Difference between revisions of "Geoffrey Chaucer" - New World Encyclopedia

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==Works==
 
==Works==
  
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Chaucer's first major work ''[[The Book of the Duchess]]'' was an [[elegy]] for [[Blanche of Lancaster]].  Although unlikely that it was commissioned by her husband [[John of Gaunt]], as some scholars have claimed, he did grant Chaucer a £10 annuity on [[13 June]] [[1374]].  Two other early works were ''[[Anelida and Arcite]]'' and ''The [[House of Fame]]''. Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period while working as customs comptroller.  His ''[[Parlement of Foules]]'', ''[[The Legend of Good Women]]'' and ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' all date from this time.  He is best known as the writer of ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'', a collection of stories (told by fictional [[pilgrim]]s on the road to the [[cathedral]] at [[Canterbury, Kent|Canterbury]]) that would help to shape [[English literature]].
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Chaucer's first major work ''[[The Book of the Duchess]]'' was an [[elegy]] for [[Blanche of Lancaster]].  The most important work of this early period, however, is ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]''. Like many other works of his early period (sometimes called his French-and-Italian period) ''Troilus and Criseyde'' shows structural influence from contemporary French and Italian poets, as well as subject material drawn from classical sources.  
  
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''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' contrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage which sets it apart from other literature of the period.  Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, probably representing the incomplete state of the work. Chaucer drew on real life for his cast of Pilgrims; the inn keeper shares the name of a contemporary keeper of an Inn in [[Southwark]], and real life identities for the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Man of Law and the Student have been suggested. The many jobs Chaucer held in medieval society; page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the ''Tales''.  He was able to ape their speech, satirise their manners and still, in the end, use their idioms as a means for making art.
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===''Troilus and Criseyde''===
  
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Chaucer's works are sometimes grouped into, first a French period, then an Italian period and finally an English period, with Chaucer being influenced by those countries' literatures in turn.  Certainly ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' is a middle period work with its reliance on the forms of Italian poetry, little known in England at the time, but to which Chaucer was probably exposed during his frequent trips abroad on court business. In addition, its use of a [[classical antiquity|classical]] subject and its elaborate, courtly language sets it apart as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In ''[[Troilus and Criseyde]]'' Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Bocaccio, and on the late Latin philsopher Boethius. However, it is ''The Canterbury Tales'', wherein he focuses on English subjects, with bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour, that has cemented his reputation.
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''Troilus and Criseyde'' is the love story of [[Troilus]], a [[Troy|Trojan]] prince, and [[Cressida|Criseyde]].  Many Chaucer scholars regard this as his best work.
  
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Chaucer also [[translation|translated]] such important works as [[Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius|Boethius]]' ''[[Consolation of Philosophy]]'' and ''[[The Romance of the Rose]]'' by [[Guillaume de Lorris]] (extended by Jean de Meun). However, while many scholars maintain that Chaucer did indeed translate part of the text of ''The Romance of the Rose'' as ''[[Roman de la Rose]]'', others claim that this has been effectively disproved.  Many of his other works were very loose translations of, or simply based on, works from continental Europe.  It is in this role that Chaucer receives some of his earliest critical praise.  [[Eustache Deschamps]] wrote a [[ballade]] on the great translator and called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In [[1385]] [[Thomas Usk]] made glowing mention of Chaucer, and [[John Gower]], Chaucer's main poetic rival of the time, also lauded him.  This reference was later edited out of Gower's ''[[Confessio Amantis]]'' and it has been suggested by some that this was because of ill feeling between them, but it is likely due simply to stylistic concerns.
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Troilus is a character who appears in numerous medieval and [[Renaissance]] versions of the Trojan War legend. He is a Trojan prince, and son of the god [[Apollo]], who falls in love with Cressida, a Greek woman captured and enslaved by the Trojans. Cressida pledges her love to him, but when she is returned to the Greeks in a hostage exchange, she goes to live with the Greek hero Diomedes.
  
