Poets - 05 - Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer one of the greatest English poets was born in London, England, in the year of 1343. His father was a wealthy wine merchant in the famous city.

Chaucer had the good fortune to serve as a pageboy in the royal household while in his early teens. Later he married one of the queen’s attendants and was sent to France and Italy as the king’s representative.

After he returned to England, he held various positions in the home government. Controller of Customs, Justice of the Peace, Member of Parliament, clerk of the kings works, and Deputy Forester for a royal forest, were among them.

Despite of the pressure of work such responsibilities bore on him, Chaucer somehow found time to produce an astonishing body of prose and poetry.

Chaucer’s poetry is generally divided into three periods. His earliest poetry, is in the artificial manner of the great French poets of the day. The Italian period, comes next. It was inspired by the poet’s own journeys to Italy as a royal emissary. Influenced by the vigour of three great Italian writers – Dante, Petrarch and especially Boccaccio, Chaucer brought to his own verse a new strength.

The greatest of Chaucer’s achievements and one of the glories of all literature was a product of his final – the English Period: ‘The Canterbury Tales’.

‘The Canterbury Tales’ is a long poem made up of general introduction (The Prologue) and twenty four stories, told in verse by a cross section of English men and women.

They tell their stories as they travel one April from an inn in a London suburb for the cathedral city of Canterbury fifty miles away. They are on a pilgrimage, a journey to a sacred place; the Canterbury cathedral the site where Thomas Becket the archbishop of Canterbury had been murdered by order of King Henry, in 1170.

The pilgrims’ stories are framed by the narrative of the journey. That is, the tales are connected by links that relate what happens among the pilgrims travelling together.

The individual stories are of many different kinds: religious stories, legends, fables, fairy tales, sermons and courtly romances. Short story writers in the following centuries learned much about their craft from the poet Chaucer.

Geoffrey Chaucer, along with William Shakespeare and John Milton comes to most scholars’ minds when they list the three greatest poets of the English language.

Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400 while still at work on his poetry and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London. Around his burial spot has grown up the famous poets’ corner.

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