"Chaucer" redirects here. For other uses, see Chaucer (disambiguation).
English poet and author (c. 1340s – 1400)
Geoffrey Chaucer
Manuscript portrait, 1412
Born
c. 1343
London, England
Died
25 October 1400(1400-10-25) (aged 56–57)
London, England
Resting place
Westminster Abbey, London, England
Occupations
Author
poet
philosopher
bureaucrat
diplomat
Era
Plantagenet
Spouse
Philippa Roet
(m. 1366)
Children
4, including Thomas
Writing career
Language
Middle English
Period
Middle English literature
Genres
Epic poem
lyric poem
short story
treatise
Literary movement
Precursor to the English Renaissance
Years active
from 1368
Notable works
The Canterbury Tales
Signature
Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales.[1] He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry".[2] He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey.[3] Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Among Chaucer's many other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. He is seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. [4] Chaucer's contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English).[5][6] Almost two thousand English words are first attested to in Chaucerian manuscripts. As scholar Bruce Holsinger has argued, charting Chaucer's life and work comes with many challenges related to the "difficult disjunction between the written record of his public and private life and the literary corpus he left behind". His recorded works and his life show many personas that are "ironic, mysterious, elusive [or] cagey" in nature, ever-changing with new discoveries.[7]
^"Geoffrey Chaucer in Context". Cambridge University Press. 2019. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
^"Chaucer". Cambridge University Press. 2011. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
^Robert DeMaria, Jr., Heesok Chang, Samantha Zacher, eds, A Companion to British Literature, Volume 2: Early Modern Literature, 1450–1660, John Wiley & Sons, 2013, p. 41.
^Butterfield, Ardis. "Chaucer and the idea of Englishness". History Extra. Retrieved 22 May 2022. The extraordinary dominance of English now as a world language has made it hard to appreciate that its status in the medieval period was very low. Not only was English just one of three languages used in England before the 15th century, it was not the major one. For although it was of course the most widely used spoken language, English fell far short of Latin and French as a written language. [Chaucer's] decision to write exclusively in English was indeed unusual [...] He made English successful because he made it urban and international.
^Simpson, James (27 April 2023). "Literary Traditions – Continuity and Change". The Oxford History of Poetry in English: Volume 3. Medieval Poetry: 1400–1500. Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 978-0-19-883968-2.
^Lerer, Seth (1 January 2006). The Yale Companion to Chaucer. Yale University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-300-12597-9.
^Holsinger, Bruce (2017). "Reference: Chaucer Biography - Chaucer's Difficult Lives". The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. Archived from the original on 7 February 2024. Retrieved 7 February 2024.
GeoffreyChaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been...
000 lines written in Middle English by GeoffreyChaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales (mostly written...
Thomas Chaucer (c. 1367 – 18 November 1434) was an English courtier and politician. The son of the poet GeoffreyChaucer and his wife Philippa Roet, Thomas...
literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and GeoffreyChaucer, whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the...
Perry Tatlock, a prominent Old English philologist and an expert on GeoffreyChaucer, Tatlock was a graduate of Vassar College and the Stanford Medical...
poet GeoffreyChaucer, best known for his work The Canterbury Tales. Near the end of their lives, Lancaster and Chaucer became brothers-in-law. Chaucer married...
of Lancaster – a son of King Edward III) and the wife of the poet GeoffreyChaucer. Philippa was the daughter of Sir Gilles de Roet, who was a herald...
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by GeoffreyChaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling...
obedient wives and (because of their scarcity) is thin and starving. GeoffreyChaucer mentions Chichevache in the envoy of the Clerk's Tale in his Canterbury...
contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of GeoffreyChaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works—the Mirour de l'Omme...
(Hous of Fame in the original spelling) is a Middle English poem by GeoffreyChaucer, probably written between 1374 and 1385, making it one of his earlier...
The Pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales by GeoffreyChaucer are the main characters in the framing narrative of the book. In addition, they can be considered...
to later developments of the cittern. During the 14th century in GeoffreyChaucer's time, the 'e' that appears at the end of his English spelling 'gyterne'...
Birds) or the Assemble of Foules (Assembly of Fowls), is a poem by GeoffreyChaucer (c. 1340s–1400) made up of approximately 700 lines. The poem, which...
it at least a dozen years earlier. 1360 – The future English writer GeoffreyChaucer is captured by the French during the Reims campaign of the Hundred...
Tales by GeoffreyChaucer, published in 1387. The tale is one of two—together with The Tale of Melibee—told by the fictive GeoffreyChaucer as he travels...
is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by GeoffreyChaucer. The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and...
works of GeoffreyChaucer, ed. by Walter William Skeat (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), pp. 83–96. Book of the Duchess: GeoffreyChaucer, Fourteenth...
mentioned in various works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and GeoffreyChaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca. During...
an adjective, sluttish, referring to a man's untidy appearance) by GeoffreyChaucer in The Canterbury Tales. From the late 20th century, there have been...
series of digressions. GeoffreyChaucer began translating Le Roman into Middle English early in his career, perhaps in the 1360s. Chaucer may have selected...
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