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One other significant work of Chaucer's is his [[Treatise on the Astrolabe]], possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use of [[Astrolabe|that instrument]] in detail. Although much of the text may have come from other sources, the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents. Another scientific work discovered in [[1952]], ''Equatorie of the Planetis'', has similar language and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the ideas from the Astrolabe.  The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.
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An oracle prophesies that Troy will not be defeated as long as Troilus reaches the age of twenty alive. Achilles, however, seeing Troilus lead his horses to the fountain, falls in love with the beautiful long-haired boy. He ambushes him and his sister, Polyxena, who escapes. Troilus, however, rejects Achilles' advances, and takes refuge inside the temple of Apollo Timbraeus.
  
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==Influence==
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Achilles, enraged, slays Troilus on the altar. When the Trojan heroes, too late, ride to the rescue, he whirls the head by the hair and hurls it at them. This affront to the god - killing his son and desecrating the temple - has been conjectured as the cause of Apollo's enmity towards Achilles, and, in Chaucer's poem, is used to tragically contrast Troilus' innocence and good-faith with the arrogance and rapaciousness of Achilles.  
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===Linguistic===
 
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[[Image:Chaucer Hoccleve.gif|thumb|300px|Portrait of Chaucer from [[Thomas Occleve]], a close friend, so probably an accurate depiction]]
 
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Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic [[metre (poetry)|metre]], a style which had developed since around the twelfth century as an alternative to the [[alliterative verse|alliterative]] [[Anglo-Saxon poetry|Anglo-Saxon metre]].  Chaucer is known for metrical innovation, inventing the [[rhyme royal]], and he was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, the [[iambic pentameter]], in his work, with only a few anonymous short works using it before him. And the arrangement of these five-stress line into rhyming [[couplet]]s was first seen in his ''[[The Legend of Good Women]]'', was used in much of his later work and became one of the standard poetic forms in English.  His early influence as a satirist is also important, with the common humorous device, the funny accent of a [[regional dialect]], apparently making its first appearance in ''[[The Reeve's Prologue and Tale|The Reeve's Tale]]''.
 
  
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The poetry of Chaucer, along with other writers of the era, is credited with helping to ''standardise'' the London Dialect of the [[Middle English]] language; a combination of Kentish and Midlands dialect.  This is probably overstated: the influence of the court, [[chancery]] and bureaucracy—of which Chaucer was a part—remains a more probable influence on the development of [[Standard English]].  [[Modern English]] is somewhat distanced from the language of Chaucer's poems owing to the effect of the [[Great Vowel Shift]] some time after his death.  This change in the [[pronunciation]] of English, still not fully understood, makes the reading of Chaucer difficult for the modern audience. The status of the final ''-e'' in Chaucer's verse is uncertain: it seems likely that during the period of Chaucer's writing the final ''-e'' was dropping out of colloquial English and that its use was somewhat irregular. Chaucer's versification suggests that the final ''-e'' is sometimes to be vocalised, and sometimes to be silent; however, this remains a point on which there is disagreement. Apart from the irregular spelling, much of the vocabulary is recognisable to the modern reader.  Chaucer is also recorded in the [[Oxford English Dictionary]] as the first author to use many common English words in his writings.  These words were probably frequently used in the language at the time but Chaucer, with his ear for common speech, is the earliest manuscript source.  ''Acceptable'', ''alkali'', ''altercation'', ''amble'', ''angrily'', ''annex'', ''annoyance'', ''approaching'', ''arbitration'', ''armless'', ''army'', ''arrogant'', ''arsenic'', ''arc'', ''artillery'' and ''aspect'' are just some of those from the first letter of the alphabet.
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Chaucer's main source for the poem was[[Boccaccio]], who wrote the story in his ''Il Filostrato'', itself a re-working of [[Benoît de Sainte-Maure]]'s ''Roman de Troie'', which was in turn an expansion of a passage from [[Homer]].
  
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====Literary====
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===''The Canterbury Tales''===
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[[Chaucer]]'s early popularity is attested by the many poets who imitated his works.  [[John Lydgate]] was one of earliest imitators who wrote a continuation to the ''Tales''. Later a group of poets including [[Gavin Douglas]], [[William Dunbar]] and [[Robert Henryson]] were known as the [[Scottish Chaucerians]] for their indebtedness to his style.  Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works contain material from these admiring poets and the later [[romantic era]] poets' appreciation of Chaucer was coloured by their not knowing which of the works were genuine.  It was not until the late [[19th century]] that the official Chaucerian canon, accepted today, was decided upon.  One hundred and fifty years after his death, ''The Canterbury Tales'' was selected by [[William Caxton]] to be one of the first books to be printed in England.
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Chaucer, however, is almost certainly best known for his long poem, ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]''.  
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The poem consists of a collection of 14 stories, two in [[prose]] and the rest in [[verse]]. The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a [[frame tale]] and told by a group of [[pilgrim]]s on their way from [[London Borough of Southwark|Southwark]] to [[Canterbury, Kent|Canterbury]] to visit the shrine of [[Saint]] [[Thomas à Becket]]'s at [[Canterbury Cathedral]]{{ref|shrine}}.
  
