Chaucer

Geoffrey, chaw'ser, jef'fre (1340-1400), an English poet. He was the son of a London wine merchant. He was brought up at court as a ladies' page. In 1359 he went to France in the army of Edward III, was taken prisoner and ransomed. A little later he went abroad several times as an ambassador. In this way he became familiar with Italian literature, this being before the day of printing. He was at one time collector of customs. In 1386 he was dismissed by the court to a life of poverty, yet in the end received a pension, and at his death he was the first to be buried in that part of Westminster Abbey now known as the Poets' Corner. There were several English dialects. Chaucer made his dialect so prominent that it became the literary language of England.

At a time when printed books were unknown and diverting manuscripts few, Chaucer wrote to amuse the queen and the court. A parliament of the birds, a story of the Trojan war, a story of a glass temple on which famous names are carved, but which continually melt away, and stories of famous women, such as Dido and Cleopatra, are some of the subjects. His fame rests on the Canterbury Tales, the best stories in verse in the English language. Chaucer is called the father of English poetry. He was not the first to write verse, but his predecessors wrote in Anglo-Saxon, almost as difficult to read as French. Chaucer is the first great English poet.

The Tales were not the invention of a day. It was the fashion of the time to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, "the holy blissful martyr for to seek." A company of people representative of the different classes of society happens together at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. This inn is still to be seen in southwest London at the beginning of the Canterbury road.

The poet introduces the characters in a prologue. Some of the more prominent of them are a clerk, or scholar, who would rather have twenty books of Aristotle in "blak or reed" than rich robes, "And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche"; a "veray parfit gentil knight," and his son, a yonge squire, who was

A lovyere and a lusty bachelor;

a prioress,

That of her smyling was ful symple and coy;

a ruddy, baldheaded monk, fond of hunting,

A fat swan loved he best of any roast;

a wanton merry friar,

He was an esy man to give penance;

a merchant with a forked beard and Flanders' beaver hat; a wise sergeant of the law,

a franklin,

Whit was his berd as is a dayesye;

he cared not who was his cook, if the sauce were right; a doctor, who spoke of "phisik and surgerye" and who loved gold; a good wife with red stockings and new shoes, a bold face and a shrewd tongue, and yet she was a worthy woman all her lyve:

Housbondes at chirce dore she hadde fyve;

a poor parson rich in holy thought and work, who visited the sick and set an example of a right life, preaching the gospel,

That firste he wroghte and afterward he taughte.

Other characters are a plowman; and a miller

Well koude he stelen corn and tollen thries,

a reve; a pardoner; a haberdasher; a carpenter; a weaver; a dyer; a cook; a shipman; and, lastly, their host of the Tabard Inn.

All these characters, twenty-nine in all, Chaucer sets on horseback under the guidance of the Tabard host. Under the influence of a common purpose, restraint is for the once relaxed, social distinctions are laid aside. They set off a merry company. As they jog along each is to tell a tale. It is difficult to describe the tales without repeating them. So far as Chaucer found time to compose them, he puts into the mouth of each such a tale as might be expected of one in that particular walk of life. In this way the tales give a picture of the manners, jokes, and ways of thinking of the different kinds of people then living. The full number of tales was never completed.

The study of Chaucer is not at all difficult if undertaken with an edition provided with a vocabulary. The old spellings, plurals, possessives, and verb forms are instructive. Swete and smale, each pronounced in two syllables, are the old forms of sweet and small; ton, eyen, and shoon are old plurals of toe, eye, and shoe, formed by adding ``n'' to the singular. Slepen and longen are the equivalents of the verbs, sleep and long. The prologue is one of the most artless, cutting, musical bits of writing in the English language. Some of the tales are certainly a trifle coarse. Chaucer ingeniously pleads that he is not at fault, that he must tell the tales as they were told. Chaucer was called by his contemporaries the Flower of Poets.

The star of a misty morning.--Welsh.

The firste fynder of our fair language.--Occleve.

Our greatest poet of the Middle Ages.--Hallam.