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GEOFFREY CHAUCER (? 1340-1400)
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See also:GEOFFREY See also:CHAUCER (? 1340-1400)
, See also:English poet
.
The name See also:Chaucer, a See also:French See also:form of the Latin calcearius, a See also:shoe-maker, is found in See also:London and the eastern counties as See also:early as the second See also:half of the 13th See also:century
.
Some of the London Chaucers lived in Cordwainer See also:Street, in the shoemakers' See also:quarter; several of them, however, were vintners, and among others the poet's See also:father See also:
It is possible that Philippa was See also:sister to Sir Hugh and sister-in-See also:law to'3
Katherine
.
In either See also:case the See also:marriage See also:helps to See also:account for the favour subsequently shown to Chaucer by John of Gaunt
.
In the See also: His own and his wife's income now amounted to over £6o, the See also:equivalent of upwards of £r000 in See also:modern See also:money . In the next two years large windfalls came to him in the form of two wardships of Kentish heirs, one of whom paid him £104, and a grant of £71: 4: 6; the value of some confiscated See also:wool . In December 1376 he was sent abroad on the king's service in the See also:retinue of Sir John Burley; in See also:February 1377 he was sent to See also:Paris and See also:Montreuil in connexion probably with the See also:peace negotiations between England and France, and at the end of April (after a reward of £20 for his See also:good services) he was again despatched to France . On the See also:accession of Richard II . Chaucer was confirmed in his offices and See also:pensions . In See also:January 1378 he seems to have been in France in connexion with a proposed marriage between Richard and the daughter of the French king; and on the 28th of May of the same year he was sent with Sir Edward de See also:Berkeley to the See also:lord of See also:Milan and Sir John See also:Hawkwood to treat for help in the king's See also:wars, returning on the 19th of September . This was his last See also:diplomatic See also:journey, and the See also:close of a period of his life generally considered to have been so unprolific of See also:poetry that little beyond the Clerk's " See also:Tale of Grisilde," one or two other of the stories afterwards included in the See also:Canterbury Tales, and a few See also:short poems, are attributed to it, though the poet's actual absences from England during the eight years amount to little more than eighteen months . During the next twelve or fifteen years there is no question that Chaucer was constantly engaged in See also:literary See also:work, though for the first half of them he had no lack of See also:official employment . Abundant favour was shown him by the new king . He was paid £22 as a reward for his later See also:missions in Edward III.'s reign, and was allowed an See also:annual gratuity of 10 marks in addition to his pay of £10 as comptroller of the customs of wool . In April 1382 a new comptrollership, that of the petty customs in the Port of London, was given him, and shortly after he was allowed to exercise it by See also:deputy, a similar See also:licence being given him in February 1385, at the instance of the See also:earl of See also:Oxford, as regards the comptrollership of wool . In See also:October 1385 Chaucer was made a See also:justice of the peace for See also:Kent .
In February 1386 we catch a glimpse of his wife Philippa being admitted to the fraternity of See also:Lincoln See also:cathedral in the See also:company of See also:
It is possible, also, that about this time, or a little later, he was in the service of the earl of Derby
.
In 1397 he received from King Richard a grant of a See also:butt of wine yearly
.
For this he appears to have asked in terms that suggest poverty, and in May 1398 he obtained letters of See also:protection against his creditors, a step perhaps rendered necessary by an See also:action for See also:debt taken against him earlier in the year
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On the accession of Henry IV. a new pension of 40 marks was conferred on Chaucer (13th of October 1399) and Richard II.'s grants were formally confirmed
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Henry himself, however, was probably straitened for ready money, and no See also:instalment of the new pension was paid during the few months of his reign that the poet lived
.
Nevertheless, on the strength of his expectations, on the 24th of December 1399 he leased a See also:tenement in the See also:garden of St See also:Mary's Chapel, See also:Westminster, and it was probably here that he died, on the 25th of the following October
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He was buried in Westminster See also:Abbey, and his See also:tomb became the See also:nucleus of what is now known as Poets' Corner
.
The portrait of Chaucer, which the See also:affection of his See also:disciple, Thomas Hoccleve, caused to be painted in a copy of the latter's Regement of Princes (now Harleian MS
.