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====Monuments and Tributes====
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The poem is in stark contrast to other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell, and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage, setting apart from almost anything else written during its period.  Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, probably representing the incomplete state of the work. The many jobs Chaucer held in medieval society: page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the ''Tales''.  He was able to ape their speech, satirise their manners and still, in the end, use their idioms as a means for making art.
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A building has been named in Chaucer's honour at the [[United Kingdom]] [[Civil Service College]].
 
  
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==Historical Reception and Representation==
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The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as [[courtly love]], treachery and avarice. The genres also vary, and include [[Romance (genre)|romance]], [[Breton lai]], [[sermon]], and [[fabliau]]. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance, and are among the most vivid accounts of medieval life that we have today. Chaucer provides a "slice-of-life", creating a picture of the times in which he lived by letting us hear the voices and see the viewpoints of people from all different backgrounds and social classes.
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===Manuscripts===
 
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As early as 1400, Chaucer's courtly audience grew to include members of the rising literate, middle and merchant classes, which included many [[Lollard]] sympathizers who would have been inclined to read Chaucer as one of his own, particularly in his satirical writings about priests and various religious. We would not have so many manuscripts of Chaucer's works today if this group of readers had not created a great demand for them.
 
  
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===Printed Books===
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Some of the tales are serious and others humorous; however, all are very precise in describing the traits and faults of human nature. Chaucer, like virtually all other authors of his period, was very interested in presenting a moral to his story. Religious malpractice is a major theme, appropriate for a work written on the eve of [[The Reformation]]. Most of the tales are interlinked with similar themes running through them and some are told in retaliation for other tales in the form of an argument. The work is incomplete, as it was originally intended that each character would tell four tales, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the return journey. This would have meant a possible one hundred and twenty tales which would have dwarfed the twenty-six tales actually written.  
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Early on, representations of Chaucer began to circle around two co-existing identites: 1) a courtier and a king's man, an international humanist familiar with the classics and continental greats; 2) a man of the people, a plain-style satirist and a critic of the church. All things to all people (barring some sensitive moralists), for a combination of mixed aesthetic and political reasons, Chaucer was held in high esteem by high and low audiences—certainly a boon for printers and booksellers. [http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg073.htm The sixteenth-century folio editions of Chaucer's ''Works''] were seminal events in the construction of this national literary forefather who could be read in support of both radical and conservative positions as well as different historical narratives: a popular, reformation from below and a court-controlled reformation from above.
 
  
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In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English author, and he was the first author to have his works collected in comprehensive single-volume editions in which a Chaucer [[canon]] began to cohere. Some scholars contend that that sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's ''Works'' set the precedent for all other English authors in terms of presentation, prestige and success in print. These editions certainly established Chaucer's reputation, but they also began the complicated process of reconstructing and frequently inventing Chaucer's biography and the canonical list of works attributed to him.  
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It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that ''The Canterbury Tales'' made to [[English literature]] was in popularising the literary use of the [[vernacular]] language, [[English language|English]] (rather than the [[French language|French]] or [[Latin]] then spoken by the noble classes). However, several of Chaucer's contemporaries—[[John Gower]], [[William Langland]], and [[the Pearl Poet]]—also wrote major literary works in English, and Chaucer's appellation as the "Father of English Literature," though somewhat true, is an overstatement.
  
