Read complete books and articles on: Canterbury Tales

Chaucer, Geoffrey - jĕfˈrē chôˈsər, c.1340–1400, English poet, one of the most important figures in English literature.

Life and Career

Chaucer, Geoffrey - jĕfˈrē chôˈsər, c.1340–1400, English poet, one of the most important figures in English literature.

Life and Career

The known facts of Chaucer's life are fragmentary and are based almost entirely on official records. He was born in London between 1340 and 1344, the son of John Chaucer, a vintner. In 1357 he was a page in the household of Prince Lionel, later duke of Clarence, whom he served for many years. In 1359–60 he was with the army of Edward III in France, where he was captured by the French but ransomed.

By 1366 he had married Philippa Roet, who was probably the sister of John of Gaunt's third wife; she was a lady-in-waiting to Edward III's queen. During the years 1370 to 1378, Chaucer was frequently employed on diplomatic missions to the Continent, visiting Italy in 1372–73 and in 1378. From 1374 on he held a number of official positions, among them comptroller of customs on furs, skins, and hides for the port of London (1374–86) and clerk of the king's works (1389–91). The official date of Chaucer's death is Oct. 25, 1400. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Early Works

Chaucer's literary activity is often divided into three periods. The first period includes his early work (to 1370), which is based largely on French models, especially the Roman de la Rose and the poems of Guillaume de Machaut. Chaucer's chief works during this time are the Book of the Duchess, an allegorical lament written in 1369 on the death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, and a partial translation of the Roman de la Rose.

Italian Period

Chaucer's second period (up to c.1387) is called his Italian period because during this time his works were modeled primarily on Dante and Boccaccio. Major works of the second period include The House of Fame, recounting the adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy; The Parliament of Fowls, which tells of the mating of fowls on St. Valentine's Day and is thought to celebrate the betrothal of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia; and a prose translation of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae.

Also among the works of this period are the unfinished Legend of Good Women, a poem telling of nine classical heroines, which introduced the heroic couplet (two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter) into English verse; the prose fragment The Treatise on the Astrolabe, written for his son Lewis; and Troilus and Criseyde, based on Boccaccio's Filostrato, one of the great love poems in the English language (see Troilus and Cressida). In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer perfected the seven-line stanza later called rhyme royal.

The Canterbury Tales

To Chaucer's final period, in which he achieved his fullest artistic power, belongs his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales (written mostly after 1387). This unfinished poem, about 17,000 lines, is one of the most brilliant works in all literature. The poem introduces a group of pilgrims journeying from London to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. To help pass the time they decide to tell stories. Together, the pilgrims represent a wide cross section of 14th-century English life.

The pilgrims' tales include a variety of medieval genres from the humorous fabliau to the serious homily, and they vividly indicate medieval attitudes and customs in such areas as love, marriage, and religion. Through Chaucer's superb powers of characterization the pilgrims—such as the earthy wife of Bath, the gentle knight, the worldly prioress, the evil summoner—come intensely alive. Chaucer was a master storyteller and craftsman, but because of a change in the language after 1400, his metrical technique was not fully appreciated until the 18th cent. Only in Scotland in the 15th and 16th cent. did his imitators understand his versification.

Bibliography

The best editions of Chaucer's works are those of F. N. Robinson (1933) and W. W. Skeat (7 vol., 1894–97); of The Canterbury Tales, that of J. M. Manly and E. Rickert (8 vol., 1940); of Troilus and Criseyde, that of R. K. Root (1926).

See C. Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition (1960); G. G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England (1950, repr. 1963); M. A. Bowden, A Reader's Guide to Geoffrey Chaucer (1964); G. G. Williams, A New View of Chaucer (1965); M. Hussey et al., Introduction to Chaucer (1965); D. W. Robertson, Jr., Chaucer's London (1968); G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (1915, repr. 1970); I. Robinson, Chaucer's Prosody (1971) and Chaucer and the English Tradition (1972); P. M. Kean, Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry (2 vol., 1972); D. Brewer, ed., Chaucer: The Critical Heritage (2 vol., 1978); B. Rowland, ed., Companion to Chaucer Studies (1979); D. R. Howard, Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World (1989). Bibliographies for 1908 to 1953 by D. D. Griffith (rev. ed. 1954) and for 1954 to 1963 by W. R. Crawford (1967).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Canterbury Tales

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1.

The Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Geoffrey Chaucer, Nevill Coghill. 525 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...-1- -2- The Canterbury Tales GEOFFREY CHAUCER TRANSLATED...Chaucer's Works 11 The Canterbury Tales GROUP A THE...are to be seen throughout The Canterbury Tales . If we may...
2.

A Companion to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Margaret Hallissy. 338 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

This do-it-yourself course for the first-time Chaucer reader systematically proceeds through a clear explication of each tale and makes the tales accessible to those unfamiliar with Chaucer's work. Reading this book along with Canterbury Tales, tale by tale, will help the reader to understand and...
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This do-it-yourself course for the first-time Chaucer reader systematically proceeds through a clear explication of each tale and makes the tales accessible to those unfamiliar with Chaucer's work. Reading this book along with Canterbury Tales, tale by tale, will help the reader to understand and appreciate each tale, Chaucer's world, and his language. This book differs from other guides to the tales because it takes the reader along on the pilgrimage through each tale and assumes no previous experience with Chaucer's work. Middle English and modern English paraphrases of passages from the tales are arranged together for the ease of the novice. An explicatory essay is provided for the General Prologue and for each major tale.
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3.

Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Helen Cooper. 436 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

Since its first publication in 1989, Helen Cooper's guide to The Canterbury Tales has established itself as the standard work on the poem. This second edition continues to offer the most comprehensive scrutiny of the Tales both as a whole and individually. In addition, Cooper incorporates the most...
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Since its first publication in 1989, Helen Cooper's guide to The Canterbury Tales has established itself as the standard work on the poem. This second edition continues to offer the most comprehensive scrutiny of the Tales both as a whole and individually. In addition, Cooper incorporates the most significant recent scholarship and criticism, reflecting current research in the areas of Chaucer's historical and social context and developments in the interpretation of Chaucer's presentation of women.
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4.

Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by William Witherle Lawrence. 188 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

...CHAUCER AND THE CANTERBURY TALES CHAUCER AND THE CANTERBURY TALES By WILLIAM WITHERLE LAWRENCE Professor Emeritus...been written for those who are interested in the...
5.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 160 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature
-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
6.

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Pardoner's Tale (literary criticism) » Read Now
by Harold Bloom. 171 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

-- Presents the most important 20th-century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature
-- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism
-- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index
7.

Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Laura C. Lambdin, Robert T. Lambdin. 397 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library

To have a clear understanding of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the reader needs to know about the vocations of the pilgrims. For some 600 years, this information has been difficult to locate. This reference provides a detailed historical description of the occupations of Chaucer's pilgrims. An entry...
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To have a clear understanding of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the reader needs to know about the vocations of the pilgrims. For some 600 years, this information has been difficult to locate. This reference provides a detailed historical description of the occupations of Chaucer's pilgrims. An entry is devoted to each traveler, and the entries have similar formats to foster comparison. Each entry discusses the historical daily routine of the pilgrim's occupation, the portrayal of the profession in Chaucer's poem, and the relationship between the tale and Chaucer's "General Prologue."
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8.

Chaucer's Drama of Style: Poetic Variety and Contrast in the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by C. David Benson. 183 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
9.

The Unity of the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Ralph Baldwin. 112 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...COPENHAGEN 1955 THE UNITY OF THE CANTERBURY TALES BY RALPH BALDWIN ROSENKILDE...the narrative art of The Canterbury Tales . Its scope is the beginning...It is accepted that...
10.

Chaucer and the Energy of Creation: The Design and the Organization of the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Edward I. Condren. 298 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
11.

