Young geoffrey chaucer biography

Chaucer's versification suggests that the final -e is sometimes to be vocalised and sometimes to be silent; however, this remains a point on which there is disagreement. Most scholars pronounce it as a schwa when it is vocalised. Besides the irregular spelling, much of the vocabulary is recognisable to the modern reader. Chaucer is also recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as the first author to use many common English words in his writings.

These words were probably frequently used in the language at the time, but Chaucer was the earliest extant manuscript source with his ear for common speech. Acceptablealkalialtercationambleangrilyannexannoyanceapproachingarbitrationarmlessarmyarrogantarsenicarcartillery and aspect are just some of almost two thousand English words first attested in Chaucer.

Widespread knowledge of Chaucer's works is attested by the many poets who imitated or responded to his writing. John Lydgate was one of the earliest poets to write continuations of Chaucer's unfinished Tales. Many of the manuscripts of Chaucer's works contain material from these poets, and later appreciations by the Romantic era poets were shaped by their failure to distinguish the later "additions" from the original Chaucer.

Writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as John Drydenadmired Chaucer for his stories but not for his rhythm and rhyme, as few critics could then read Middle English and the text had been butchered by printers, leaving a somewhat unadmirable mess. Roughly seventy-five years after Chaucer's death, The Canterbury Tales was selected by William Caxton as one of the first books to be printed in England.

Chaucer is sometimes considered the source of the English vernacular tradition.

Young geoffrey chaucer biography

His achievement for the language can be seen as part of a general historical trend towards the creation of a vernacular literatureafter the example of Dantein many parts of Europe. A parallel trend in Chaucer's lifetime was underway in Scotland through the work of his slightly earlier contemporary, John Barbour. Barbour's work was likely to have been even more general, as is evidenced by the example of the Pearl Poet in the north of England.

Although Chaucer's language is much closer to Modern English than the text of Beowulfsuch that unlike that of Beowulf a Modern English speaker with an extensive vocabulary of archaic words may understand it, it differs enough that most publications modernise his idiom. The first recorded association of Valentine's Day with romantic love is believed to be in Chaucer's Parlement of Foulesa dream vision portraying a parliament for birds to choose their mates.

The poet Thomas Hocclevewho may have met Chaucer and considered him his role model, hailed Chaucer as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage". Chesterton writing, "among the great canonical English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common. The large number of surviving manuscripts of Chaucer's works is testimony to the enduring interest in his poetry prior to the arrival of the printing press.

There are 83 surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales in whole or part alone, along with sixteen of Troilus and Criseydeincluding the personal copy of Henry IV. Chaucer's original audience was a courtly one and would have included women as well as men of the upper social classes. Yet even before his death inChaucer's audience had begun to include members of the rising literate, middle and merchant classes.

This included many Lollard sympathisers who may well have been inclined to read Chaucer as one of their own. Lollards were particularly attracted to Chaucer's satirical writings about friars, priests, and other church officials. InJohn Baron, a tenant farmer in Agmondesham Amersham in Buckinghamshirewas brought before John Chadworththe Bishop of Lincolnon charges of being a Lollard heretic; he confessed to owning a "boke of the Tales of Caunterburie" among other suspect volumes.

The first English printer, William Caxton, was responsible for the first two folio editions of The Canterbury Tales published in and Both Caxton editions carry the equivalent of manuscript authority. Caxton's edition was reprinted by his successor, Wynkyn de Wordebut this edition has no independent authority. Richard Pynsonthe King's Printer under Henry VIII for about twenty years, was the first to collect and sell something that resembled an edition of the collected works of Chaucer; however, in the process, he introduced five previously printed texts that are now known not to be Chaucer's.

The collection is actually three separately printed texts, or collections of texts, bound together as one volume. There is a likely connection between Pynson's product and William Thynne 's a mere six years later. Thynne had a successful career from the s until his death in as chief clerk of the kitchen of Henry VIII, one of the masters of the royal household.

He spent years comparing various versions of Chaucer's works and selected 41 pieces for publication. While there were questions over the authorship of some of the material, there is no doubt that this was the first comprehensive view of Chaucer's work. The Workes of Geffray Chaucer, published inwas the first edition of Chaucer's collected works.

Thynne's editions of Chaucer's Works in and were the first significant contributions to the existence of a widely recognised Chaucerian canon. Thynne represents his edition as a book sponsored by and supportive of the king, who is praised in the preface by Sir Brian Tuke. Thynne's canon brought the number of apocryphal works associated with Chaucer to a total of 28, even if that was not his intention.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, Chaucer was printed more than any other English author, and he was the first author to have his works collected in comprehensive single-volume editions in which a Chaucer canon began to cohere. Some scholars contend that 16th-century editions of Chaucer's Works set the precedent for all other English authors regarding presentation, prestige and success in print.

These editions certainly established Chaucer's reputation, but they also began the complicated process of reconstructing and frequently inventing Chaucer's biography and the canonical list of works which were attributed to him. Probably the most significant aspect of the growing apocrypha is that beginning with Thynne's editions, it began to include medieval texts that made Chaucer appear as a proto-Protestant Lollard, primarily the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale.

As "Chaucerian" works that were not considered apocryphal until the late 19th century, these medieval texts enjoyed a new life, with English Protestants carrying on the earlier Lollard project of appropriating existing texts and authors who seemed sympathetic—or young geoffrey chaucer biography enough to be construed as sympathetic—to their cause.