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[[William Caxton]]'s [http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg076.htm two folio editions] of ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' were published in [[1478]] and [[1483]]. [[Richard Pynson]], the [[King's Printer]] for about twenty years, was the first to collect and sell something that resembled an edition of the collected works of Chaucer, introducing in the process five previously printed texts that are not Chaucer's. (The collection is actually three separately printed texts, or collections of texts, bound together as one volume.) There is a likely connection between Pynson's product and [[William Thynne]]'s a mere six years later. Thynne had a successful career from the 1520s until his death in [[1546]], when he was one of the masters of the royal household. His editions of ''Chaucers Works'' in [[1532]] and [[1542]] were the first major contributions to the existence of a widely recognized Chaucerian canon. Thynne represents his edition as a book sponsored by and supportive of the king who is praised in the preface by [[Sir Brian Tuke]]. Thynne's canon brought the number of apocryphal works associated with Chaucer to a total of 28, even if that was not his intention. As with Pynson, once included in the ''Works'', pseudepigraphic texts stayed within it, regardless of their first editor's intentions.  
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Much more important than standardization of dialect was the introduction, through ''The Canterbury Tales'', of numerous poetic techinques that would become standards for English poesy. The poem's use of [[accentual-syllabic meter]], which had been invented a century earlier by the French and Italians, was revolutionary; after Chaucer, the [[alliterative verse|alliterative meter]] of Old English poetry would become completely extinct. The poem also deploys, masterfully, [[iambic pentameter]], which would become the de facto measure for the English poetic line. Chaucer was the first author in English to write in pentameter, and ''The Canterbury Tales'' are his masterpiece of the technique. The poem is also one of the first in the language to use rhymed [[couplet|couplets]] in conjunction with a five-stress line, a form of rhyme that would become extremeley popular in all varieties English verse after ''The Canterbury Tales''' publication.  
  
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Probably the most significant aspect of the growing apocrypha is that, beginning with Thynne's editions, it began to include medieval texts that made Chaucer appear as a proto-Protestant [[Lollard]], primarily the ''[[Testament of Love]]'' and ''[[The Plowman's Tale]]''. As "Chaucerian" works that were not considered apocryphal until the late nineteenth century, these medieval texts enjoyed a new life, with English Protestants carrying on the earlier Lollard project of appropriating existing texts and authors who seemed sympathetic—or malleable enough to be construed as sympathetic—to their cause. The official Chaucer of the early printed volumes of his ''Works'' was construed as a proto-Protestant as the same was done, concurrently, with [[William Langland]] and ''[[Piers Plowman]]''. The famous ''Plowman's Tale'' did not enter Thynne's ''Works'' until the second, [[1542]] edition. Its entry was surely facilitated by Thynne's inclusion of [[Thomas Usk]]'s ''Testament of Love'' in the first edition. The ''Testament of Love'' imitates, borrows from, and thus resembles Usk's contemporary, Chaucer. (''Testament of Love'' also appears to borrow from ''Piers Plowman''.)  Since the ''Testament of Love'' mentions its author's part in a failed plot (book 1, chapter 6), his imprisonment, and (perhaps) a recantation of (possibly Lollard) heresy, all this was associated with Chaucer. (Usk himself was executed as a traitor in [[1388]].) Interestingly, [[John Foxe]] took this recantation of heresy as a defense of the true faith, calling Chaucer a "right Wiclevian" and (erroneously) identifying him as a schoolmate and close friend of [[John Wycliffe]] at [[Merton College, Oxford]]. ([[Thomas Speght]] is careful to highlight these facts in his editions and his "Life of Chaucer.") No other sources for the ''Testament of Love'' exist—there is only Thynne's construction of whatever manuscript sources he had.
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===Translation===
  
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[[John Stow]] (1525-1605) was an antiquarian and also a chronicler. [http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg077.htm His edition of Chaucer's ''Works'' in 1561] brought the apocrypha to more than 50 titles. More were added in the seventeenth century, and they remained as late as [[1810]], well after [[Thomas Tyrwhitt]] pared the canon down in [http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg079.htm his 1775 edition]. The compilation and printing of Chaucer's works was, from its beginning, a political enterprise, since it was intended to establish an English national identity and history that grounded and authorized the Tudor monarchy and church. What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favorably to Protestant England.
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Chaucer, in his own time, was most famous as a translator of continental works. He translated such diverse works as [[Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius|Boethius]]' ''[[Consolation of Philosophy]]'' and ''[[The Romance of the Rose]]'', and the poems of [[Eustache Deschamps]], who wrote in a [[ballade]] that he considered himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In recent times, however, the authenticity of some of Chaucer's translations have come into dispute, with some works putatatively attributed to Chaucer having been proven as authored by anonymous imitators. What is more, it is somewhat difficult for a modern audience to distinguish Chaucer's poetry from his translations; many of his most famous poems consist of long passages of direct translation from other sources.  
  
