Chaucer, Geoffrey

b. circa 1340; d. 1400

English poet, born in London, the son of a vintner. He had a distinguished career as a public servant and diplomat though the records of it are incomplete. His father was occasionally employed on service for Edward III and it was probably through this that Chaucer was introduced to court. At the age of about 16 he became page to Elisabeth, Countess of Ulster, and accompanied her husband Prince Lionel on the French campaign of 1359-60 where he was taken prisoner and ransomed. Little is known of the next six years of his life but probably in 1366 he married Philippa de Roet, one of the Queen's 'demoiselles' and visited Spain in the same year. When Prince Lionel died in 1368 he transferred his services to John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

The first poem which can be dated with certainty, The Book of the Duchess, was written as an elegy on the Duke's first wife, Blanche, who died in 1369. Payments during the period 1367-74 indicate a rising fortune and show that Chaucer made several journeys abroad both on military service and public business. In 1372-73 he visited Genoa and Florence on a commercial mission. It may have been then that he encountered the work of Boccaccio, Dante and Petrarch. From 1374 to 1386 he was controller of wool customs, and from 1382 to 1386 of petty customs. He lived in Aldgate, London during this time and in 1378 he was again in Italy employed in negotiations with Bernabo Visconti of Milan who figures in The Monk's Tale. He became justice of the peace for Kent in 1385 and knight of the shire in 1386. During 1386-89 there seems to have been some sort of check in his career; he became comparatively poor and relinquished both his offices as controller. But in 1389 he was given the responsible position of Clerk of the King's Works, and superintended undertakings at Woolwich and Smithfield. While fulfilling business connected with this office, he was twice attacked and robbed in the same day. In 1391 he gave up the clerkship and accepted the position of deputy forester of North Petherton, Somerset. In 1399 Henry IV increased his payments. He leased a house in the gardens of Westminster Abbey and records of his activities cease after 1400.

The great range of Chaucer's work comprises four allegorical dream-poems, several love complaints, a group of moral and personal ballades, one long narrative (Troilus and Criseyde) and two collections of tales (The Legend of Good Women and The Canterbury Tales). Many of his works cannot be dated exactly but the list of works in the first Prologue to The Legend of Good Women, 1385-86, gives evidence of earlier writings, while topical references and dedications often help with dating in general. His Parliament of Fowls, in which birds debate a dispute of love, is usually dated 1382 from its connection with Richard II's marriage. The translation of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy as well at Troilus and Criseyde and The Knight's Tale probably also belong to the first half of the decade. Though the Prologue and the general plan of The Canterbury Tales are thought to be later work, the tales themselves probably incorporated a good deal of earlier material.

In the envoie to The Complaint to his Empty Purse, Chaucer implores Henry IV for increased payments, suggesting 1399 as the date. The Astrolabe (an introductory manual on the construction and use of the astronomical instrument) as well as the revised version of the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women belong to the 1390s. The Canterbury Tales were left unfinished at his death. Three works difficult to date are the Romaunt of the Rose, Anelide and Arcite, and The House of Fame.

Any satisfactory appraisal of Chaucer's work is impossible to encapsulate briefly, but certain fundamental elements can be seen. The grouping of his work under 'influences' - French, Italian, and English - is on the whole unsatisfactory as most of it represents all three. Deschamps called him a 'grant translateur' and he was stimulated by many earlier authors, notably Ovid, Boethius, and Boccaccio. But though his themes are rarely of his own invention there is a recurring and profound originality in his handling of them. For example, much of his poetry is concerned with varying concepts of love; human, divine, and philosophical, and in order to show their various aspects he sets them in a dramatic context beside marriage, tyranny, lust, ill-fortune, faithlessness, and death. The contrasting demands of human love and rationality is also a favourite theme, and Troilus and Criseyde may owe something of its timeless appeal of the conflict found in it between idealising human love and the values of eternal life.

With similar versatility and through his use of critical and ironic undertones, Chaucer also produces refreshing variations on an accepted literary style. The dream-allegory as well as the love-narrative show new possibilities under his treatment, while the technique in The Canterbury Tales of ascribing each of the stories to a character introduced in a General Prologue produces a many-layered interest. Chaucer's profound insight into character and situation and the final values that emerge are based firmly on a deeply Christian view of life. The Canterbury pilgrims have an animation and a solidarity that makes them immediately sympathetic to a modern reader, and the element of appraisal surrounding this colourful gathering adds greatly to the flavour with which each famous individual emerges - the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, the Knight, Madam Eglantine, Chaucer himself. And, as in all his work, warmth and humour make acceptable the portrayal of every kind of vice and wretchedness which are presented beside more wholesome joys and sorrows.

Finally the spoken beauty of Chaucer's verse must not be ignored. A manuscript in Corpus Christi College has an illustration showing Chaucer reading aloud to a royal and noble audiences, and the reactions of some of the audience are noted in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women.

© JM Dent/Historybookshop.com

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