Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of
English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and
was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey.
While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer,
composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also
maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat.
Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend
of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English,
at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
Life Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime
around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown.
His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had
been merchants in Ipswich.
(His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".)
In 1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying
the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich.
The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially
secure—bourgeois, if not elite.
John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops
in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated 3 April 1354
and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of
London.
In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to
himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie'.
While records concerning the lives of his contemporary poets, William Langland and the
Pearl Poet are practically non-existent, since Chaucer was a public servant, his official
life is very well documented, with nearly five hundred written items testifying to his
career.
The first of the "Chaucer Life Records" appears in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth
de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster, when he became the noblewoman's page through his father's
connections.
She was married to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward
III, and the position brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle, where
he was to remain for the rest of his life.
He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as working for
the king, collecting and inventorying scrap metal.
In 1359, in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and
Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth's husband,
as part of the English army.
In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims.
Edward paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released.
After this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain,
and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps even going on a pilgrimage to Santiago
de Compostela.
Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet.
She was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister
of Katherine Swynford, who later (c. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt.
It is uncertain how many children Chaucer and Philippa had, but three or four are most
commonly cited.
His son, Thomas Chaucer, had an illustrious career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy
to France, and Speaker of the House of Commons.
Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk.
Thomas's great-grandson (Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the
heir to the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed.
Geoffrey's other children probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey.
Agnes, an attendant at Henry IV's coronation; and another son, Lewis Chaucer.
Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe” was written for Lewis.
Chaucer probably studied law in the Inner Temple (an Inn of Court) at this time.
He became a member of the royal court of Edward III as a varlet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire
on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail a wide variety of tasks.
His wife also received a pension for court employment.
He travelled abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet.
In 1368, he may have attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti,
daughter of Galeazzo II Visconti, in Milan.
Two other literary stars of the era were in attendance: Jean Froissart and Petrarch.
Around this time, Chaucer is believed to have written The Book of the Duchess in honour
of Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of Gaunt, who died in 1369.
Chaucer travelled to Picardy the next year as part of a military expedition; in 1373
he visited Genoa and Florence.
Numerous scholars such as Skeat, Boitani, and Rowland suggested that, on this Italian
trip, he came into contact with Petrarch or Boccaccio.
They introduced him to medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories of which he would use
later.
The purposes of a voyage in 1377 are mysterious, as details within the historical record conflict.
Later documents suggest it was a mission, along with Jean Froissart, to arrange a marriage
between the future King Richard II and a French princess, thereby ending the Hundred Years
War.
If this was the purpose of their trip, they seem to have been unsuccessful, as no wedding
occurred.
In 1378, Richard II sent Chaucer as an envoy (secret dispatch) to the Visconti and to Sir
John Hawkwood, English condottiere (mercenary leader) in Milan.
It has been speculated that it was Hawkwood on whom Chaucer based his character the Knight
in the Canterbury Tales, for a description matches that of a 14th-century condottiere.
A possible indication that his career as a writer was appreciated came when Edward III
granted Chaucer "a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life" for some unspecified
task.
This was an unusual grant, but given on a day of celebration, St George's Day, 1374,
when artistic endeavours were traditionally rewarded, it is assumed to have been another
early poetic work.
It is not known which, if any, of Chaucer's extant works prompted the reward, but the
suggestion of him as poet to a king places him as a precursor to later poets laureate.
Chaucer continued to collect the liquid stipend until Richard II came to power, after which
it was converted to a monetary grant on 18 April 1378.
Chaucer obtained the very substantial job of comptroller of the customs for the port
of London, which he began on 8 June 1374.
He must have been suited for the role as he continued in it for twelve years, a long time
in such a post at that time.
His life goes undocumented for much of the next ten years, but it is believed that he
wrote (or began) most of his famous works during this period.
He was mentioned in law papers of 4 May 1380, involved in the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne.
What raptus means is unclear, but the incident seems to have been resolved quickly and did
not leave a stain on Chaucer's reputation.
It is not known if Chaucer was in the city of London at the time of the Peasants' Revolt,
but if he was, he would have seen its leaders pass almost directly under his apartment window
at Aldgate.