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In his [[1598]] edition of the ''Works'', Speght (probably taking cues from Foxe) made good use of Usk's account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the ''Testament of Love'' to assemble a largely fictional "Life of Our Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer." Speght's "Life" presents readers with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, a proto-Protestant who eventually came around the king's views on religion. Speght states that "In the second year of Richard the second, the King tooke Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof no doubt was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash attempt of the common people." Under the discussion of Chaucer's friends, namely John of Gaunt, Speght further explains:
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==Historical Representations and Context==
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Early on, representations of Chaucer began to circle around two co-existing identites: 1) a courtier and a king's man, an international humanist familiar with the classics and continental greats; 2) a man of the people, a plain-style satirist and a critic of the church. All things to all people, for a combination of mixed aesthetic and political reasons, Chaucer was held in high esteem by high and low audiences—certainly a boon for printers and booksellers. [http://www.uwm.edu/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg073.htm The sixteenth-century folio editions of Chaucer's ''Works''] were seminal events in the construction of this national literary forefather who could be read in support of both radical and conservative positions as well as different historical narratives: a popular reformation from below and a court-controlled reformation from above. His enduring popularity is attested to by the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English author.  
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::Yet it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies of King Richard the second, as it may appeare in the Testament of Loue: where hee doth greatly complaine of his owne rashnesse in following the multitude, and of their hatred of him for bewraying their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh to his empty purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is adjoined, then is in print. Where he maketh great lamentation for his wrongfull imprisonment, wishing death to end his daies: which in my iudgement doth greatly accord with that in the Testament of Love. Moreover we find it thus in Record.
 
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Later, in "The [[Argument (literature)|Argument]]" to the ''Testament of Love'', Speght adds:
 
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::Chaucer did compile this booke as a comfort to himselfe after great griefs conceiued for some rash attempts of the commons, with whome he had ioyned, and thereby was in feare to loose the fauour of his best friends.
 
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Speght is also the source of the famous tale of Chaucer being fined for beating a [[Franciscan]] [[friar]] in [[Fleet Street]], as well as a fictitious [[coat of arms]] and [[family tree]]. Ironically—and perhaps consciously so—an introductory, apologetic letter in Speght's edition from [[Francis Beaumont]] defends the unseemly, "low," and bawdy bits in Chaucer from an elite, classicist position. Francis Thynne noted some of these inconsistencies in his ''Animadversions'', insisting that Chaucer was not a commoner, and he objected to the friar-beating story. Yet Thynne himself underscores Chaucer's support for popular religious reform, associating Chaucer's views with his father William Thynne's attempts to include ''The Plowman's Tale'' and ''The Pilgrim's Tale'' in the [[1532]] and [[1542]] ''Works''.
 
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====Foxe's Chaucer====
 
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Alongside Chaucer's ''Works'', the most impressive literary monument of the period is [[John Foxe]]'s ''[[Foxe's Book of Martyrs|Acts and Monuments...]]''. As with the Chaucer editions, it was critically significant to English Protestant identity and included Chaucer in its project. Foxe's Chaucer both derived from and contributed to the printed editions of Chaucer's ''Works'', particularly the pseudepigrapha. ''Jack Upland'' was first printed in Foxe's ''Acts and Monuments'', and then it appeared in Speght's edition of Chaucer's ''Works''. Speght's "Life of Chaucer" echoes Foxe's own account, which is itself dependent upon the earlier editions that added the ''Testament of Love'' and ''The Plowman's Tale'' to their pages. Like Speght's Chaucer, Foxe's Chaucer was also a shrewd (or lucky) political survivor. In his [[1563]] edition, Foxe "thought it not out of season . . . to couple . . . some mention of Geoffrey Chaucer" with a discussion of [[John Colet]], a possible source for [[John Skelton]]'s character [[Colin Clout]].
 
