Pardone Reve CENTURY READINGS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE GEOFFREY CHAUCER (c. 1340-1400) Since Chaucer's father, John Chaucer, was not only a successful London vintner, but also, probably, an occasional servant of the king, it is not surprising that at an early age our poet himself entered the service of royalty. Our earliest records concerning him show that in April, 1357, he was occupied, perhaps as page, in the household of Elizabeth, wife of Prince Lionel, son of Edward III, where he continued to serve throughout that year and probably into the next. During this service, Chaucer accompanied the princess to Hatfield, in Yorkshire, to London, and probably to other parts of England. We surmise that he witnessed more than one brilliant chivalric entertainment, and that at Hatfield, during Christmastide of 1357, he met his future friend and patron, John of Gaunt. During the year 1359, Chaucer served as a soldier in the army of Edward III, in France. Having been taken prisoner, not far from Reims, he was released through a ransom to which the king himself contributed the substantial sum of sixteen pounds. After the conclusion of this expedition, with the Peace of Brétigny, May 8, 1360, Chaucer returned to England, where he seems to have increased in favor at court, for in 1367 he was granted a life pension of twenty marks as a valet of the king. During the next ten or fifteen years, Chaucer took part in a considerable number of diplomatic missions to the Continent, of which the most important, from a literary point of view, are a secret embassy to Genoa and Florence (Dec., 1372, to April, 1373), and a mission to Milan (May to September, 1378). Although Petrarch and Boccaccio were both living at the time of Chaucer's first visit to Italy, we have no evidence that the English poet met either of them. To these Italian journeys, however, may be due Chaucer's subsequent devotion to Italian literature. Aside from his diplomatic employment, the poet had official duties at home in connection with the customs of the port of London. In 1374 he was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides, and in 1382 he received the additional appointment of comptroller of the petty customs. In the autumn of 1386, Chaucer sat for a short time in parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent. In the political eclipse of Richard, from the latter part of 1386 to 1389, Chaucer lost his offices, a loss that left him, presumably, much leisure for writing. During this period he may have written a considerable part of The Canterbury Tales. In 1389, Chaucer was again in the service of the government as clerk of the king's works, and although the loss of this appointment, in 1391, left him in straitened circumstances, a royal pension of twenty pounds, in 1394, and a yearly gift of a tun of wine, in 1398, contributed somewhat toward his comfort. When Henry IV, son of Chaucer's old patron, John of Gaunt, came to the throne in 1399, the poet promptly addressed to him a ballade entitled The Compleynt of Chaucer to his Empty Purse. To this pleasant bit of begging the king responded readily with a pension of forty marks, in addition to the annuity of twenty pounds that had been granted in 1394. Chaucer spent his last days, then, in comparative comfort, and on his death, October 25, 1400, he was buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, which has since become the Poets' Corner.' Although the exact chronology of Chaucer's works is far from certain, the literary influences under which he wrote are clearly defined. As a courtier, diplomat, and man of the world, he was familiar with literary fashions at home and abroad,- literary fashions definitely embodied in his works. His first poems are imitations or translations of French poems popular at court both in France and in England. To an early stage of his career is assigned his translation of at least part of the Roman de la Rose, a French poem composed during the thirteenth century and popular in the fourteenth. French in style is The Book of the Duchess, written in 1369 as a lament for the death of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt. Upon French models Chaucer composed his early poem, A. B. G., and numerous shorter poems that highten balades, roundels, virelayes.' The Parliament of Fowls, written, probably, in 1382, in honor of the marriage of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, is conspicuously influenced by French poetical taste. During his journeys to Italy, or before, Chaucer acquired a new source of literary inspiration in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Although from Dante and Petrarch his literal borrowings are few, his extensive verbal obligations to Boccaccio are shown in Troilus and Criseyde, written about 1383, and in the Knight's Tale. The House of Fame, written, perhaps, about 1379, clearly shows the influence of Dante, as well as of French allegorical poetry. To the last fifteen years or so of Chaucer's life, without specification, may be assigned the Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales. Although in these works Chaucer used a multiplicity of sources, the poems themselves show vigorous increase in English spirit and in literary originality. THE CANTERBURY TALES THE PROLOGUE Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote roote, 5 10 And bathed every veyne in swich licour, 15 20 25 Bifel that, in that sesoun on a day, But natheles, whyl I have tyme and space, See 60 At many a noble aryve hadde he be. And of his port as meek as is a mayde. 65 70 75 36 Al bismotered with his habergeoun. 80 Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun, A lovyer, and a lusty bacheler, presse. |