Title: Geoffrey Chaucer
Description: Aside from writing The Canterbury Tales and generally being considered the first poet to create a substantial body of work written in a language that is recognizably like modern English, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) was also an accomplished translator and all-around gentleman of fourteenth-century England. Nearly five-hundred items detail his public career, testifying to his importance in his own time. He was a soldier, a member of the king's household, a controller of customs, a member of diplomatic missions abroad, a justice of the peace, a clerk of the king's works (and thus in charge of extensive building), and even a forester. But it is as author of the uncompleted Canterbury Tales as well as Troilus and Criseyde and other masterpieces of Middle English that Geoffrey Chaucer is best remembered. This biographical-critical book begins with a thorough consideration of Chaucer's life, his language, his milieu, and religious beliefs, before going on to a detailed discussion of the Tales - a treasury of medieval story telling that evokes the Middle Ages while being thoroughly timeless in its inventive richness. Several chapters are devoted to the study of the Canterbury Tales (secular romances, fabliaux, religious romances and saints' legends, tales with satiric warnings, and sermons). The following chapters examine lyrics, translations, and other works, including "An ABC" and "Complaint unto Pity," The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, Boece, The Parliament of Fowls, and Troilus and Criseyde. Like Shakespeare, Chaucer has a universal quality that appeals and has been accessible from his own time to the present. His remarkable body of work continues to attract readers nearly six-hundred years after his death and will likely do so for all time.
Subjects: English Poets, Biography, Chaucer, geoffrey, -1400, English literature (collections), middle english, 1100-1500