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Probably referring to the 1542 [[Act for the Advancement of True Religion]], Foxe says he "marvel[s] to consider . . . how the bishops, condemning and abolishing all manner of English books and treatises which might bring the people to any light of knowledge, did yet authorise the works of Chaucer to remain still and to be occupied; who, no doubt, saw into religion as much almost as even we do now, and uttereth in his works no less, and seemeth to be a right Wicklevian, or else there never was any. And that, all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will testify (albeit done in mirth, and covertly); and especially the latter end of his third book of the Testament of Love . . . . Wherein, except a man be altogether blind, he may espy him at the full : although in the same book (as in all others he useth to do), under shadows covertly, as under a visor, he suborneth truth in such sort, as both privily she may profit the godly-minded, and yet not be espied of the crafty adversary. And therefore the bishops, belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet permitted his books to be read."
 
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It is significant, too, that Foxe's discussion of Chaucer leads into his history of "The Reformation of the Church of Christ in the Time of Martin Luther" when "Printing, being opened, incontinently ministered unto the church the instruments and tools of learning and knowledge; which were good books and authors, which before lay hid and unknown. The science of printing being found, immediately followed the grace of God; which stirred up good wits aptly to conceive the light of knowledge and judgment: by which light darkness began to be espied, and ignorance to be detected; truth from error, religion from superstition, to be discerned."
 
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Foxe downplays Chaucer's bawdy and amorous writing, insisting that it all testifies to his piety. Material that is troubling is deemed metaphoric, while the more forthright satire (which Foxe prefers) is taken literally.
 
  
 
==List of Works==
 
==List of Works==
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* [http://www.aberdeen.k12.sd.us]
 
* [http://www.aberdeen.k12.sd.us]
  
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[[Category:Art,
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[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]

Revision as of 05:58, 14 February 2006

Chaucer: Illustration from Cassell's History of England, circa 1902.

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – October 25, 1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat (courtier), and diplomat. Chaucer is best known as the author of The Canterbury Tales. He is sometimes credited with being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language, rather than French or Latin. He is considered by many to be the most important author of the Middle English period.

Life

Chaucer as a pilgrim from the Ellesmere manuscript

Chaucer was born around 1343 probably in London, although the exact date and location is not known. His father and grandfather were both London wine merchants (vintners) and before that, for several generations, the family were merchants in Ipswich, and although not of noble birth, were extremely well-to-do.

The young Chaucer began his career by becoming a page to Elizabeth de Burgh, a Countess of Ulster. In 1359, Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, Elizabeth's husband, as part of the English army in the Hundred Years War. After his tour of duty, Chaucer travelled in France, Spain and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps as a religious pilgrim. In 1367, Chaucer became a valet to the royal family, which position he traveled with king, performing any number of odd jobs.

On one such trip to Italy in 1373 Chaucer came into contact with medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories of which he would use later. While he may have been exposed to manuscripts of these works the trips were not usually long enough to learn sufficient Italian. It is speculated that he had learned Itlain due to his upbringing among the merchants and immigrants in the docklands of London.

A 19th century depiction of Chaucer. For three near-contemporary portraits of Chaucer see here.

In 1374 Chaucer becameComptroller of the Customs for the port of London for Richard II. While working as comptroller Chaucer moved to Kent and became a Member of Parliament there in 1386, and later assumed the title of clerk of the king's works, a sort of foreman organizing most of the king's building projects. In this capacity he oversaw repairs upon Westminster Palace, and St. George's Chapel.

Soon after the overthrow of his patron Richard II, Chaucer vanished from the historical record. He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October, 1400 but there is no firm evidence for this date which is from the engraving on his tomb, built over one hundred years after his death. There is some speculation—most recently in Terry Jones' book Who Murdered Chaucer? : A Medieval Mystery—that he was murdered by enemies of Richard II or even on the orders of his successor Henry IV.

Works

Chaucer's first major work The Book of the Duchess was an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster. The most important work of this early period, however, is Troilus and Criseyde. Like many other works of his early period (sometimes called his French-and-Italian period) Troilus and Criseyde shows structural influence from contemporary French and Italian poets, as well as subject material drawn from classical sources.

Troilus and Criseyde

Troilus and Criseyde is the love story of Troilus, a Trojan prince, and Criseyde. Many Chaucer scholars regard this as his best work.

