Geoffrey Chaucer

Born into an bourgeois family of well-to-do Londoners, sometime around 1340, as a teenager, Geoffrey Chaucer worked as a public servant for Countess Elizabeth of Ulster, the Duke of Clarence’s wife, before fighting in the Hundred Years’ War. Captured at Rethel, his royal connections prompted King Edward III to pay for much of his ransom, before Chaucer spent the rest of his life as a diplomat and public servant to Great Britain and her aristocratic leaders.

A Strategic Marriage

Marrying Philippa Roet in 1366, the daughter of Sir Payne Roet, the marriage did much to advance Chaucer’s career in the English court. The couple lived abroad from 1370 to 1373, fulfilling diplomatic missions to Florence Italy, followed by the establishment of an English port at Genoa. Despite his near constant work distractions, Chaucer managed to carve out time for his original love—poetry—and while many of his most famous works remained unfinished at the time of his death, his contributions to English literature make his work highly readable, even to this day.

Parliament of Fouls

Most likely written in 1380, when he spearheaded marriage negotiations between Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, Parliament of Fouls employs poetic allegory, incorporating elements of satiric irony that jabs at the superficial qualities of courtly love. Troilus and Criseyde is a narrative poem retelling the tragic love story of Troilus and Criseyde during the Trojan War, written in Chaucer’s original technique of Rime royal, which involves rhyming stanzas of seven lines each.

Multiple Unfinished Works

Another important yet unfinished work by Chaucer is The Legend of Good Women, which employs short poetic narratives written in iambic pentameter couplets—the first time such a technique was ever used in the English language, yet his most famous work is Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which comprises 24 stories in fragmented and varied order, prompting many scholars to challenge the correct, intended order of his unfinished work.

Canterbury Tales

Chaucer’s original vision of writing 120 tales proved to be overly ambitious for a man with a full-time day job, yet his Canterbury Tales remain widely read for the beautiful rhythm of Chaucer’s language, along with his clever injections of satirical wit. Passing away in London on October 25th, 1400—penniless and broke—Chaucer was entombed at Westminster Abbey, the first English writer to inhabit the now legendary Poet’s Corner, making the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, required reading for English majors everywhere.