Chapter 3 Geoffrey Chaucer (CA1343--1400)

1. Chapter 3 Geoffrey Chaucer(CA1343--1400) “Father” of English Poetry

2. His life and career • the outstanding English poet before Shakespeare and “the first finder of our language.” His The Canterbury Tales ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English. He also contributed importantly in the second half of the 14th century to the management of public affairs as courtier, diplomat, and civil servant. In that career he was trusted and aided by three successive kings—Edward III, Richard II, and Henry IV. But it is his avocation—the writing of poetry—for which he is remembered. • Geoffrey Chaucer

3. His works • The Book of the Duchess, his first important extant poem • The Canterbury Tales, his masterpiece which marks his ultimate achievement. • Troilus and Criseyde, its greatest predecessor.

4. Some previous literary sources • ¤Boccaccio薄伽丘(Giovanni, 1313-1375, 文艺复兴时期意大利作家, Decameron《十日谈》的作者) • Dante 但丁(意大利诗人,1265-1321) • Ovid: Roman poet known for his explorations of love, especially the Art of Love (c. 1 b.c. ) and Metamorphoses (c. a.d. 8). 奥维德：公元前 43年- 公元 17年罗马诗人，以其对爱的研究，尤其是《爱的艺术》（公元前1年 )和《变形记》（公元 8年）而闻名。

5. from a manuscript of The Canterbury • Geoffrey Chaucer, a Londoner of bourgeois origins, was at various times a courtier, a diplomat, and a civil servant. His poetry frequently (but not always unironically) reflects the views and values associated with the term courtly. It is in some ways not easy to account for his decision to write in English, and it is not surprising that his earliest substantial poems, the Book of the Duchess (c. 1370) and the House of Fame (1370s), were heavily indebted to the fashionable French courtly love poetry of the time. Also of French origin was the octosyllabic couplet used in these poems. Chaucer‘s abandonment of this engaging but ultimately jejune metre in favour of a 10-syllable line (specifically, iambic pentameter抑扬格五音步) was a portentous moment for English poetry. His mastery of it was first revealed in stanzaic form, notably the seven-line stanza (rhyme royal) of the Parliament of Fowls (c. 1382) and Troilus and Criseyde (c. 1385), and later was extended in the decasyllabic couplets of the prologue to the Legend of Good Women (1380s) and large parts of The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387–1400).

6. His works The pages from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896).

7. Though Chaucer wrote a number of moral and amatory lyrics, which were imitated by his 15th-century followers, his major achievements were in the field of narrative poetry. The early influence of French courtly love poetry (notably the Roman de la Rose, which he translated) gave way to an interest in Italian literature. Chaucer was acquainted with Dante‘s writings. • His consummate skill in narrative art, however, was most fully displayed in The Canterbury Tales, an unfinished series of stories purporting to be told by a group of pilgrims journeying from London to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket and back.

8. The illusion that the individual pilgrims (rather than Chaucer himself) tell their tales gave him an unprecedented freedom of authorial stance, which enabled him to explore the rich fictive potentialities of a number of styles: pious legend (in The Man of Law‘s Tale and The Prioress’s Tale), fabliau [尤其13世纪左右指描述日常生活中可笑事件的故事诗](The Shipman's Tale,The Miller's Tale, and The Reeve's Tale), chivalric romance (The Knight's Tale), popular romance (parodied in Chaucer's “own”Tale of Sir Thopas), beast fable (The Nun's Priest's Tale and The Manciple's Tale), and more—what the poet John Dryden later summed up as “God's plenty.”

9. A recurrent concern in Chaucer's writings is the refined and sophisticated cultivation of love, commonly described by the modern expression courtly love. A French term of Chaucer's time, fine amour, gives a more authentic description of the phenomenon; Chaucer's friend John Gower translated it as “fine loving” in his long poem Confessio amantis (begun c. 1386).

10. The summary • Perhaps the chief characteristics of Chaucer's works are their variety in subject matter, genre, tone, and style and in the complexities presented concerning the human pursuit of a sensible existence. Yet his writings also consistently reflect an all-pervasive humour combined with serious and tolerant consideration of important philosophical questions. From his writings Chaucer emerges as poet of love, both earthly and divine, whose presentations range from lustful cuckoldry to spiritual union with God. Thereby, they regularly lead the reader to speculation about man's relation both to his fellows and to his Maker, while simultaneously providing delightfully entertaining views of the frailties and follies, as well as the nobility, of mankind.

11. The Canterbury Tales • Begun in 1386, it represents Chaucer’s final poetic achievements. For depth of interest, for the wealth of its impressions of the human comedy, and for its mature wisdom. It is unrivaled among Chaucer’s works. • 30 pilgrims, would be 120 stories. But Chaucer had actually completed only 22 stories, with two more existing in fragments.

13. Crypt, Canterbury Cathedral (12th century), England

14. illuminated manuscript: initial from manuscript of "The Canterbury Tales"

15. Canterbury, the place.