Troilus is a character who appears in numerous medieval and Renaissance versions of the Trojan War legend. He is a Trojan prince, and son of the god Apollo, who falls in love with Cressida, a Greek woman captured and enslaved by the Trojans. Cressida pledges her love to him, but when she is returned to the Greeks in a hostage exchange, she goes to live with the Greek hero Diomedes.

An oracle prophesies that Troy will not be defeated as long as Troilus reaches the age of twenty alive. Achilles, however, seeing Troilus lead his horses to the fountain, falls in love with the beautiful long-haired boy. He ambushes him and his sister, Polyxena, who escapes. Troilus, however, rejects Achilles' advances, and takes refuge inside the temple of Apollo Timbraeus.

Achilles, enraged, slays Troilus on the altar. When the Trojan heroes, too late, ride to the rescue, he whirls the head by the hair and hurls it at them. This affront to the god - killing his son and desecrating the temple - has been conjectured as the cause of Apollo's enmity towards Achilles, and, in Chaucer's poem, is used to tragically contrast Troilus' innocence and good-faith with the arrogance and rapaciousness of Achilles.

Chaucer's main source for the poem wasBoccaccio, who wrote the story in his Il Filostrato, itself a re-working of Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, which was in turn an expansion of a passage from Homer.

The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer, however, is almost certainly best known for his long poem, The Canterbury Tales. The poem consists of a collection of 14 stories, two in prose and the rest in verse. The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a frame tale and told by a group of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket's at Canterbury Cathedral[1].

The poem is in stark contrast to other literature of the period in the naturalism of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell, and the varied characters who are engaged in the pilgrimage, setting apart from almost anything else written during its period. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting to their narrators, probably representing the incomplete state of the work. The many jobs Chaucer held in medieval society: page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator probably exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the Tales. He was able to ape their speech, satirise their manners and still, in the end, use their idioms as a means for making art.

The themes of the tales vary, and include topics such as courtly love, treachery and avarice. The genres also vary, and include romance, Breton lai, sermon, and fabliau. The characters, introduced in the General Prologue of the book, tell tales of great cultural relevance, and are among the most vivid accounts of medieval life that we have today. Chaucer provides a "slice-of-life", creating a picture of the times in which he lived by letting us hear the voices and see the viewpoints of people from all different backgrounds and social classes.

Some of the tales are serious and others humorous; however, all are very precise in describing the traits and faults of human nature. Chaucer, like virtually all other authors of his period, was very interested in presenting a moral to his story. Religious malpractice is a major theme, appropriate for a work written on the eve of The Reformation. Most of the tales are interlinked with similar themes running through them and some are told in retaliation for other tales in the form of an argument. The work is incomplete, as it was originally intended that each character would tell four tales, two on the way to Canterbury and two on the return journey. This would have meant a possible one hundred and twenty tales which would have dwarfed the twenty-six tales actually written.

It is sometimes argued that the greatest contribution that The Canterbury Tales made to English literature was in popularising the literary use of the vernacular language, English (rather than the French or Latin then spoken by the noble classes). However, several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, and the Pearl Poet—also wrote major literary works in English, and Chaucer's appellation as the "Father of English Literature," though somewhat true, is an overstatement.

Much more important than standardization of dialect was the introduction, through The Canterbury Tales, of numerous poetic techinques that would become standards for English poesy. The poem's use of accentual-syllabic meter, which had been invented a century earlier by the French and Italians, was revolutionary; after Chaucer, the alliterative meter of Old English poetry would become completely extinct. The poem also deploys, masterfully, iambic pentameter, which would become the de facto measure for the English poetic line. Chaucer was the first author in English to write in pentameter, and The Canterbury Tales are his masterpiece of the technique. The poem is also one of the first in the language to use rhymed couplets in conjunction with a five-stress line, a form of rhyme that would become extremeley popular in all varieties English verse after The Canterbury Tales' publication.

Translation

Chaucer, in his own time, was most famous as a translator of continental works. He translated such diverse works as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose, and the poems of Eustache Deschamps, who wrote in a ballade that he considered himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In recent times, however, the authenticity of some of Chaucer's translations have come into dispute, with some works putatatively attributed to Chaucer having been proven as authored by anonymous imitators. What is more, it is somewhat difficult for a modern audience to distinguish Chaucer's poetry from his translations; many of his most famous poems consist of long passages of direct translation from other sources.

