Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was
an English author, poet,
philosopher,
bureaucrat,
courtier and
diplomat.
Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his
unfinished
frame narrative
The Canterbury Tales.
Sometimes called the father of English literature, Chaucer is
credited by some scholars as the first author to demonstrate the
artistic legitimacy of the
vernacular
English language, rather than French
or
Latin.
Life
Chaucer was born circa 1343 in London, though the exact date and
location of his birth are not known.
His father and
grandfather were both London vintners and
before that, for several generations, the family members were
merchants in Ipswich
. His
name is derived 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,
upper
middle-class, if not in the elite. John married Agnes Copton,
who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London
from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described as the "
moneyer" at the Tower of London.
There are few details of Chaucer's early life and education but
compared with near contemporary poets,
William Langland and the
Pearl Poet, his life is well documented, with
nearly five hundred written items testifying to his career. The
first time he is mentioned is 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. 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
, becoming a
prisoner of war. Edward contributed £16 as part of a ransom,
and Chaucer was released.
After
this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have traveled 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 Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting
to Edward III's queen,
Philippa of
Hainault, and a sister of
Katherine Swynford, who later (ca. 1396)
became the third wife of Chaucer's friend and patron,
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' daughter, Alice, married the
Duke of Suffolk.
Thomas' 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
may have studied law in the Inner Temple
(an Inn of Court) at
about this time, although definite proof is lacking. 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 any number of jobs. His wife
also received a pension for court employment. He traveled 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,
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
traveled to Picardy the next year as part of
a military expedition, and visited Genoa
and Florence
in
1373. It is speculated that, on this Italian trip, he came
into contact with
medieval Italian poetry, the forms and stories of
which he would use later. One other trip he took in 1377 seems
shrouded in mystery, with records of the time conflicting in
details. 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 is on the person of Hawkwood that
Chaucer based the character of the Knight in the
Canterbury
Tales, whose description matches that of a fourteenth-century
condottiere.
A 19th century depiction of
Chaucer.
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 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,
rape or possibly kidnapping, 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 well some of the men executed over the affair.
On 12 July, 1389, Chaucer was appointed the
clerk of the king's works, a sort of
foreman organizing 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. 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 December 24, 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 satirize 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
The Romance of the Rose as
Roman de la 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. 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 is
a famous example of early European
encryption
. The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.
Influence
Linguistic
Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic
metre, a style which had developed since
around the twelfth 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
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 standardize 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, though it is thought by some that the modern
Scottish accent is closely related to the
sound of Middle English. 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 those from
the first letter of the alphabet.
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.
Seventeenth and eighteenth century writers, 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. One hundred and fifty years after his
death,
The Canterbury Tales was selected by
William Caxton to be one of the first books
to be printed in England.
Chaucer's English
Chaucer is sometimes considered the source of the English
vernacular tradition and the "father" of modern
English literature. 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, 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:
| Line |
Original |
Wikipedia Translation |
|
This frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, |
This friar boasts that he knows hell, |
|
And God it woot, that it is litel wonder; |
And God knows that it is little wonder; |
|
Freres and feendes been but lyte asonder. |
Friars and fiends are seldom far apart. |
|
For, pardee, ye han ofte tyme herd telle |
For, by God, you have ofttimes heard tell |
|
How that a frere ravyshed was to helle |
How a friar was taken to hell |
|
In spirit ones by a visioun; |
In spirit, once by a vision; |
|
And as an angel ladde hym up and doun, |
And as an angel led him up and down, |
|
To shewen hym the peynes that the were, |
To show him the pains that were there, |
|
In al the place saugh he nat a frere; |
In the whole place he saw not one friar; |
|
Of oother folk he saugh ynowe in wo. |
He saw enough of other folk in woe. |
|
Unto this angel spak the frere tho: |
To the angel spoke the friar thus: |
|
Now, sire, quod he, han freres swich a grace |
"Now sir", said he, "Do friars have such a grace |
|
That noon of hem shal come to this place? |
That none of them come to this place?" |
|
Yis, quod this aungel, many a millioun! |
"Yes", said the angel, "many a million!" |
|
And unto sathanas he ladde hym doun. |
And the angel led him down to Satan. |
|
--And now hath sathanas,--seith he,--a tayl |
He said, "And Satan has a tail, |
|
Brodder than of a carryk is the sayl. |
Broader than a large ship's sail. |
|
Hold up thy tayl, thou sathanas!--quod he; |
Hold up your tail, Satan!" said he. |
|
--shewe forth thyn ers, and lat the frere se |
"Show forth your arse, and let the friar see |
|
Where is the nest of freres in this place!-- |
Where the nest of friars is in this place!" |
|
And er that half a furlong wey of space, |
And before half a furlong of space, |
|
Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve, |
Just as bees swarm from a hive, |
|
Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve |
Out of the devil's arse there were driven |
|
Twenty thousand freres on a route, |
Twenty thousand friars on a rout, |
|
And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute, |
And throughout hell swarmed all about, |
|
And comen agayn as faste as they may gon, |
And came again as fast as they could go, |
|
And in his ers they crepten everychon. |
And every one crept back into his arse. |
|
He clapte his tayl agayn and lay ful stille. |
He shut his tail again and lay very still. |
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 sympathizers 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 recognized
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 sixteenth and seventeenth 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 sixteenth-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 nineteenth
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
defense 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 seventeenth 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 authorized the Tudor monarchy and church.
