Geoffrey Chaucer
(1340-1400)
He was born between 1340-1345 probably in London. His father was a prosperous wine merchant.
In 1357 he was a page in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster (wife of Prince Lionel).
He was captured by the French during the Brittany Expedition of 1359 but was ransomed by the King.
Edward III later sent him to France on a diplomatic mission. He also travelled to Genoa and Florence.
Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet, a lady in waiting in the Queen’s household.
Phillippa’s sister, Katherine Swynford later became the third wife of John of Gaunt (King’s fourth son and
Chaucer’s patron).
In 1374 Chaucer was appointed Comptroller of the Lucrative London customs.
In 1386 he was elected Member of Parliament for Kent and also served as a justice of peace. In 1389, he
was made clerk of the King’s works, overseeing loyal building projects.
He held a number of royal posts serving both Edward III and his successor Richard II.
Chaucer lived during
Edward III – 1327-1377
Richard II – 1377 -1399
Henry IV – 1399 -1413
He was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey now known as “The Poets Corner.”
Arnold called him father of English poetry.
In the “Legends of Good Women”, the 9 legends are - Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea,
Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra.
Dryden re-wrote Canterbury Tales in Modern English.
He was the first national poet of England.
Dryden said about him – “Here is God’s plenty” and “A Rough diamond and must first be polished ere
he shines”.
Boccacio exercised a deep influence on Chaucer. On diplomatic mission he was sent to Italy where he
met Petrarch and Boccacio. He makes a clear reference of Petrarch in his Clerk’s tale.
He is called father of English poetry and Grandfather of English Novel.
He is called morning star of song, and morning star of Renaissance.
Arnold says about him – “Chaucer lacks not only the accent of Dante but also the high seriousness.”
He is the first one to use Ottava Rima in The Book of The Duchess. (Ottava Rima is the eight syllable line
in couplet rhyming)
He first used heroic couplet in The Legends of Good Women. (Heroic couplet is ten syllable line
rhyming in Couplets i.e. Decasyllabic Couplet)
He first used Rhyme Royal in Troilus and Cressida. Rhyme Royal is ten syllable line arranged in Seven
line stanza (ABAB BCC)
Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida is called novel in verse.
In The House of Fame, Chaucer resemblance closes to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
W. J. Long called the prologue to the Canterbury tales as “the prologue to modern fiction” because of its
realism.
The general prologue of The Canterbury Tales contains 858 lines.
The general plan of Canterbury tales is taken from Boccacio’s Decameron. In Canterbury the pilgrims
could be seen going to Thomas a Beckett in the month of April. He gave pen picture of 21 pilgrims in this
work.
“Had Chaucer written in prose it is possible his Troilus and Cressida and not Richardson’s “Pamela”
would be celebrated as 1st English Novel” - by S. D. Neil.
Edmund Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” called – “Chaucer, well of English undefiled.”
Nevill Coghill interpreted Canterbury Tales in 20th Century English.
‘Albert’ called Chaucer “The earliest of the great moderns.” and “the morning star of Renaissance.”
Dryden called Chaucer “The father of English poetry.”
“Chaucer found his native tongue a dialect and left it a language” - By Lowes
“Chaucer is the earliest of the great moderns”: By Mathew Arnold
“If Chaucer is the father of English poetry, he is the grandfather of English novel.” -By G.K. Chesterton.
“Here is God’s plenty.” By Dryden
Occleve wrote a famous poem “The Regiment of Princess” on the death of Chaucer.
Chaucer and Langland died in the same year (1400).
Chaucer has been criticised for presenting about courts and cultivated classes and neglect the suffering of
the poor.
Although in Canterbury Tales 120 stories were planned but only 24 were completed.
Chaucer introduced ‘Felicity’ in English.
Longest tale of Canterbury Tales is Knight’s Tale.
Chaucer has been called the “Prince of Plagiarists.”
“Chaucer was not in any sense a poet of the people” – by Hudson
The works of his life can be divided into three periods
French Period (1359-1372)
During this time, Chaucer translated the "Roman de la Rose," a French poem written during the 1200s.
He also wrote his "Book of the Duchess," an elegiac poem that shared much with contemporary French
poetry of the time but also departed from that poetry in important ways.
Chaucer's extensive reading of Latin poets such as Boethius also influenced his own work.
He was influenced by French masters as Guillaume de Machaut, Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris.
The Romaunt of the Rose (1360)
This book was almost a translated version of French work “le Roman de la Rose” Jean de Meun and
Guillaume de Lorris.
The story begins with an allegorical dream, in which the narrator receives advice from the god of love on
gaining his lady's favour. Her love being symbolized by a rose, he is unable to get to the rose.
The second fragment is a satire on the mores of the time, with respect to courting, religious order, and
religious hypocrisy. In the second fragment, the narrator is able to kiss the rose, but then the allegorical
character Jealousy builds a fortress encircling it so that the narrator does not have access to it.