Chaucer and the Trivium: The Mindsong of the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by J. Stephen Russell. 266 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

J. Stephen Russell examines the impact that Chaucer's education had on his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales, and demonstrates that understanding the nature of education in the Middle Ages, especially linguistic education, provides important insights into Chaucer's poem.
Specifically, he shows that...
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J. Stephen Russell examines the impact that Chaucer's education had on his greatest work, the Canterbury Tales, and demonstrates that understanding the nature of education in the Middle Ages, especially linguistic education, provides important insights into Chaucer's poem.
Specifically, he shows that the medieval trivium (a curriculum of logic, grammar, and rhetoric) conveyed attitudes about expression, communication, and personality subtly but powerfully different from modern attitudes and that a recognition of these differences completely changes the nature of poems such as the general prologue and the tales of the knight, man of law, and clerk.
Russell begins with a concise, lucid account of the medieval trivium, synthesizing a variety of sources in an engaging explanation of such potentially dry subjects as grammar and conceptual hierarchies. He then examines four parts of the Canterbury Tales, providing insight into Chaucer's method of presenting information about the pilgrims in the "General Prologue", the role of language in the "Man of Law's Tale", the definition of man in the "Knight's Tale", and the Artes in the "Clerk's Tale". Finally, he extends his discussion to the "Tale of Melibee" and the tales of the wife of Bath, franklin, and nun's priest and suggests avenues for further research based on the trivium.
For the modern reader, this work re-creates the mental parameters of a medieval education and provides a view of Chaucer's conception of the way the world is organized, the foundation of his intellectual and artistic development.
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12.

The Canterbury Tales in Modern Verse » Read Now
by Joseph Glaser, Geoffrey Chaucer. 348 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
13.

The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question » Read Now
by Leonard Michael Koff, Brenda Deen Schildgen. 354 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
14.

Framing the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer and the Medieval Frame Narrative Tradition » Read Now
by Katharine S. Gittes. 174 pgs.

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A clear emphasis on the literary antecedents of the Canterbury Tales differentiates this book from most criticism of Chaucer's work. Gittes finds a blending of two frame narrative traditions in the Canterbury Tales, one originating in India and the Near East, and the other in ancient Greece. She...
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A clear emphasis on the literary antecedents of the Canterbury Tales differentiates this book from most criticism of Chaucer's work. Gittes finds a blending of two frame narrative traditions in the Canterbury Tales, one originating in India and the Near East, and the other in ancient Greece. She illustrates this dual tradition through comparison of Chaucer's work with selected Eastern and Western frame narratives from pre-Chaucerian and Chaucerian times. Covering material written in eight different languages, this book attempts to resolve some of the critical issues raised by scholars about the Canterbury Tales, including the organizing principle behind the Tales, their open-endedness, and the nature of Chaucer's ambiguity.
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15.

Society and Nature in the 'Cook's Tale,' in Papers on Language & Literature » Read Now
by William F. Woods. 17 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...the realism peculiar to the Canterbury Tales. Perkyns world is divided between...when Chaucer began writing the Canterbury Tales. London, like any large medieval...of...
16.

Eighteenth-Century Modernizations from the Canterbury Tales » Read Now
by Betsy Bowden. 263 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Taleswhich appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studyingthe history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so preciseand extensive is available onlyfor Chaucer among English...
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This collection of 32 modernised versions of The Canterbury Taleswhich appeared in the 18th century offers basic material for studyingthe history of attitudes to Chaucer, and Chaucer scholarship, duringthe period. Reception data so preciseand extensive is available onlyfor Chaucer among English authors. At least seventeen known and anonymous writers produced thirty-two modernised Canterbury tales during the century, plus tale links and adaptations of each other's work. The present collection contains only modernisations that have not seen print since 1796, thus excluding those by Pope and Dryden. Although most works in this collection may be examined furtherin several British and American libraries, others cannot. Apparentlyonly one copy has survived of an anonymous Miller's Tale (1791) with a thoughtful preface justifying the tale's overt sexuality published just as WilliamLipscomb was completing his 1795 edition that, in its preface, justifies exclusion from the pilgrimage of the notorious tales of Miller and Reeve. Such contrasting attitudes illustrate the dangers of generalisation about the usual reception or interpretation of Chaucer during this or any other socio-historic period; instead, the collection provides an untapped reservoir of material with which to investigate anew the rich complexity of his poetry and its enduring appeal. BETSY BOWDEN is Professor of English at Rutgers University,New Jersey.
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