While still working as comptroller, Chaucer appears to have moved to Kent, being appointed
as one of the commissioners of peace for Kent, at a time when French invasion was a possibility.
He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s.
He also became a Member of Parliament for Kent in 1386.
There is no further reference after this date to Philippa, Chaucer's wife, and she is presumed
to have died in 1387.
He survived the political upheavals caused by the Lords Appellants, despite the fact
that Chaucer knew some of the men executed over the affair quite well.
On 12 July 1389, Chaucer was appointed the clerk of the king's works, a sort of foreman
organising most of the king's building projects.
No major works were begun during his tenure, but he did conduct repairs on Westminster
Palace, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, continue building the wharf at the Tower of London,
and build the stands for a tournament held in 1390.
It may have been a difficult job, but it paid well: two shillings a day, more than three
times his salary as a comptroller.
Chaucer was also appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham, which was
a largely honorary appointment.
In September 1390, records say that he was robbed, and possibly injured, while conducting
the business, and it was shortly after, on 17 June 1391, that he stopped working in this
capacity.
Almost immediately, on 22 June, he began as Deputy Forester in the royal forest of North
Petherton, Somerset.
This was no sinecure, with maintenance an important part of the job, although there
were many opportunities to derive profit.
He was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by Richard II in 1394.
It is believed that Chaucer stopped work on the Canterbury Tales sometime towards the
end of this decade.
Not long after the overthrow of his patron, Richard II, in 1399, Chaucer's name fades
from the historical record.
The last few records of his life show his pension renewed by the new king, and his taking
of a lease on a residence within the close of Westminster Abbey on 24 December 1399.
Although Henry IV renewed the grants assigned to Chaucer by Richard, Chaucer's own The Complaint
of Chaucer to his Purse hints that the grants might not have been paid.
The last mention of Chaucer is on 5 June 1400, when some monies owed to him were paid.
He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October 1400, but there is no firm evidence
for this date, as it comes from the engraving on his tomb, erected more than 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, but the case is entirely circumstantial.
Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, as was his right owing to his status
as a tenant of the Abbey's close.
In 1556, his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb, making Chaucer the first
writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner.
Works Chaucer's first major work, The Book of the
Duchess, was an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster (who died in 1369).
It is possible that this work was commissioned by her husband John of Gaunt, as he granted
Chaucer a £10 annuity on 13 June 1374.
This would seem to place the writing of The Book of the Duchess between the years 1369
and 1374.
Two other early works by Chaucer were Anelida and Arcite and The House of Fame.
Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the job of customs
comptroller for London (1374 to 1386).
His Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde all date from
this time.
Also it is believed that he started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s.
Chaucer is best known as the writer of The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of
stories told by fictional pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury; these
tales would help to shape English literature.
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.
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, perhaps
as a result of the incomplete state of the work.
Chaucer drew on real life for his cast of pilgrims: the innkeeper 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 that 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 shape their speech and satirise their manners in what was to become popular
literature among people of the same types.
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 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, Boccaccio, and on the late
Latin philosopher 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.
Chaucer also translated such important works as 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 Roman de la Rose as The Romaunt of the 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.
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 that instrument in detail and is sometimes
cited as the first example of technical writing in the English language.
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.
Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption.
The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.
Influence Linguistic
Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter, a style which had developed since around
the 12th century as an alternative to the alliterative 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, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic
pentameter, in his work, with only a few anonymous short works using it before him.
The arrangement of these five-stress lines into rhyming couplets, 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
Tale.
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 from a combination of the Kentish and Midlands
dialects.
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.
When it is vocalised, most scholars pronounce it as a schwa.
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 the many English
words first attested in Chaucer.
Literary Widespread knowledge of Chaucer's works is
attested by the many poets who imitated or responded to his writing.
John Lydgate was one of the earliest poets to write continuations of Chaucer's unfinished
Tales while Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid completes the story of Cressida left
unfinished in his Troilus and Criseyde.
Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works contain material from these poets and later
appreciations by the romantic era poets were shaped by their failure to distinguish the
later "additions" from original Chaucer.
Writers or the 17th and 18th centuries, such as John Dryden, admired Chaucer for his stories,
but not for his rhythm and rhyme, as few critics could then read Middle English and the text
had been butchered by printers, leaving a somewhat unadmirable mess.
