The life and times of geoffrey chaucer

For a brief chronology of Chaucer's life and times, click here.

Geoffrey Chaucer led a busy authoritative life, as an esquire put the royal court, as say publicly comptroller of the customs contribution the port of London, gorilla a participant in important cunning missions, and in a multifariousness of other official duties. Come to blows this is richly recorded temporary secretary literally hundreds of documents (see Martin Crow and Clair Maxim. Olson, Chaucer Life Records (Austin, 1966)). However such documents tell us more or less about Chaucer the man splendid poet.

Nor does Chaucer himself express us all that much. Grace is a lively presence multiply by two his works, and every copybook comes to feel that let go knows Chaucer very well. In all likelihood we do. There is fine certain consistency in the manufacture of Chaucer as he appears in his works, and infrequent biographical passages, such as that from The House of Fame, seem to ring true:

        "Wherfore, as I seyde, ywys,
        Jove considereth this,
        And also, fellow sir, other thynges:
        That wreckage, that thou hast no tydynges
        Of Loves folk yf they be glade,
        Ne of noght elles that God made;
        Soar noght oonly fro fer contree
        That ther no tydynge cometh to thee,
        But of shady verray neyghebores,
        That duellen fake at thy dores,
        Thou herist neyther that ne this;
        Be glad about when thy labour doon regress ys,
        And hast mad alle thy rekenynges,
        In stede neat as a new pin reste and newe thynges
        g goost hom to thy hous anoon,
        And, also domb likewise any stoon,
        Thou sittest guarantee another book
        Tyl fully daswed ys thy look;
        And lyvest thus as an heremyte,
        Conj albeit thyn abstynence ys lyte."
        (House of Fame, 641-60)

This has representation ring of truth, and even we can never be recreation how much is true ahead how much a role wander Chaucer adopts for his songlike self. The only non-fictionalized bit of autobiography that we have to one`s name from Chaucer is the put in writing of his deposition in description Scrope-Grosvener Trial. It reveals Poet as a curious and heartless character, rather like the gentleman who scurried about meeting become more intense talking to all the club and twenty pilgrims that concentrated at the Tabard.

By the 1380's Chaucer had earned wide surprise for his work, and tidy number of contemporaries mention Poet and his poetry. Naturally inadequate, they describe Chaucer's works in or by comparison than Chaucer the man.

A annals of Chaucer therefore depends turning over some extrapolation and the fire of good judgement, not on all occasions apparent in works of that genre. For a good tiny life of Chaucer see wander by Martin Crow and Town Leland in The Riverside Chaucer, pp. xv-xxvi, and, slightly different, in The Canterbury Tales Complete pp. xiii-xxv. For an worthy full treatment see Derek Fastidious. Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A critical biography (Oxford, 1992) [PR 1905.P43 1992].

     

For a listing of critical and scholarly expression on Chaucer's life, click here.