Historical Representations and Context

Early on, representations of Chaucer began to circle around two co-existing identites: 1) a courtier and a king's man, an international humanist familiar with the classics and continental greats; 2) a man of the people, a plain-style satirist and a critic of the church. All things to all people, for a combination of mixed aesthetic and political reasons, Chaucer was held in high esteem by high and low audiences—certainly a boon for printers and booksellers. The sixteenth-century folio editions of Chaucer's Works were seminal events in the construction of this national literary forefather who could be read in support of both radical and conservative positions as well as different historical narratives: a popular reformation from below and a court-controlled reformation from above. His enduring popularity is attested to by the fact that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English author.

List of Works

The following major works are in rough chronological order but scholars still debate the dating of most of Chaucer's output and works made up from a collection of stories may have been compiled over a long period.

Major works

  • Translation of Roman de la Rose, possibly extant as The Romaunt of the Rose
  • The Book of the Duchess
  • The House of Fame
  • Anelida and Arcite
  • The Parliament of Fowls
  • Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy as Boece
  • Troilus and Criseyde
  • The Legend of Good Women
  • Treatise on the Astrolabe
  • The Canterbury Tales

Short poems

  • An ABC
  • Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn
  • The Complaint unto Pity
  • The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse
  • The Complaint of Mars
  • The Complaint of Venus
  • A Complaint to His Lady
  • The Former Age
  • Fortune
  • Gentilesse
  • Lak of Stedfastnesse
  • Lenvoy de Chaucer a Scogan
  • Lenvoy de Chaucer a Bukton
  • Proverbs
  • To Rosemounde
  • Truth
  • Womanly Noblesse

Poems dubiously ascribed to Chaucer

  • Against Women Unconstant
  • A Balade of Complaint
  • Complaynt D'Amours
  • Merciles Beaute
  • The Visioner's Tale
  • The Equatorie of the Planets - Rumored to be a rough translation of a Latin work derived from an Arab work of the same title. It is a description of the construction and use of what is called an 'equatorium planetarum', and was used in calculating planetary orbits and positions (at the time it was believed the sun orbited the Earth). The belief this work is ascribed to Chaucer comes from similar 'treatise' on the Astrolabe. However, the evidence Chaucer wrote such a work is questionable, and as such is not included in The Riverside Chaucer. If Chaucer did not compose this work, it was probably written by a contemporary (Benson, perhaps?). (S. Curran)

Works mentioned by Chaucer, presumed lost

  • Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde, possible translation of Innocent III's De miseria conditionis humanae
  • Origenes upon the Maudeleyne
  • The book of the Leoun - An interesting argument. The Book of the Leon is mentioned in Chaucer's retraction at the end of the Canterbury Tales. It is likely he wrote such a work; one suggestion is that the work was such a bad piece of writing it was lost, but if so, Chaucer would not have included it in the middle of his retraction. Indeed, he would not have included it at all. A likely source dictates it was probably a 'redaction of Guillaume de Machaut's 'Dit dou lyon,' a story about courtly love, a subject which Chaucer scholars agree he frequently wrote about (Le Romaunt de Rose).

Pseudepigraphies and Works Plagiarizing Chaucer

  • The Pilgrim's Tale — Written in the sixteenth-century with many Chaucerian allusions
  • The Plowman's Tale AKA The Complaint of the Ploughman — A Lollard satire later appropriated as a Protestant text
  • Pierce the Ploughman's Crede — A Lollard satire later appropriated by Protestants
  • The Ploughman's Tale — Its body is largely a version of Thomas Hoccleve's "Item de Beata Virgine"
  • "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" — Richard Roos' translation of a poem of the same name by Alain Chartier
  • The Testament of Love — Actually by Thomas Usk
  • Jack Upland — A Lollard satire
  • God Spede the Plow — Borrows parts of Chaucer's Monk's Tale

See also

  • Literature
  • Middle English
  • Middle English literature
  • Middle English poetry
  • Medieval literature
  • Chaucer College, a graduate school of the University of Kent, England; North Petherton.
  • Asteroid 2984 Chaucer, named after the poet
  • The movie A Knight's Tale was very loosely based on The Knight's Tale, one of the Canterbury Tales, and a fictionalised Chaucer himself appears as a character in it.

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