Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer

The greatest poet of the Middle English period was the son of a wealthy wine-merchant of powerful connections. As a boy he was a page to the Countess of Ulster, and later was employed as a valet in the Royal household. In 1359, serving with the English army in France, he was taken prisoner and King Edward III subscribed Ј16 upon the payment of his ransom. Thereafter he spent many years in the service of his king. In 1372-3 he was sent to Genoa on a commercial mission; in 1374 he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs for the Port of London; in 1385 he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Kent; and in 1386 he was elected Member of Parliament. His last years were spent at Greenwich, where he died in 1400. He was the first poet to be buried in what is now known as Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Chaucer's public career must have greatly enriched his observation and his stock of ideas. In Italy, he found himself in the midst of the flourishing Renaissance. Thus, he developed into a pre-Renaissance writer addressing a medieval English audience.

His works are conventionally divided into three chronological groups; his French period (to 1372), his Italian period (1372-1385) and his English period (1385-1400). In his French period, he wrote The Book of the Duchess and translated a large fragment of Le Roman de la Rose,by Guillaumi de Lorris and Jean de Meung. In his Italian period, when Chaucer exhibits the influence of the great Italian writers, namely Boccaccio, he wrote The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde and The Legend of Good Women. The Canterbury Tales and a few shorter poems comprise Chaucer's English period.

He was a man of wide learning and wrote with ease on religion, philosophy, ethics, science, rethoric. Master of verse as Chaucer was, he introduced into English poetry many verse forms: the heroic couplet, the rhyme royal, the terza rima, and the octosyllabic verse.