4866 in the See also:British Museum), shows him an old See also:man with See also: Chaucer addresses him as the " conquerour of Brutes Albioun." Thus within the last year of his life the poet was still See also:writing . Nevertheless, as early as 1393-1394, in lines to his friend Scogan, he had written as if his day for poetry were past, and it seems probable that his longer poems were all composed before this date . In the preceding fifteen—or, if another view be taken, twenty—years, his literary activity was very See also:great, and with the aid of the lists of his works which he gives in the Legende of Good See also:Women (lines 414-431), and the talk on the road which precedes the " Man of Law's Tale " (Canterbury Tales, B . 46-76), the See also:order in which his See also:main works were writtencan be traced with approximate certainty,' while a few both of these and of the See also:minor poems can be connected with definite See also:dates . The development of his See also:genius has been attractively summed up as comprised in three stages, French, See also:Italian and English, and there is a rough approximation to the truth in this See also:formula, since his earliest poems are translated from the French or based on French See also:models, and the two great works of his See also:middle period are borrowed from the Italian, while his latest stories have no such obvious and See also:direct originals and in their See also:humour and freedom anticipate the typically English See also:temper of Henry See also:Fielding . But Chaucer's indebtedness to French poetry was no passing phase . For various reasons—a not very remote French origin of his own See also:family may be one of them—he was in no way interested in older English literature or in the work of his English contemporaries, See also:save possibly that of " the moral See also:Gower." On the other See also:hand he knew the See also:Roman de la See also:rose as modern English poets know See also:Shakespeare, and the full extent of his debt to his French contemporaries, not merely in 1369, but in 1385 and in 1393 (the dates are approximate), is only gradually being discovered . To be in See also:touch throughout his life with the best French poets of the day was much for Chaucer . Even with their stimulus alone he might have See also:developed no small part of his genius . But it was his great good fortune to add to this continuing French See also:influence, lessons in See also:plot and construction derived from See also:Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseide, as well as some glimpses of the higher See also:art of the Divina Commedia . He shows acquaintance also with one of Petrarch's sonnets, and though, when all is said, the Italian books with which he can be proved to have been intimate are but few, they sufficed . His study of them was but an See also:episode in his literary life, but it was an episode of unique importance .
Before it began he had already been making his own See also:artistic experiments, and it is noteworthy that while he learnt so much from Boccaccio he improved on his originals as he translated them
.
Doubtless his busy life in the service of the See also:crown had taught him self-confidence, and he uses his Italian models in his own way and with the most triumphant and assured success
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When he had no more Italian poems to adapt he had learnt his See also:lesson
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The art of See also:weaving a plot out of his own See also:imagination was never his, but he could take what might be little more than an See also:anecdote and lend it See also:body and life and See also:colour with a skill which has never been surpassed
.
The most direct example of Chaucer's French studies is his See also:translation of Le Roman de la rose, a poem written in some 4000 lines by See also:Guillaume Lorris about 1237 and extended to over 22,000 by See also:Jean Clopinel, better known as Jean de Meun, See also:forty years later
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We know from Chaucer himself that he translated this poem, and the extant English fragment of 7698 lines was generally assigned to him from 1532, when it was first printed, till its authorship was challenged in the early years of the Chaucer Society
.
The ground of this See also:challenge was its wide divergence from Chaucer's practice in his undoubtedly genuine works as to certain niceties of See also:rhyme, notable as to not rhyming words ending in -y with others ending -ye
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It was subsequently discovered, however, that the whole fragment was divisible linguistically into three portions, of which the first and second end respectively at lines 1705 and 581o, and that in the first of these three sections the See also:variations from Chaucer's accepted practice are insignificant
.