The third fragment of the translation takes up the poem 5,000 lines after the second fragment ends. At its
beginning, the god of love is planning to attack the fortress of Jealousy with his barons. The rest of the
fragment is a confession given by Fals-Semblant, or false-seeming, which is a treatise on the ways in which
men are false to one another, especially the clergy to their parishioners.
The third fragment ends with Fals-Semblant going to the fortress of Jealousy in the disguise of a religious
pilgrim. He speaks with Wikked-Tunge that is holding one of the gates of the fortress and convinces him
to repent his sins. The poem ends with Fals-Semblant absolving Wikked-Tunge of his sins.
The Book of the Duchess (1369)
This book was written on the death of the Dutchess Blenche, who was the wife of John of Gaunt ( Patron
of Chaucer). She belongs to Lancester. This book is an elegy and allegory in nature. It comprises 1300
lines. In this book Chaucer used Ottava Rima for the first time.
'The Book of the Duchess' begins with a man who cannot sleep. His heavy thoughts and fantasies are so
disturbing that he hasn't slept for eight years. He fears he will die of his insomnia, so he asks a servant to
bring him a book to read, which he calls a romance, a medieval European genre of literature often about
knights and their adventures and romances. He says that it's better to read than to play chess to try to fall
asleep.
He reads about a fictional king, Ceyx, who sets sail for an adventure at sea and is drowned in a storm. The
queen, Alcyone, waits for him to return and when he doesn't, she grieves inconsolably. She begs the
goddess Juno to let her see what happened to her husband, if only in a dream. She vows to give her total
devotion to the goddess if she grants her wish.
The goddess causes Alcyone to fall into a deep sleep and summons Morpheus, the god of sleep, to go find
the king on the ocean floor, inhabit his body, and make him appear to Alcyone in a dream so that she sees
that he has drowned. He does so, and Alcyone dies of grief three days later.
The narrator, or the speaker of the poem, figures that if a god helps Alcyone fall asleep and dream, maybe
a god would do the same for him. He sends a plea up to the gods that he will reward them with the most
luxurious gold-painted bedchamber, with a bed of the finest down, with covers embroidered with the finest
threads of pure gold, if they will help him sleep. He immediately falls asleep and has a vivid dream.
First, the narrator hears the birds singing the sweetest symphony he's ever heard. He is lying in a room
whose walls have pictures of all the characters of the great European epic poems.
'For the entire story of Troy was wrought in the glasswork thus: of Hector and of King Priam, of Achilles
and of King Lamedon, and also of Medea and of Jason, of Paris, Helen, and of Lavinia. And on all the
walls were painted with fine colours the entire Romance of the Rose, both text and gloss.'
Some of the other works of this period are:-
The ABC- It is written in eight line stanza.
The Complaint into Pity :- Chaucer has used first time a seven line stanza known as 'Rhyme Royal
in this work.
The Complaint of Mars.
Queen Anelida.
Italian Period (1372-85)
In 1372 Chaucer has been to Italy & came in personal contact with Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. The
important works of this period are : Troilus and Criseyde, The Parlement of Foules, The House of Fame
and The Legend of Good Women.
Troilus and Criseyde
It is a tragic verse romance by Geoffrey Chaucer, composed in the 1380s and considered by some critics
to be his finest work. The plot of this 8,239-line poem was taken largely from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il
filostrato.
It recounts the love story of Troilus, son of the Trojan king Priam, and Criseyde, widowed daughter of the
deserter priest Calchas.
The poem moves in leisurely fashion, with introspection and much of what would now be called
psychological insight dominating many sections. Aided by Criseyde’s uncle Pandarus, Troilus and
Criseyde are united in love about halfway through the poem, but then she is sent to join her father in the
Greek camp outside Troy.
Despite her promise to return, she is loved by the Greek warrior Diomedes and comes to love him.
Troilus, left in despair, is killed in the Trojan War.
These events are interspersed with Boethian discussion of free will and determinism and the direct
comments of the narrator.
At the end of the poem, when Troilus’s soul rises into the heavens, the folly of complete immersion in
sexual love is contrasted with the eternal love of God.
The Parliament of Foules (1382)
It is a 699-line poem in rhyme royal by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in 1380–90. Composed in the tradition
of French romances.
This poem has been called one of the best occasional verses in the English language. Often thought
to commemorate the marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia in 1382, it describes a conference of
birds that meet to choose their mates on St. Valentine’s Day.
The narrator falls asleep and dreams of a beautiful garden in which Nature presides over a debate between
three high-ranking eagles, all vying for the attentions of a beautiful female.
The other birds, each of which represents a different aspect of English society, are given a chance to
express their opinions; Chaucer uses this device to gently satirize the tradition of courtly love. He handles
the debate with humour and deftly characterizes the various birds.
