Geoffrey Chaucer And His Works Essay, Research Paper
Known as the Father of the English Language, Geoffrey Chaucer, after six centuries, has retained his position as one of the three or four greatest English poets. Throughout his sedulous life as a courtier and civil retainer under the royalty of Edward III and Richard II, Chaucer has written many celebrated pieces that are still admired and congratulations today. His life functioning royalty in which he undertook multiply places that allowed him to prosecute with assorted people of difference positions has greatly swayed his Hagiographas. Furthermore, Chaucer himself and the success of this plants have placed great influence on the English linguistic communication.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in Vintry Ward, London around 1343.1 He was the boy of Agnes de Copton and John Chaucer, a comfortable vino merchandiser. The name, from chaussier ( Gallic term for places ) , indicates ascendants who were shoemakers.2 In 1357, when he was about 14 old ages old, he was old plenty to inscribe as a page in a baronial household- the family of King Edward’s boy Prince Lionel and his married woman Elizabeth. This is known from an entry in Countess Elizabeth’s family history book, which records the purchase of a suit of apparels for Geoffrey Chaucer, including a brace of ruddy and black hosiery and a brace of places. 1 This being his first connexion with royalty, he was trained to be a civil retainer and a diplomat; at the same clip he leant the ways of the tribunal and the usage of arms.2 Those yearss must hold been lively yearss for the immature page, for old records show that the countess and her family were invariably on the move from one castle or great sign of the zodiac to another. 1 Two old ages subsequently Chaucer was with a European ground forces that Edward III led into France during the Hundred Years’War. He was taken captive by the Gallic but was shortly ransomed by the male monarch for a sum equivalent to about U.S. $ 2,400 in 1360. 3
Of his following seven old ages, nil definite is known; but there is ground to believe that he may hold been analyzing jurisprudence in London.1 It is believed that from this clip frontward, Chaucer began roll uping information and inside informations through his experience for his ulterior work the Canterbury Tales.
By 1367, he was a member of the royal family with the rank of beefeater and subsequently of squire, with a regular pension, or salary.1 He besides had a married woman, Philippa, the girl of Sir Poan Roet of Hainauut and sister of John of Gaunt s 3rd married woman; she was a member of the queen’s household.3 Thus, some clip in his 20s, Chaucer was launched on the official calling that he followed for the balance of his life-time.
For the following 30 old ages, or thereabouts, Chaucer traveled on board on legion diplomatic missions because of his preparation in diplomatic negotiations and he besides held a figure of places at tribunal and in the male monarch s service. He served two male monarchs, Edward III and Richard II, in of import offices and diplomatic missions abroad.3 Between 1370 and 1378, he was sent on seven missions to France, Flanders, and Italy. From 1374 to 1386, he was accountant of the imposts in London.1 In 1385, he was appointed justness of the peace, and in 1386, in add-on to his one term place in Parliament, he was made knight of the shire of Kent.1 From 1389 to 1391 came a sequence of responsible stations. He was clerk of the male monarch’s plants, in charge of Westminster Palace, the Tower of London, and other castles and manors. He was given a committee to study the roads, Bridgess, and ditches along the Thames near London, and he was put in charge of fixs to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.3 A less demanding station fell to him in 1391, when he was made sub-forester of one of the male monarch’s parks.1 He may hold held this place until his decease.
During the 12 old ages that Chaucer was accountant of the imposts ( 1374-86 ) , he and his married woman lived in a house built on the metropolis wall above the gate called Aldgate. His married woman died in 1387.3 Nothing is known about where Chaucer lived after this calamity until December 1399, when he leased a house in the garden of Westminster Abbey in London.3 October 25 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer died and was buried where he had spent his last twelvemonth of life. It was at that place in later old ages that other work forces of letters were buried near him, and gave acknowledgment to this portion of the Abbey as the Poets’Corner.4
Soldier, diplomat, justness of the peace, Member of Parliament, and adult male of personal businesss, Chaucer lived a full and busy life. Born shortly after the beginning of the Hundred Years’War, he lived through the awful old ages of the Black Death, through John Wycliffe’s dramatic challenge to the established church, through the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, and through the deposition of Richard II. Geoffrey Chaucer lived to the age 57.
With his association with the royal household, from boyhood to his decease, Chaucer s multiple places likely caused him to be fascinated with people s characters, to hold cognition of English life style and to develop the sarcasm in his plant. His life, which has greatly influenced his thoughts in his plants, in add-on to his love for poesy, gave him a rubric as one of greatest poet every known.
London was so a rural metropolis. Garden, grove, and hayfield were in sight of Chaucer’s window; moor, heath, and forest were within easy walking distance. As a male child, he skated across the frozen pools, but shared with most others a disfavor of the cold; and, though antiphonal to the beauty of stars on a frigid dark, he preferred showers of April, Garlands of May, and tune of birds. He is the poet of morning and spring. 4
He boom on literature, both authoritative and recent. Ovid, Vergil, Livy, Boethius, Petrarch, Dante, and Jean de Meun are among the writers of whom his pages are liberally evocative; some of them he converted into life English.5 Literature of the yesteryear was often captured by word of oral cavity, since printing was yet to be invented and books were scarce. Taking what he needed from others, he remolded and immortalized it, with narrative accomplishment still unsurpassed. His first feature is humor, flashing, softly glowing, or aloud robust. 4
Chaucer s superb thoughts for his celebrated piece of work, the Canterbury Tales, obviously evolved from his associations. In his England of spread outing trade with all nations- England under that Edward who has been called the Father of English Commerce- he met shipman, merchandiser, superintendent, and ploughman. In an epoch of altering spiritual thoughts, he met the members of the assorted clerical orders- from parish priest to abbot- and he may hold known John Wyclif, who wanted to reform the church. Even though his crisp eyes detected maltreatments in the church, he was non profoundly concerned nor was he peculiarly sympathetic with reformers.3 In his old age, he made imploring God’s forgiveness for songs-written, thanking God for lives of saints he had told. By that clip, nevertheless, he felt old, his ideas no longer fixed on Earth.2
In his cardinal province he wrote sensibly, heartily, approximately work forces as he saw them, go forthing the reader to pull decisions. He knew work forces of jurisprudence and, in that period of his life about which nil has been revealed, he may hold studied jurisprudence. He knew physicians, and may hold studied medical specialty in those same concealed years.1 He knew hosts, at whose hostel he undoubtedly drank the vino they had bought from his ain father.3 On trips to the continent he mingled with work forces of high estate who directed national and international affairs.2 In Italy was where he may hold met his great literary friends Petrarch and Boccaccio. While at place he k
new the poet John Gower.1
As a page, and subsequently as a courtier, Chaucer became acquainted with the aristocracy and with royalty. His married woman was a lady in waiting. As a soldier he knew adversity in the field, and at least one time he experienced life as a captive in a foreign land. He was familiar with the pattern of gallantry and satirized them as deceasing customs.3
His cognition of people, broadened by travel, was deepened by work at place and lengthened in his Hagiographas. As accountant of the imposts in London he met all types of people, native and foreign. As deputy Forester he knew cottagers.2 As knight of the shire for Kent, he sat with Parliamentarians. As clerk of the male monarch’s works in charge of mending royal abodes and province edifices, he supervised carpenters and Masons. Several times he was robbed of the money he was transporting to pay off labourers; one time he was badly beaten.2 Chaucer besides knew adult females of all categories. Queens, duchesses, nuns, middle-class adult females, and low-class adult females are all dependably portrayed in his works.5
Therefore, Chaucer s acquaintance with different people of different position has assisted him in his Hagiographas, particularly in the Canterbury Tales. The Shipman, the Clerk, the Man of Law, the Nun, the Priest, etc. all appear as of import character s in his poesy.
Although Chaucer s plants were written for his fellow courtiers, functionaries and for members of the royal household, his plants have followed clip and are good known, read and studied by many today.
Since the civilization of the English upper category was still predominately Gallic, Chaucer s earliest plants were influenced by the latest Gallic poets of that clip, Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart, and by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, who wrote the celebrated 13th-century verse form Le Roman de la rose 2 which Chaucer subsequently claims to hold translated. The common subject of these plants is courtly love.
His first of import original work, The Book of the Duchess, is a poem written for John of Gaunt’s first married woman, Blanche, who died in 1369.4 In a dream, the poet encounters a sorrowing knight in black Gaunt- who describes his love and loss of “good carnival White” -Blanche.6 Other dream verse forms, The House of Fame and Parliament of Fowls show the influence of Dante and of Giovanni Boccaccio, whose plants Chaucer likely encountered on his first journey to Italy.2 The unfinished House of Fame gives a humourous history of the poet’s thwarting journey in the claws of a elephantine aureate bird of Jove -an thought from Dante- to the castle of the goddess Fame. The Parliament of Fowls reads an inconclusive argument about love among the different categories of birds. All three dream visions, written from about 1373 to about 1385, contain a mixture of comedy and serious guess about the enigmatic nature of love.6
In this period, Chaucer besides translated and adapted spiritual, historical, and philosophical plants: a life of St. Cecilia; a series of mediaeval calamities, brief lives of celebrated work forces cast down by inauspicious luck; a interlingual rendition of De Consolatione Philosophiae, written by the Roman philosopher Anicius Boethius to proclaim his religion in godly justness and providence.4
Troilus for Criseyde, a verse form of more than 8000 lines6, is Chaucer s 2nd major work next to The Canterbury Tales. It is the tragic love narrative of the Trojan prince, Troilus, who wins Criseyde, but so loses her to the Greek warrior Diomede. The love narrative turns into a deeply felt mediaeval calamity, the human chase of ephemeral earthly ideals that pale into insignificance beside the ageless love of God. 6 The verse form ends with the storyteller’s solemn advice to immature people to go forth vain loves and turn their Black Marias to Christ. Chuacer s characters are psychologically so complex that the work is known as the first modern novel. 6
The Canterbury Tales is a aggregation of narratives set within a narrative of a pilgrim’s journey to Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket. The poet joins a group of pilgrims, described in the General Prologue, who assemble at the Tabard Inn outside London for the journey to Canterbury. The Host at the Inn proposes a storytelling competition to go through the clip; each of the 30 or so pilgrims ( the exact figure is ill-defined ) is to state 4 narratives on the unit of ammunition trip. Chaucer completed less than a one-fourth of this program. The work contains 22 poetry narratives ( 2 unfinished ) and 2 long prose narratives; a few are thought to be pieces written before by Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, composed of more than 18,000 lines of poesy, is made up of separate blocks of one or more narratives with links presenting and fall ining narratives within a block.6
The singularity and skillfulness presented in this piece of work prevarications in the dramatic interaction between the narratives and the framing narrative. After the Knight’s courtly and philosophical love affair about baronial love, the Miller interrupts with a pleasurably off-color narrative of seduction aimed at the Reeve; the Reeve takes retaliation with a narrative about the seduction of a Miller’s married woman and girl. 6 Therefore, the narratives develop the characters personalities, battles, and assorted sentiments of their Tellers. The prologues and narratives of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner are the extremum of Chaucer s art.4 The Wife, an vocal guardian of her sex against the traditional anti-feminism of the church, initiates a series of narratives about sex, matrimony, and aristocracy. The Pardoner gives a chilling presentation of how his strength in the ministry turns the hope of redemption into a barbarous assurance game. Although Chaucer in this manner satirizes the maltreatments of the church, he besides includes a figure of moral and spiritual narratives. This is followed by a personal confession in which Chaucer retract all his secular Hagiographas, including Troilus for Criseyde and those Canterbury narratives that incline toward wickedness. 4 Like the stoping of Troilus for Criseyde the abjuration is a reminder that Chaucer s mastermind was ever capable to recognized godliness.4
Chaucer had distributed influence on the English linguistic communication. In Chaucer’s clip no printed books existed, and contacts between assorted parts of England were few.3 There were, hence, striking differences in the English linguistic communication as spoken in assorted parts. Furthermore, the linguistic communication of the tribunal was Gallic, and the linguistic communication of acquisition was Latin. Chaucer was the first tribunal author to utilize the English lingua. Because he lived in London, he of course used the English of the Midland counties instead than the Northern or the Southern dialects.2 His Hagiographas did much to put the linguistic communication in the signifier it has today. Chaucer greatly increased the prestigiousness of English as a literary linguistic communication and extended the scope of its poetic vocabulary and metres. He was the first English poet to utilize iambic pentameter, the seven-line stanza called rime royal, and the pair subsequently called heroic. 4 His method of versification, which depends on sounding many E s in concluding syllables that are soundless, in modern English, was no longer understood by the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, Chaucer s composing dominated English poesy up to the clip of Shakespeare.4
Chaucer lived a really full and persevering life, a life that defined the utmost significances of frankness. The multitudinous of life experiences that enable him to hold on the footings of heterogenous in a society, benefited his distinguished plants of poesy. Chaucer himself and his all right plants exhibit great influence on the English linguistic communication. His part to great literature has decidedly earned his lasting rubric as the Father of the English Language.