It was not until the late 19th century that the official Chaucerian canon, accepted today,
was decided upon, largely as a result of Walter William Skeat's work.
Roughly seventy-five years after Chaucer's death, The Canterbury Tales was selected by
William Caxton to be one of the first books to be printed in England.
English Chaucer is sometimes considered the source
of the English vernacular tradition.
His achievement for the language can be seen as part of a general historical trend towards
the creation of a vernacular literature, after the example of Dante, in many parts of Europe.
A parallel trend in Chaucer's own lifetime was underway in Scotland through the work
of his slightly earlier contemporary, John Barbour, and was likely to have been even
more general, as is evidenced by the example of the Pearl Poet in the north of England.
Although Chaucer's language is much closer to Modern English than the text of Beowulf,
such that (unlike that of Beowulf) a Modern English-speaker with a large vocabulary of
archaic words may understand it, it differs enough that most publications modernise his
idiom.
Following is a sample from the prologue of "The Summoner's Tale" that compares Chaucer's
text to a modern translation: Critical reception
Early criticism The poet Thomas Hoccleve, who may have met
Chaucer and considered him his role model, hailed Chaucer as "the firste fyndere of our
fair langage."
John Lydgate referred to Chaucer within his own text The Fall of Princes as the "lodesterre...
off our language".
Around two centuries later, Sir Philip Sidney greatly praised Troilus and Criseyde in his
own Defence of Poesie.
Manuscripts and audience The large number of surviving manuscripts
of Chaucer's works is testimony to the enduring interest in his poetry prior to the arrival
of the printing press.
There are 83 surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales (in whole or part) alone,
along with sixteen of Troilus and Criseyde, including the personal copy of Henry IV.
Given the ravages of time, it is likely that these surviving manuscripts represent hundreds
since lost.
Chaucer's original audience was a courtly one, and would have included women as well
as men of the upper social classes.
Yet even before his death in 1400, Chaucer's audience had begun to include members of the
rising literate, middle and merchant classes, which included many Lollard sympathisers who
may well have been inclined to read Chaucer as one of their own, particularly in his satirical
writings about friars, priests, and other church officials.
In 1464, John Baron, a tenant farmer in Agmondesham, was brought before John Chadworth, the Bishop
of Lincoln, on charges he was a Lollard heretic; he confessed to owning a "boke of the Tales
of Caunterburie" among other suspect volumes.
Printed editions William Caxton, the first English printer,
was responsible for the first two folio editions of The Canterbury Tales which were published
in 1478 and 1483.
Caxton's second printing, by his own account, came about because a customer complained that
the printed text differed from a manuscript he knew; Caxton obligingly used the man's
manuscript as his source.
Both Caxton editions carry the equivalent of manuscript authority.
Caxton's edition was reprinted by his successor, Wynkyn de Worde, but this edition has no independent
authority.
Richard Pynson, the King's Printer under Henry VIII 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 we now know 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 recognised 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.
In the 16th and 17th 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 16th-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 which were attributed to him.
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 19th 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 defence 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.
John Stow (1525–1605) was an antiquarian and also a chronicler.
His edition of Chaucer's Works in 1561 brought the apocrypha to more than 50 titles.
More were added in the 17th century, and they remained as late as 1810, well after Thomas
Tyrwhitt pared the canon down in 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 authorised the Tudor monarchy and church.
What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to Protestant England.
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:
Later, in "The Argument" to the Testament of Love, Speght adds:
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.
The myth of the Protestant Chaucer continues to have a lasting impact on a large body of
Chaucerian scholarship.
Though it is extremely rare for a modern scholar to suggest Chaucer supported a religious movement
that didn't exist until more than a century after his death, the predominance of this
thinking for so many centuries left it for granted that Chaucer was at least hostile
toward Catholicism.
This assumption forms a large part of many critical approaches to Chaucer's works, including
neo-Marxism.
Alongside Chaucer's Works, the most impressive literary monument of the period is John Foxe's
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.
Probably referring to the 1542 Act for the Advancement of True Religion, Foxe said that
he "marvel 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."
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."
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.
John Urry produced the first edition of the complete works of Chaucer in a Latin font,
published posthumously in 1721.