Although the debate on love and marriage is never resolved, the poem is complete in itself and ends on a
note of joy and satisfaction.
The House of Fame (1380)
It was written after the influence of Dante. It has the resemblance to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
It is an unfinished dream‐ poem by Chaucer. There are three books, in 2,158 lines of Octosyllabics.
After the prologue on dreams and the invocation to the god of sleep, Book I says the poet fell asleep and
dreamt that he was in a Temple of Glass where he saw depicted Aeneas and Dido; the dream moves on to
deal more briefly with other parts of the Aeneid.
The poet sees an eagle that alights by him and is his guide through the House of Fame. The eagle
explains, philosophically and at length, how Fame works in its arbitrary ways.
The eagle departs and Chaucer enters the Palace of Fame (Rumour) where he sees the famous of both
classical and biblical lore. Eolus blows a trumpet to summon up the various celebrities who introduce
themselves in categories reminiscent of the souls in Dante's Divina Commedia.
Towards the end of the poem comes a vision of bearers of false tidings: shipmen, pilgrims, pardoners, and
messengers, whose confusion seems to be about to be resolved by the appearance of ‘A man of gret
auctorite…’; but there the poem ends.
The Legend of Good Women (1385)
It is written on Queen Bohemia’s bidding who asked him to write of good women. Much of this poem is
devoted to the first use of the heroic couplet by Chaucer to retell in lyrical form the tragic love stories of
Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, Phyllis and Hypermnestra.
It is a dream-vision by Geoffrey Chaucer. The fourth and final work of the genre that Chaucer composed,
it presents a “Prologue” (existing in two versions) and nine stories.
In the “Prologue” the god of love is angry at Chaucer for writing about so many women who betray men.
As penance, Chaucer is instructed to write about good women.
The “Prologue” is noteworthy for the delightful humour of the narrator’s self-mockery and for the
passages in praise of books and of the spring.
The stories—concerning such women of antiquity as Cleopatra, Dido, and Lucrece—are brief and rather
mechanical, with the betrayal of women by wicked men as a regular theme. As a result, the whole becomes
more a legend of bad men than of good women.
English Period (1386-1400)
The famous work of this period is Canterbury Tales which was written after influence of Boccaccio’s
‘The Decameron’.
The Canterbury Tales (contains 17000Lines)
In The Canterbury Tales, 32 characters make the trip to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket in
Canterbury.
Although 29 characters are mentioned in line 24 of the “General Prologue.” The narrator joins this group
(making 30). The host, Harry Bailey, makes 31. The Canon’s yeoman, who joins the group later, makes
32.
The narrator gives a description of 27 Pilgrims. (Except second Nun or Nun’s Priest).
This work remained unfinished at Chaucer’s death.
In Prologue to Canterbury Tales Chaucer employed the Heroic couplet.
There are four characters that are not criticised or satirised by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales –
i) Knight
ii) Parson
iii) Clerk
iv) Plowman
Clergymen in the Canterbury Tales are:
1. Prioress (Madam Eglantine)
2. Parson
3. Friar and
4. Monk
Canterbury Tales have the characters from three social groups or estates Viz. Nobility, Church and
Commoners.
Opinion of Chaucer about different Characters of Canterbury Tales in The Prologue
Plowman: He would help the poor for the love of Christ and never take a penny. About Plowman
Chaucer says – “He would pay his taxes regularly.
Host: Bold in his speech, yet wise and full of tact no manly attribute he lacked, merry- hearted man.
Doctor (Physician): He was rather close to expenses and kept the gold he won in pestilence. Gold
stimulated the heart or so we are told, had a special love for gold.
Reeve: He was under contract to present the accounts, right from his masters earliest years; no one ever
caught him in arrears.
Miller: A wrangler and buffoon who had a store of tavern stories, filthy in the main, was a master-hand at
stealing grain.
Summoner: Loved Garlic, Onion, leeks and drinking strong wine till he was hazy. Then he would shout
and jabber as if crazy and wouldn’t speak a word except in Latin when he was drunk.
Franklin: His house was never short of bake-meat pies of fish and flesh, and these in such supplies it
positively snowed with meat and drink and all the dainties that a man could think.
Clerk of Oxford: His horse was thinner than a rake and he was not too fat, but had a hollow look, a sober
stare; the thread upon his overcoat was bare.
Friar: Knew the taverns well in every town and every innkeeper and barmaid too; better than leapers,
beggars, and the crew, kept his tippet stuffed with pins for curls and pocket-knives to give to pretty girls.
Merchant: Had set his wits to work, none knew he was in debt, was so stately in negotiation, loan, bargain
and commercial obligation.
Wife of Bath: Liked to laugh and chat and knew the remedies of love’s mischances, an art in which she
knew the oldest dances.
Cook: Had an ulcer on his knee, as for blancmange he made it with the best.
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