Chaucer and the birth of English literature

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) is the earliest English poet whose work is still widely read. Before him, English was a spoken language with only a small written literature in Anglo-Norman and Middle English; after him, English was a literary language, with a recognisable canon of poets and a recognisable tradition of writing. The article below traces his life, his major poems, and the literary inheritance that runs from him through Lydgate, Hoccleve, the Scottish makars, and on into the Renaissance. The wider context of the literature, music, and performance of the period is in the overview of literature, music, and performance; the music that filled the courts he moved in is in The late medieval cathedral choir and its music; the popular theatre that he never wrote for is in Mystery plays and medieval theatre.

A life in the king’s service

Chaucer’s biography is unusually well documented for a medieval poet because he was a public servant. The earliest known record is a household roll of Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, dated 1357, recording a paltok (a short cloak) for one Geoffrey Chaucer. From 1357 he was in the service of Elizabeth de Burgh; from 1359 he was in the service of King Edward III. The Life-Records of Chaucer edited by Walter F. Schirmer and John Crow list the public documents in which his name appears: a protection of 1359 for service in the English army in France, a ransom of 1360 for his capture, a patent of 1367 for a pension from the Crown, a grant of 1369 of a valet place in the King’s chamber, a patent of 1374 for a pension of twenty pounds a year, a patent of 1375 for the custos (custody) of the St Nicholas priory of Doncaster, a grant of 1382 for the controllership of the customs of the port of London, and a patent of 1389 for the clerkship of the King’s works.

The diplomatic missions are the second layer of the biography. The most consequential were two journeys to Italy: in 1372–1373 to Genoa and Florence, and in 1378–1379, again to the Italian peninsula. The first journey brought Chaucer into direct contact with the Trecento Italian poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio — the Dolce stil novo, the Canzoniere, the Decameron — and the second allowed him to consolidate the influence. The Troilus and Criseyde of c. 1380–1385 is in form a Trecento poem in the manner of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato; the Book of the Duchess of c. 1369–1370 draws on the French dit and the Ovide moralisé; the Parliament of Fowls of c. 1374–1380 combines the French songe and the Italian sestina. The House of Fame of c. 1378–1384 is the most ambitious of the early poems, and the Legend of Good Women of c. 1386–1388 is Chaucer’s farewell to the Trecento Italian model.

The later life, after 1386, is the life of a man whose fortunes rose and fell with the politics of Richard II. From 1386 to 1389 he was out of royal favour; from 1389 to 1391 he was clerk of the King’s works; from 1391 to 1394 he was in reduced circumstances; from 1394 to 1400 he was a pensioner of the Crown. He died on 25 October 1400, and was buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. The Derek Pearsall Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1992) and the Paul Strohm Social Chaucer (1989) are the standard modern biographies.

The Canterbury Tales: a portable society

The Canterbury Tales was begun, by Chaucer’s own account, in the early 1380s, and was being added to until the poet’s death in 1400. The frame is a pilgrimage from the Tabard Inn in Southwark to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury, and the pilgrims are a cross-section of late medieval English society: a knight, a squire, a yeoman, a prioress, a second nun, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of the law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry-maker, a cook, a shipman, a doctor, a wife of Bath, a parson, a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, a prioress’s chaplain, a monk’s priest, a canon’s yeoman, a man of law’s clerk, a merchant’s tale teller, the host of the Tabard, and the poet himself. The number of pilgrims is twenty-nine or thirty depending on the manuscript, and the number of tales that Chaucer actually completed is twenty-two, with two more left in fragments.

The General Prologue is the most famous piece of the poem, and one of the great set-pieces of English literature. The description of the Knight (a worthy man, fresh from the crusades, with a stained coat and a coarse hood), the Squire (the Knight’s son, “with lokkes crulle as they were leyd in presse”), the Yeoman (a forester with peacock-feathered arrows), the Prioress (Madame Eglantine, who spoke French “after the scole of Stratford atte Bowe”), the Monk (a fine horseman who loved a fat swan), the Friar (a wanton limiter, “ful plesaunt and amiable of port”), the Merchant (with his forked beard, “in motlee”), the Clerk (thin and threadbare, “gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche”), the Sergeant of the Law (a wise and discreet man), the Franklin (a householder with a white beard and a great house), the Haberdasher and the Carpenter and the Weaver and the Dyer and the Tapestry-maker (the five guildsmen of the fraternitee), the Cook (with the mormal on his shin), the Shipman (a brown man from Dartmouth, with a beard like a pummice), the Doctor (well-read in medical texts), the Wife of Bath (deaf in one ear, gap-toothed, with a hat as broad as a buckler), the Parson (a poor scholar, “but riche he was of holy thought and werk”), the Plowman (the Parson’s brother), the Miller (a stout churl, with a red beard and a wen on his nose), the Manciple (a shrewd buyer of the law-courts), the Reeve (a thin, choleric old man), the Summoner (red-faced and pimpled, with a garland on his head), the Pardoner (with a wallet full of pardons and a pillow of indulgences), the Prioress’s Chaplain, the Monk’s Priest, the Canon’s Yeoman (who was fleeing his master and his alchemical fumes), the Man of Law’s Clerk, the Merchant’s Tale Teller, the Host of the Tabard (Harry Bailly, a large, bold man, “the beste quyk mynde”), and the poet himself — is a portrait gallery in couplets, and the model for the English literary portrait for the next three centuries.

The tales are even more varied than the General Prologue promises. The Knight’s Tale is a romance based on Boccaccio; the Miller’s Tale, the Reeve’s Tale, the Cook’s Tale (unfinished), the Summoner’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale, the Shipman’s Tale, the Friar’s Tale, the Summoner’s Tale, and the Manciple’s Tale are fabliaux; the Man of Law’s Tale, the Clerk’s Tale, and the Tale of Griselda are saint’s lives; the Wife of Bath’s Tale is a fabliau with a Breton lay at the centre; the Franklin’s Tale is a Breton lay; the Pardoner’s Tale is a sermon and an exemplum; the Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a beast fable from the Roman de Renart; the Monk’s Tale is a de casibus collection; the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale is an alchemical anecdote; the Manciple’s Tale is a fable from Ovid; the Parson’s Tale is a sermon on penitence; the Tale of Melibee is a didactic tale based on Albertano of Brescia. The range is one of the great achievements of the poem, and the English literary tradition that runs from Chaucer through Shakespeare is unimaginable without it. The article on Mystery plays and medieval theatre considers the other great English literary experiment of the period.

The language of the poem

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Chaucer’s afterlives: Lydgate, Hoccleve, the Scottish makars

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References

Walter F. Schirmer and John Crow, Chaucer: Life-Records (Oxford University Press, 1969).
Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Blackwell, 1992).
Paul Strohm, Social Chaucer (Harvard University Press, 1989).
Helen Cooper, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (Oxford University Press, 1989, 2nd ed. 1996).
A. S. G. Edwards, ed., Chaucer: A European Life (Oxford University Press, 2017).