Included were several tales, according to the editors, for the first time printed, a
biography of Chaucer, a glossary of old English words, and testimonials of author writers
concerning Chaucer dating back to the 16th century.
According to A.S.G Edwards, "This was the first collected edition of Chaucer to be printed
in roman type.
The life of Chaucer prefixed to the volume was the work of the Reverend John Dart, corrected
and revised by Timothy Thomas.
The glossary appended was also mainly compiled by Thomas.
The text of Urry's edition has often been criticised by subsequent editors for its frequent
conjectural emendations, mainly to make it conform to his sense of Chaucer's metre.
The justice of such criticisms should not obscure his achievement.
His is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and fifty years to consult any manuscripts
and is the first since that of William Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble
a substantial number of manuscripts to establish his text.
It is also the first edition to offer descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works, and
the first to print texts of 'Gamelyn' and 'The Tale of Beryn', works ascribed to, but
not by, Chaucer."
Modern scholarship Although Chaucer's works were admired for
many years, serious scholarly work on his legacy did not begin until the 19th century.
Scholars such as Frederick James Furnivall, who founded the Chaucer Society in 1868, pioneered
the establishment of diplomatic editions of Chaucer's major texts, along with careful
accounts of Chaucer's language and prosody.
Walter William Skeat, who like Furnivall was closely associated with the Oxford English
Dictionary, established the base text of all of Chaucer's works with his edition, published
by Oxford University Press.
Later editions by John H. Fisher and Larry D. Benson have offered further refinements,
along with critical commentary and bibliographies.
With the textual issues largely addressed, if not solved, the questions of Chaucer's
themes, structure, and audience were addressed.
In 1966, the Chaucer Review was founded, and has maintained its position as the preeminent
journal of Chaucer studies.
Popular culture Powell and Pressburger's 1944 film A Canterbury
Tale opens with a re-creation of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims; the film itself takes
place on the road to, and in, wartime Canterbury.
The plot of the detective novel Landscape with Dead Dons by Robert Robinson centres
on the apparent rediscovery of The Book of the Leoun, and a passage from it (eleven lines
of good Chaucerian pastiche) turn out to be the vital murder clue as well as proving that
the "rediscovered" poem is an elaborate, clever forgery by the murderer (a Chaucer scholar).
In Rudyard Kipling's story "Dayspring Mishandled", a writer plans an elaborate revenge on a former
friend, a Chaucer expert, who has insulted the woman he loves, by fabricating a "medieval"
manuscript sheet containing an alleged fragment of a lost Canterbury Tale (actually his own
composition).
Both an asteroid and a lunar crater have been named after Chaucer.
A (fictionalized) version of Chaucer was portrayed by Paul Bettany in the movie A Knight's Tale.
Kafka's Soup, a literary pastiche in the form of a cookbook, contains a recipe for onion
tart à la Chaucer.
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
Parlement of Foules Translation of Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy
as Boece Troilus and Criseyde
The Legend of Good Women The Canterbury Tales
A Treatise on the Astrolabe 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
Balade to Rosemounde Truth
Womanly Noblesse Poems of dubious authorship
Against Women Unconstant A Balade of Complaint
Complaynt D'Amours Merciles Beaute
The Equatorie of the Planets – 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 a planetary equatorium, which was used
in calculating planetary orbits and positions (at the time it was believed the sun orbited
the Earth).
The similar Treatise on the Astrolabe, not usually doubted as Chaucer's work, in addition
to Chaucer's name as a gloss to the manuscript are the main pieces of evidence for the ascription
to Chaucer.
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.
Presumedly lost works 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 – The Book of the
Leon is mentioned in Chaucer's retraction.
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 that had been the case, Chaucer would not have mentioned it.
A likely source dictates it was probably a 'redaction of Guillaume de Machaut's 'Dit
dou lyon,' a story about courtly love, a subject about which Chaucer frequently wrote.
Spurious works The Pilgrim's Tale – written in the 16th
century with many Chaucerian allusions The Plowman's Tale or 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's
translation of a poem of the same name by Alain Chartier
The Testament of Love – actually by Thomas Usk
Jack Upland – a Lollard satire The Floure and the Leafe – a 15th-century
allegory Derived works
God Spede the Plough – Borrows twelve stanzas of Chaucer's Monk's Tale