Lines 1-1705 have therefore been provisionally accepted as Chaucer's, and the other two fragments as the work of unknown translators (See also: 
The strength of French influence on Chaucer's early work may, however, be amply illustrated from the first of his poems with which we are on sure ground, the Book of the Duchesse, or, as it is alternatively called, the Deth of Blaunche . Here not only are individual passages closely imitated from Machault and See also:Froissart, but the See also:dream, the May See also:morning, and the whole machinery of the poem are taken over from contemporary French conventions . But even at this See also:stage Chaucer could prove his right to See also:borrow by the skill with which he makes his materials serve his own purpose, and some of the lines in the Deth of Blaunche are among the most See also:tender and charming he ever wrote . Chaucer's A.B.C., a poem in honour of the Blessed Virgin, of which the stanzas begin with the successive letters of the See also:alpha-See also:bet, is another early example of French influence . It is taken from the Pelerinage de la See also:vie humaine, written by Guillaume de Deguilleville about 1330 . The occurrence of some magnificent lines in Chaucer's version, combined with evidence that he did not yet possess the skill to translate at all literally as soon as rhymes had to be considered, accounts for this poem having been dated sometimes earlier than the Book of the Duchesse, and sometimes several years later . With it is usually moved up and down, though it should surely be placed in the 'seventies, the Compleynt to Pity, a See also:fine poem which yet, from its slight obscurity and absence of Chaucer's usual ease, may very well some day prove to be a translation from the French . While Chaucer thus sought to reproduce both the See also:matter and the See also:style of French poetry in England, he found other materials in popular Latin books . Among his lost works are renderings of " Origenes upon the Maudeleyne," and of See also:Pope See also:Innocent III. on " The Wreced Engendring of Mankinde " (De miseria conditionis humanae) . He must have begun his attempts at straightforward narrative with the Lyf of Seynt Cecyle (the weakest of all his works, the second See also:Nun's Tale in the Canterbury See also:series) from the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, and the See also:story of the See also:patience of Grisilde, taken from Petrarch's Latin version of a tale by Boccaccio . In both of these he condenses a little, but ventures on very few changes, though he lets his readers see his impatience with his originals . In his story of See also:Constance (afterwards ascribed to the Man of Law), taken from the Anglo-See also:Norman See also:chronicle of See also:Nicholas See also:Trivet, written about 1334, we find him struggling to put some substance into another weak tale, but still without the courage to remedy its See also:radical faults, though here, as with Grisilde, he does as much for his heroine as the conventional exaltation of one virtue at a time permitted . It is possible that other tales which now stand in the Canterbury series were written originally at this period . What is certain is that at some time in the 'seventies three or four Italian poems passed into Chaucer's See also:possession, and that he set to work busily to make use of them . One of the most interesting of the poems reclaimed for him by See also:Professor See also:Skeat is a fragmentary " Compleynt," part of which is written in terza rima . While he thus experimented with the See also:metre of the Divina Commedia, he made his first See also:attempt to use the material provided by Boccaccio's Teseide in another fragment of great See also:interest, that of Quene Anelida and Fals Arcyte . More than a third of this is taken up with another, and quite successful, metrical experiment in Anelida's " compleynt," but in the introduction of Anelida herself Chaucer made the first of his three unsuccessful efforts to construct a plot for an important poem out of his own See also:head, and the fragment which begins so well breaks off abruptly at See also:line 357 . For a time the Teseide seems to have been laid aside, and it was perhaps at this moment, in despondency at his failure, that Chaucer wrote his most important See also:prose work, the translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius . Reminiscences of this helped to enrich many of his subsequent poems, and inspired five of his shorter pieces (The Former Age, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse and Lak of Stedfastnesse), but the translation itself was only a partial success . To borrow his own phrase, his " Englysh was insufficient " to reproduce such difficult Latin . The translation is often barely intelligible without the See also:original,and it is only here and there that it flows with any ease or See also:rhythm . If Chaucer See also:felt this himself he must have been speedily See also:con-sold by achieving in See also:Troilus and Criseyde his greatest artistic See also:triumph . Warned by his failure in Anelida and Arcyte, he was content this time to take his plot unaltered from the Filostrato, and to follow Boccaccio step by step through the poem . But he did not follow him as a See also:mere translator . He had done his See also:duty manfully for the See also:saints " of other holinesse " in Cecyle; Grisilde and Constance, whom he was forbidden by the rules of the See also:game to clothe with See also:complete flesh and See also:blood . In this great love-story there were no such restrictions, and the characters which Boccaccio's treatment See also:left thin and conventional became in Chaucer's hands convincingly human . No other English poem is so See also:instinct with the See also:glory and tragedy of youth, and in the details of the story Chaucer's gifts of vivid colouring, of humour and pity, are all at their highest . An unfortunate theory that the reference in the Legende of Good Women to " al the love of Palamon and Arcyte " is to a hypothetical poem in seven-line stanzas on this theme, which Chaucer is imagined, when he came to See also:plan the Canterbury Tales, to have suppressed in favour of a new version in heroic couplets, has obscured the close connexion in temper and See also:power between what we know as the " See also:Knight's Tale " and the Troilus . The poem may have been more or less extensively revised before, with admirable fitness, it was assigned to the Knight, but that its main See also:composition can be separated by several years from that of Troilus is aesthetically incredible . Chaucer's art here again is at its highest . He takes the plot of Boccaccio's Teseide, but only as much of it as he wants, and what he takes he heightens and humanizes with the same skill which he had shown in trans-forming the Filostrato . Of the individual characters See also:Theseus himself, the arbiter of the plot, is most notably developed; Emilie and he |