Geoffrey Chaucer. His life and work. “The Canterbury Tales”.

Geoffrey Chaucer is often referred to as “the father of English literature”, and to him goes the honour of being the first great English humorist and realist. He was born in London about 1340 in the home of a successful wine importer who had connections with the royal court and hoped for a Courtier’s career for his son. Chaucer’s father was able to place his son as a page in the household of Elizabeth Countess of Ulster, wife of Duke Lionel, Edward the IIIrd’s third son.

When Chaucer was about 15, he was in France as a squire, on a military operation in which he was taken prisoner. The King paid 16 pounds towards his ransom. He held a number of positions at Court and in the King’s service, and travelled abroad on numerous diplomatic missions. When 25 he accompanied John of Gaunt (the King’s fourth son) an a raid in Picardy (N. France)

Then in 1372 Chaucer went on a more important and very significant journey to Italy. The purpose of the visit was to negotiate with the Doge of Genoa a port of entry in England for Genoese merchants. He went to Florence on the King’s business and probably other places – he is reported to have met Petrarch in Padua. Italian literature took its place as a major influence on Chaucer’s developing art: several parts of the Canterbury Tales have their origins in Boccaccio’s work, whom he might also have visited.

After this, Chaucer moved from Westminster to the city, where he became controller of Customs of wool, skins and hides in the Port of London. His connections with John of Gaunt’s household was particularly strong, as his wife’s sister became the Duke’s third wife in 1396. Chaucer had probably known John of Gaunt since boyhood. They were more or less the same age. John of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche, had died in 1368, and Chaucer wrote his first major poem, “The Boke of the Dutchesse”, in her honour shortly afterwards. As John was extremely attached to Blanche, the poem was clearly designed to please him.

In 1382 he was made Controller of the Petty Customs on wines and other goods, and in 1385 on wool; he was made a member of Parliament as a Knight of the Shire of Kent. In 1386 he lost his job due to a change of favour under the new young King, Richard III, John of Gaunt’s nephew. When Chaucer’s wife died, the poet began to devote himself and the rest of his life to organizing and completing the Canterbury Tales.

The last year of his life was spent in a new house close to Westminster Abbey, where he died on 25 October 1400, and was buried in the Poet’s Corner.

Thus, he served his country during the reigns of Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV as soldier, courtier, diplomat, civil administrator and translator of books into the English language – a language which he more than any other writer helped to create.

His earliest poems are written in imitation of French romances. He translated from French the 13^th century classic, “The Romance of Rose”, written in part by a Frenchman called Guillaume de Lorris. Lorris chose a popular literary form, the allegory to describe a Dreamer (the young man) who enters a beautiful garden and his subsequent search for the most beautiful rose (his lady). But it is only after lengthy devotion to the demanding rules of Courtly love that he can be rewarded with the ultimate prize: his lady’s consent.

The second period of Chaucer's creative activity is marked by Italian literary and cultural influence, mainly that of the three great Italian poets – Dante, Petrarch and Boccacio, which becomes evident in the works that Chaucer wrote after his last visit to Italy in 1378. In his next dream – poem, “The House Fame”, the influence of Dante’s majestic “Divine Comedy” makes itself felt for the first time in English poetry. “The Parliament of Fowls”, probably written in the early 1380s, is an allegorical poem in which the different orders of birds, from the noble eagles to the widely despised cuckoos, show an infinite variety of attitudes to both love and life.

In 1387 he started writing his masterpiece “The Canterbury Tales”, the work that was not finished because of the poet’s death in 1400.

“The Canterbury Tales”, Geoffrey Chaucer’s most ambitious project, was begun in 1387 as the first collection of short stories in English literature. In this masterpiece Chaucer drew on his own times as a setting for his stories and in this way helped to establish a realistic writing that was to persist for centuries.

Chaucer ties together his collection of tales by having his story-teller travel together on the London-to Canterbury route of pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a’Becket. This shrine, erected in 1174 in memory of archbishop Thomas Becket, who was murdered four years earlier by the order of Henry II, was magnificently decorated with donations and thus was the most spectacular spot in the cathedral.

It was the custom throughout Europe in those days for members of all classes to travel to religious shrines to seek miraculous cures to gain remission for their sins, or to satisfy the wanderlust in their hearts. In England the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, site of this splendid shrine, was the most popular and spring was considered the best season for this pilgrimage. Here are the opening lines of Chaucer’s prologue to “The Canterbury Tales”. Pay attention that rhyme has taken place of old English alliteration.

Now try to travel in your imagination back into the year 1387, and you will thirty men and women from different ranks of society seeking shelter for the night in the Tabard Inn, in London, on the southern bank of the river Thames. They are on their way to Canterbury, and despite differences in their social position, they are to travel side by side, because pilgrimages were democratic institutions where noblemen and tradesman would travel together, sharing food and shelter, hardships and enjoyment. The pilgrimage took several days and Harry Baily, the innkeeper, put forward the following plan.

Chaucer’s characters, the pilgrims are brought vividly to life, represent a cross-section at the English medieval society and include three important groups of people:

- feudal (related to the land): the Knight, the Squire, the Yeoman;

- ecclesiastical (belonging to the church): the Parson, the monk, the Prioress;

- urban: the Cook, the Shipman, the Clothmaker, the Innkeeper.

In the Prologue the author draws a rapid portrait of each character. First comes a brave Knight.

The Knight is followed by his son, a Squire.

One of the most picturesque figures to follow them is the Prioress, the head of a nunnery.

The Oxford scholar, the Clerk, thin and pale, dressed in a shabby cloak, was riding a lean horse.

One of the most popular and beloved characters is the Wife of Bath, a clothmaker.

The stories which the pilgrims tell d0 not always correspond in the genre to what the reader can expect from the representatives of this or that layer of society. Thus, a romance is told not only by the Knight, but by the wife of Bath and the Franklin as well; a fable comes from the Nun’s Priest; a fabliau based upon popular lore is given both by the miller and the Sumner; a story of a saint is told by the second Nun.

As can be seen, “The Canterbury Tales” sums up all types of stories that existed in the Middle Ages, and the author manages to show all ranks of society, all types of people and through these people Chaucer gives us a true picture of the life of the 14^th century.

Unlike Boccaccio and other Italian poets, who had influenced him, Chaucer provides a fascinating accord between the narrators and the their stories. His characters grow and are revealed by the story. Chaucer develop his characters not only in General Prologue but also through the “links”, the interchanges among the pilgrims between stories. These interchanges sometimes lead to hostility.

Thus the Miller’s Tale offends the Reeve, who was a former carpenter and who sees himself slandered in the figure of Miller’s silly carpenter. In his turn the Reeve tells a story slandering a miller who resembles much the pilgrim Miller.

Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” impress with the breadth and variety of the language, which ranges from the polished complexity of high-flown rhetoric to the natural simplicity of domestic chat. No previous writer had shown such a range, and Chaucer’s writing-in addition to its literary merits – is thus unique in the evidence it has provided about the state of medieval grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation.