English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and

was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While

he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer,

composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also

maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among

his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend

of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English,

at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.

Life Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime

around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and

grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in

Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".) In

1324 John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying

the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The

aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure—bourgeois,

if not elite. John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including

24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated 3

April 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer

at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey

Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii,

Londonie'. While records concerning the lives of his

contemporary poets, William Langland and the Pearl Poet are practically non-existent, since

Chaucer was a public servant, his official life is very well documented, with nearly

five hundred written items testifying to his career. The first of the "Chaucer Life Records"

appears in 1357, in the household accounts of Elizabeth de Burgh, the Countess of Ulster,

when he became the noblewoman's page through his father's connections. She was married

to Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second surviving son of the king, Edward III, and the position

brought the teenage Chaucer into the close court circle, where he was to remain for the

rest of his life. He also worked as a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant, as well as

working for the king, collecting and inventorying scrap metal.

In 1359, in the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, Edward III invaded France and

Chaucer travelled with Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, Elizabeth's husband,

as part of the English army. In 1360, he was captured during the siege of Rheims. Edward

paid £16 for his ransom, a considerable sum, and Chaucer was released.

After this, Chaucer's life is uncertain, but he seems to have travelled in France, Spain,

and Flanders, possibly as a messenger and perhaps even going on a pilgrimage to Santiago

de Compostela. Around 1366, Chaucer married Philippa (de) Roet. She was a lady-in-waiting

to Edward III's queen, Philippa of Hainault, and a sister of Katherine Swynford, who later

(c. 1396) became the third wife of John of Gaunt. It is uncertain how many children Chaucer

and Philippa had, but three or four are most commonly cited. His son, Thomas Chaucer, had

an illustrious career, as chief butler to four kings, envoy to France, and Speaker of

the House of Commons. Thomas's daughter, Alice, married the Duke of Suffolk. Thomas's great-grandson

(Geoffrey's great-great-grandson), John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, was the heir to

the throne designated by Richard III before he was deposed. Geoffrey's other children

probably included Elizabeth Chaucy, a nun at Barking Abbey. Agnes, an attendant at Henry

IV's coronation; and another son, Lewis Chaucer. Chaucer’s “Treatise on the Astrolabe”

was written for Lewis. Chaucer probably studied law in the Inner

Temple (an Inn of Court) at this time. He became a member of the royal court of Edward

III as a varlet de chambre, yeoman, or esquire on 20 June 1367, a position which could entail

a wide variety of tasks. His wife also received a pension for court employment. He travelled

abroad many times, at least some of them in his role as a valet. In 1368, he may have

attended the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante Visconti, daughter of Galeazzo

II Visconti, in Milan. Two other literary stars of the era were in attendance: Jean

Froissart and Petrarch. Around this time, Chaucer is believed to have written The Book

of the Duchess in honour of Blanche of Lancaster, the late wife of John of Gaunt, who died in

1369. Chaucer travelled to Picardy the next year

as part of a military expedition; in 1373 he visited Genoa and Florence. Numerous scholars

such as Skeat, Boitani, and Rowland suggested that, on this Italian trip, he came into contact

with Petrarch or Boccaccio. They introduced him to medieval Italian poetry, the forms

and stories of which he would use later. The purposes of a voyage in 1377 are mysterious,

as details within the historical record conflict. Later documents suggest it was a mission,

along with Jean Froissart, to arrange a marriage between the future King Richard II and a French

princess, thereby ending the Hundred Years War. If this was the purpose of their trip,

they seem to have been unsuccessful, as no wedding occurred.

In 1378, Richard II sent Chaucer as an envoy (secret dispatch) to the Visconti and to Sir

John Hawkwood, English condottiere (mercenary leader) in Milan. It has been speculated that

it was Hawkwood on whom Chaucer based his character the Knight in the Canterbury Tales,

for a description matches that of a 14th-century condottiere.

A possible indication that his career as a writer was appreciated came when Edward III

granted Chaucer "a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life" for some unspecified

task. This was an unusual grant, but given on a day of celebration, St George's Day,

1374, when artistic endeavours were traditionally rewarded, it is assumed to have been another

early poetic work. It is not known which, if any, of Chaucer's extant works prompted

the reward, but the suggestion of him as poet to a king places him as a precursor to later

poets laureate. Chaucer continued to collect the liquid stipend until Richard II came to

power, after which it was converted to a monetary grant on 18 April 1378.

Chaucer obtained the very substantial job of comptroller of the customs for the port

of London, which he began on 8 June 1374. He must have been suited for the role as he

continued in it for twelve years, a long time in such a post at that time. His life goes

undocumented for much of the next ten years, but it is believed that he wrote (or began)

most of his famous works during this period. He was mentioned in law papers of 4 May 1380,

involved in the raptus of Cecilia Chaumpaigne. What raptus means is unclear, but the incident

seems to have been resolved quickly and did not leave a stain on Chaucer's reputation.

It is not known if Chaucer was in the city of London at the time of the Peasants' Revolt,

but if he was, he would have seen its leaders pass almost directly under his apartment window

at Aldgate. While still working as comptroller, Chaucer

appears to have moved to Kent, being appointed as one of the commissioners of peace for Kent,

at a time when French invasion was a possibility. He is thought to have started work on The

Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. He also became a Member of Parliament for Kent in

1386. There is no further reference after this date to Philippa, Chaucer's wife, and

she is presumed to have died in 1387. He survived the political upheavals caused by the Lords

Appellants, despite the fact that Chaucer knew some of the men executed over the affair

quite well. On 12 July 1389, Chaucer was appointed the

clerk of the king's works, a sort of foreman organising most of the king's building projects.

No major works were begun during his tenure, but he did conduct repairs on Westminster

Palace, St. George's Chapel, Windsor, continue building the wharf at the Tower of London,

and build the stands for a tournament held in 1390. It may have been a difficult job,

but it paid well: two shillings a day, more than three times his salary as a comptroller.

Chaucer was also appointed keeper of the lodge at the King’s park in Feckenham, which was

a largely honorary appointment. In September 1390, records say that he was

robbed, and possibly injured, while conducting the business, and it was shortly after, on

17 June 1391, that he stopped working in this capacity. Almost immediately, on 22 June,

he began as Deputy Forester in the royal forest of North Petherton, Somerset. This was no

sinecure, with maintenance an important part of the job, although there were many opportunities

to derive profit. He was granted an annual pension of twenty pounds by Richard II in

1394. It is believed that Chaucer stopped work on the Canterbury Tales sometime towards

the end of this decade. Not long after the overthrow of his patron,

Richard II, in 1399, Chaucer's name fades from the historical record. The last few records

of his life show his pension renewed by the new king, and his taking of a lease on a residence

within the close of Westminster Abbey on 24 December 1399. Although Henry IV renewed the

grants assigned to Chaucer by Richard, Chaucer's own The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse

hints that the grants might not have been paid. The last mention of Chaucer is on 5

June 1400, when some monies owed to him were paid.

He is believed to have died of unknown causes on 25 October 1400, but there is no firm evidence

for this date, as it comes from the engraving on his tomb, erected more than one hundred

years after his death. There is some speculation—most recently in Terry Jones' book Who Murdered

Chaucer?: A Medieval Mystery—that he was murdered by enemies of Richard II or even

on the orders of his successor Henry IV, but the case is entirely circumstantial. Chaucer

was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, as was his right owing to his status as a

tenant of the Abbey's close. In 1556, his remains were transferred to a more ornate

tomb, making Chaucer the first writer interred in the area now known as Poets' Corner.

Works Chaucer's first major work, The Book of the

Duchess, was an elegy for Blanche of Lancaster (who died in 1369). It is possible that this

work was commissioned by her husband John of Gaunt, as he granted Chaucer a £10 annuity

on 13 June 1374. This would seem to place the writing of The Book of the Duchess between

the years 1369 and 1374. Two other early works by Chaucer were Anelida and Arcite and The

House of Fame. Chaucer wrote many of his major works in a prolific period when he held the

job of customs comptroller for London (1374 to 1386). His Parlement of Foules, The Legend

of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde all date from this time. Also it is believed that

he started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s. Chaucer is best known as

the writer of The Canterbury Tales, which is a collection of stories told by fictional

pilgrims on the road to the cathedral at Canterbury; these tales would help to shape English literature.

The Canterbury Tales contrasts with other literature of the period in the naturalism

of its narrative, the variety of stories the pilgrims tell and the varied characters who

are engaged in the pilgrimage. Many of the stories narrated by the pilgrims seem to fit

their individual characters and social standing, although some of the stories seem ill-fitting

to their narrators, perhaps as a result of the incomplete state of the work. Chaucer

drew on real life for his cast of pilgrims: the innkeeper shares the name of a contemporary

keeper of an inn in Southwark, and real-life identities for the Wife of Bath, the Merchant,

the Man of Law and the Student have been suggested. The many jobs that Chaucer held in medieval

society—page, soldier, messenger, valet, bureaucrat, foreman and administrator—probably

exposed him to many of the types of people he depicted in the Tales. He was able to shape

their speech and satirise their manners in what was to become popular literature among

people of the same types. Chaucer's works are sometimes grouped into

first a French period, then an Italian period and finally an English period, with Chaucer

being influenced by those countries' literatures in turn. Certainly Troilus and Criseyde is

a middle period work with its reliance on the forms of Italian poetry, little known

in England at the time, but to which Chaucer was probably exposed during his frequent trips

abroad on court business. In addition, its use of a classical subject and its elaborate,

courtly language sets it apart as one of his most complete and well-formed works. In Troilus

and Criseyde Chaucer draws heavily on his source, Boccaccio, and on the late Latin philosopher

Boethius. However, it is The Canterbury Tales, wherein he focuses on English subjects, with

bawdy jokes and respected figures often being undercut with humour, that has cemented his

reputation. Chaucer also translated such important works

as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris

(extended by Jean de Meun). However, while many scholars maintain that Chaucer did indeed

translate part of the text of Roman de la Rose as The Romaunt of the Rose, others claim

that this has been effectively disproved. Many of his other works were very loose translations

of, or simply based on, works from continental Europe. It is in this role that Chaucer receives

some of his earliest critical praise. Eustache Deschamps wrote a ballade on the great translator

and called himself a "nettle in Chaucer's garden of poetry". In 1385 Thomas Usk made

glowing mention of Chaucer, and John Gower, Chaucer's main poetic rival of the time, also

lauded him. This reference was later edited out of Gower's Confessio Amantis and it has

been suggested by some that this was because of ill feeling between them, but it is likely

due simply to stylistic concerns. One other significant work of Chaucer's is

his Treatise on the Astrolabe, possibly for his own son, that describes the form and use

of that instrument in detail and is sometimes cited as the first example of technical writing

in the English language. Although much of the text may have come from other sources,

the treatise indicates that Chaucer was versed in science in addition to his literary talents.

Another scientific work discovered in 1952, Equatorie of the Planetis, has similar language

and handwriting compared to some considered to be Chaucer's and it continues many of the

ideas from the Astrolabe. Furthermore, it contains an example of early European encryption.

The attribution of this work to Chaucer is still uncertain.

Influence Linguistic

Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter, a style which had developed since around

the 12th century as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. Chaucer is

known for metrical innovation, inventing the rhyme royal, and he was one of the first English

poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter, in his work,

with only a few anonymous short works using it before him. The arrangement of these five-stress

lines into rhyming couplets, first seen in his The Legend of Good Women, was used in

much of his later work and became one of the standard poetic forms in English. His early

influence as a satirist is also important, with the common humorous device, the funny

accent of a regional dialect, apparently making its first appearance in The Reeve's Tale.

The poetry of Chaucer, along with other writers of the era, is credited with helping to standardise

the London Dialect of the Middle English language from a combination of the Kentish and Midlands

dialects. This is probably overstated; the influence of the court, chancery and bureaucracy—of

which Chaucer was a part—remains a more probable influence on the development of Standard

English. Modern English is somewhat distanced from the language of Chaucer's poems owing

to the effect of the Great Vowel Shift some time after his death. This change in the pronunciation