What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to
Protestant England.
Engraving of Chaucer from Speght's
edition
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:
- :Yet it seemeth that [Chaucer] was in some trouble in the daies
of King Richard the second, as it may appeare in the Testament of
Loue: where hee doth greatly complaine of his owne rashnesse in
following the multitude, and of their hatred of him for bewraying
their purpose. And in that complaint which he maketh to his empty
purse, I do find a written copy, which I had of Iohn Stow (whose
library hath helped many writers) wherein ten times more is
adjoined, then is in print. Where he maketh great lamentation for
his wrongfull imprisonment, wishing death to end his daies: which
in my iudgement doth greatly accord with that in the Testament of
Love. Moreover we find it thus in Record.
Later, in "The
Argument" to
the
Testament of Love, Speght adds:
- :Chaucer did compile this booke as a comfort to himselfe after
great griefs conceiued for some rash attempts of the commons, with
whome he had ioyned, and thereby was in feare to loose the fauour
of his best friends.
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 extremely
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[s] 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.
Spine and Titlepage of the 1721 John
Urry edition of Chaucer's complete works.
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 criticized 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 nineteenth
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.
List of 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
Short poems
To Rosemounde
- 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
- To Rosemounde
- Truth
- Womanly Noblesse
Poems dubiously ascribed to Chaucer
- 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 what is called an
'equatorium planetarum', and 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.
Works mentioned by Chaucer, presumed lost
- 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
Works incorporating Chaucerian text
Chaucer in 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.
- In the movie A Knight's
Tale (named after the narrative from the Canterbury
Tales), Chaucer is portrayed as a gambling addict and writer
who becomes the herald for the protagonist.
- In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman story Men of Good
Fortune (collected in The Doll's House),
Chaucer appears briefly in a tavern in fourteenth-century England.
He is listening to a companion dismiss The Canterbury
Tales as "filthy tales in rhyme about pilgrims".
- 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 'mediaeval' 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 for Chaucer.
Notes
- Skeat, W.W., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899, Vol. I p. ix.
- Skeat, op. cit., pp. xi-xii.
- Skeat, op. cit., p. xvii.
- Chaucer Life Records, p.24
- Henry Morley, English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History
of English Literature (London: Cassell & Co., 1890), Vol.
V. p. 106.
- Corrine J. Saunders, A Concise Companion to Chaucer
(Blackwell 2006), p. 19
- Morley, Vol. 5, p. 245.
- Ward, 109.
- Morley, Vol. V, pp. 247-248.
- Simon Singh: The Code Book, page 27. Fourth Estate,
1999
- C.B. McCully and J.J. Anderson, English Historical
Metrics, Cambridge UP 1996, p. 97.
- Marchette Gaylord Chute, Geoffrey Chaucer of England
E.P. Dutton 1946, p. 89.
- Edwin Winfield Bowen, Questions at Issue in our English
Speech, NY: Broadway Publishing, 1909, p. 147
- "From The Preface to Fables Ancient and
Modern". The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Stephen
Greenblatt. 8th ed. Vol. C. New York, London: Norton, 2006.
2132-33. pg. 2132
- Original e-text available online at the University of Virginia website, trans.
Wikipedia.
- Thomas Hoccleve,The Regiment of Princes,
TEAMS website, Rochester University
- As noted by Carolyn Collette in 'Fifteenth Century Chaucer', an
essay published in the book A Companion to Chaucer ISBN
0631235906
- 'Chawcer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and
Creseid: of whome trulie I knowe not whether to mervaile more,
either that hee in that mistie time could see so clearly, or that
wee in this cleare age, goe so stumblingly after him.' The text can
be found here
- Benson, Larry, The Riverside Chaucer (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1987), p. 1118.
- Potter, Russell A., "Chaucer and the Authority of Language: The
Politics and Poetics of the Vernacular in Late Medieval England",
Assays VI (Carnegie-Mellon Press, 1991), p. 91.
See also
References
- Skeat, W.W., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899.
- The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. Houghton-Mifflin, 1987
ISBN 0395290317
- Chaucer: Life-Records, Martin M. Crow and Clair C.
Olsen. (1966)
- Speirs, John, "Chaucer the Maker", London: Faber and Faber,
1951
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