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Geoffrey Chaucer (C • Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340 – 25 Oct. 1400) was an English poet and author. • Widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for The Canterbury Tales. • He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". • He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. • Chaucer is also commemorated by this stained glass window at Southwark Cathedral. • We are still without definite knowledge about parts of his life. • We possess no autograph manuscript of any of his works. • We have no more than a conjectural idea of the order in which he wrote his poems. • It took us a long time to ascertain what constitutes the genuine Chaucerian canon. • We are now so accustomed to clearly published and advertised authorship that we forget the cheerful anonymity of medieval literature • Chaucer tells a little about his major works, but that little is casual and incomplete; and he made no attempt to collect his writings, or to catalogue them, or even to finish them. Title page of Canterbury Tales c.1400 • What we do know of Chaucer is that he inherited the high courtly tradition of French poetry. • With all his Italian acquirements and his English spirit, he was French in the grace and skill of his technique. • He led a useful public life, enduring personal and general misfortune with courage, and never lost faith in truth, beauty and goodness. • He took a large, sagacious, charitable view of mankind, and travelled “on life’s common way in cheerful godliness”. • Chaucer was born in London, most likely in the early 1340s, though the precise location, as well as the date of his birth, remain unknown. • His father and grandfather were both London vintners (winemakers), and several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. His family name is derived from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker". • Chaucer first appears in the records in 1357, as a member of the household of Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, wife of Lionel, third son of Edward III. • By 1359 Chaucer was a member of Edward III’s army in France and was captured during the unsuccessful siege of Reims. The king contributed to his ransom, and Chaucer served as messenger from Calais to England during the peace negotiations of 1360. He was in:- •France again in 1369 •Abroad somewhere on royal business in 1370 •In Italy during 1372-3 •Abroad again somewhere in 1376 •In France and Flanders in 1377 •In Italy once again in 1378 •These frequent foreign visits naturally contributed to his literary education by enlarging his knowledge of both humans and books. •He may have met Froissart. •He may have met Petrarch, who died at Arqua in 1374. •He may also have met Boccaccio, who Chaucer as a pilgrim, in the early died a year later. 15th-century illuminated Ellesmere •Dante had, unfortunately, been dead for manuscript of the Canterbury Tales over half-a-century! • By 1366 Chaucer had married. • His wife was Philippa Roet (c. 1346 – c. 1387), who had been in the service of the countess of Ulster and entered the service of Philippa of Hainaut, queen consort of Edward III, when Elizabeth died in 1363. • In 1366 Philippa Roet- Chaucer received an annuity, and later annuities were frequently paid to her through her husband. • These and other facts indicate that Chaucer married well. • Philippa’s sister was 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 spent much of his youth and manhood in France, most of his early middle life in Italy, and almost the whole of his later days in England. • If we take the generally authenticated works, we shall find that they sort themselves into three fairly well- defined groups. • The first consists of work translated or imitated from the French, and couched in forms mainly French in origin⸺⸺ The Romaunt of the Rose, the three Complaints, The Book of the Duchess, the minor Ballads, etc. • The second consists of pieces traceable to Italian originals⸺⸺ Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, The Knight’s Tale and perhaps a few more of The Canterbury Tales. • The third includes the best and most characteristic of the Tales, which are purely and intensely English. • Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess or The Death of Blanche (c.1369) for John Gaunt to memorialize Gaunt’s wife Blanche, who had died of the plague. While Chaucer wrote during the height of the courtly love tradition, it seems from the poem that John Gaunt might have truly loved his wife. This is one of Chaucer’s earliest works and it has been generally overlooked because of Chaucer’s youth when he wrote it. Chaucer was also a religious sceptic and one of the things that is extremely notable in the poem is that the Dreamer does not console the Knight he meets in his dream, who is mourning the death of Lady White, that she is safe in Heaven with God. The poem actually opens with a myth and an invocation to Juno and Morpheus. While John of Gaunt mourned for Blanche, he did remarry. Queen Elizabeth the Second is a descendant. But Blanche was forever immortalized by Chaucer in this very fitting tribute. • Chaucer was a close friend of John of Gaunt, the wealthy Duke of Lancaster and father of Henry IV, and he served under Lancaster's patronage. Near the end of their lives, Lancaster and Chaucer became brothers-in-law when Chaucer married Philippa (Pan) de Roet in 1366, and Lancaster married Phillippa's sister Katherine Swynford (de Roet) in 1396. • Chaucer's Book of the Duchess refers to John and Blanche in allegory as the narrator relates the tale of "A long castel with walles white/Be Seynt Johan, on a ryche hil" (1318–1319) who is mourning grievously after the death of his love, "And goode faire White she het/That was my lady name ryght" (948–949). • The phrase "long castel" is a reference to Lancaster (also called "Loncastel" and "Longcastell"), "walles white" is thought to be an oblique reference to Blanche, "Seynt Johan" was John of Gaunt's name-saint, and "ryche hil" is a reference to Richmond. These references reveal the identity of the grieving black knight of the poem as John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and Earl of Richmond. "White" is the English translation of the French word "blanche", implying that the white lady was Blanche of Lancaster. Rhyme Royal/Rime Royale • The much shorter poem, Complaint Unto Pity, has for its special attraction the first appearance in English of the great stanza called the “rhyme royal”, that is to say the seven-lined decasyllabic stanza rhymed ababbcc, which held the premier position for serious verse in English poetry till the Spenserian dethroned it. Its “royalty” derives from the use made of it by James I in The King’s Quair. Pages from William Caxton's editions of Anelida and Arcite (above), dated 1477, and The Parliament of Fowls (right) Pages from the Troilus and Criseyde manuscript, England, probably London, between 1403 and 1413 •Probably first sketched in the curious and still uncertainly dated works put worth with the names of “Dictys Cretensis” and “Dates Phrygius”, the story has been worked into a long legend in the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Saint-More. A hundred years later it was adapted in the prose Latin Historia Troina of Guido delle Colonne. •On this, in turn, Boccaccio, somewhere before the middle of the 14th century, based his poem Il Filostrato in ottava rima. •From the Filostrato, Chaucer took the story, and told it in rhyme royal stanzas, excellently fashioned. • Troilus and Criseyde is an epic poem which retells the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the Siege of Troy. • It was probably completed during the mid-1380s. • Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem it is more self-contained than the better known but ultimately unfinished The Canterbury Tales. • This poem is often considered the source of the phrase: "all good things must come to an end“. • Although Troilus is a character from Ancient Greek literature, the expanded story of him as a lover was of Medieval origin. • Chaucer's version can be said to reflect a less cynical and less misogynistic world-view than Boccaccio's, casting Criseyde as fearful and sincere rather than simply fickle and having been led astray by the eloquent and perfidious Pandarus. It also inflects the sorrow of the story with humour. • Troilus and Criseyde is usually considered to be a courtly romance, although the generic classification is an area of significant debate in most Middle English literature. It is part of the Matter of Rome cycle, a fact which Chaucer emphasizes.
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