The young geoffrey chaucer biography Chaucer of the early printed volumes of his Works was construed as a proto-Protestant as the same was done concurrently with William Langland and Piers Plowman. The famous Plowman's Tale did not enter Thynne's Works until the second edition. Its entry was surely facilitated by Thynne's inclusion of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love in the first edition.

The Testament of Love imitates, borrows from, and thus resembles Usk's contemporary, Chaucer. Testament of Love also appears to borrow from Piers Plowman. Since the Testament of Love mentions its author's part in a failed plot book 1, chapter 6his imprisonment, and perhaps a recantation of possibly Lollardism heresy, all this was associated with Chaucer.

Usk himself was executed as a traitor in John Foxe took this recantation of heresy as a defence of the true faith, calling Chaucer a "right Wiclevian" and erroneously identifying him as a schoolmate and close friend of John Wycliffe at Merton College, Oxford. Thomas Speght is careful to highlight these facts in his editions and his "Life of Chaucer".

No other sources for the Testament of Love exist—there is only Thynne's construction of whatever manuscript sources he had. John Stow — was an antiquarian and also a chronicler. His edition of Chaucer's Works in [ 77 ] brought the apocrypha to more than 50 titles. More were added in the 17th century, and they remained as late aswell after Thomas Tyrwhitt pared the canon down in his edition.

What was added to Chaucer often helped represent him favourably to Protestant England. In his edition of the WorksSpeght probably taking cues from Foxe made good use of Usk's account of his political intrigue and imprisonment in the Testament of Love to assemble a largely fictional "Life of Our Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer".

Speght's "Life" presents readers with an erstwhile radical in troubled times much like their own, a proto-Protestant who eventually came round to the king's views on religion. Speght states, "In the second year of Richard the second, the King tooke Geffrey Chaucer and his lands into his protection. The occasion wherof no doubt was some daunger and trouble whereinto he was fallen by favouring some rash attempt of the common people.

Speght is also the source of the famous tale of Chaucer being fined for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Streetas well as a fictitious coat of arms and family tree. Ironically — and perhaps consciously so — an introductory, apologetic letter in Speght's edition from Francis Beaumont defends the unseemly, "low", and bawdy bits in Chaucer from an elite, classicist position.

Francis Thynne noted some of these inconsistencies in his Animadversionsinsisting that Chaucer was not a commoner, and he objected to the friar-beating story. Yet Thynne himself underscores Chaucer's support for popular religious reform, associating Chaucer's views with his father William Thynne's attempts to include The Plowman's Tale and The Pilgrim's Tale in the and Works.

The myth of the Protestant Chaucer continues to have a lasting impact on a large body of Chaucerian scholarship. Though it is extremely rare for a modern scholar to suggest Chaucer supported a religious movement that did not exist until more than a century after his death, the predominance of this thinking for so many centuries left it for granted that Chaucer was at least hostile toward Catholicism.

This assumption forms a large part of many critical approaches to Chaucer's works, including neo-Marxism. As with the Chaucer editions, it was critically significant to English Protestant identity and included Chaucer in its project. Foxe's Chaucer both derived from and contributed to the printed editions of Chaucer's Worksparticularly the pseudepigrapha.

Speght's "Life of Chaucer" echoes Foxe's own account, which is itself dependent upon the earlier editions that added the Testament of Love and The Plowman's Tale to their pages. Like Speght's Chaucer, Foxe's Chaucer was also a shrewd or lucky political survivor. In his edition, Foxe "thought it not out of season … to couple … some mention of Geoffrey Chaucer" with a discussion of John Coleta possible source for John Skelton 's character Colin Clout.

And that, all his works almost, if they be thoroughly advised, will testify albeit done in mirth, and covertly ; and especially the latter end of his third book of the Testament of Love … Wherein, except a man be altogether blind, he may espy him at the full: although in the same book as in all others he useth to dounder shadows covertly, as under a visor, he suborneth truth in such sort, as both privily she may profit the godly-minded, and yet not be espied of the crafty adversary.

And therefore the bishops, belike, taking his works but for jests and toys, in condemning other books, yet permitted his books to be read. It is significant, too, that Foxe's discussion of Chaucer leads into his history of "The Reformation of the Church of Christ in the Time of Martin Luther" when "Printing, being opened, incontinently ministered unto the church the instruments and tools of learning and knowledge; which were good books and authors, which before lay hid and unknown.

The science of printing being found, immediately followed the grace of God; which stirred up good wits aptly to conceive the light of knowledge and judgment: by which light darkness began to be espied, and ignorance to be detected; truth from error, religion from superstition, to be discerned. Foxe downplays Chaucer's bawdy and amorous writing, insisting that it all testifies to his piety.

Troubling material is deemed young geoffrey chaucer biography, while the more forthright satire which Foxe prefers is taken literally. John Urry produced the first edition of the complete works of Chaucer in a Latin font, published posthumously in According to the editors, several tales were printed, and for the first time, a biography of Chaucer, a glossary of old English words, and testimonials of author writers concerning Chaucer dating back to the 16th century.

According to A. G Edwards. The life of Chaucer prefixed to the volume was the work of the Reverend John Dartcorrected and revised by Timothy Thomas. The glossary appended was also mainly compiled by Thomas. English Literature — as we know it — starts with Geoffrey Chaucer, seven hundred years ago. So who was he? The family had risen well above the cobbler level and their Norman-French origins.

Luckily, under Edward III, the country was more or less at peace — although occasional forays made into France: now a foe. Chaucer may have attended one of the great universities or he may have received his impressive education from house tutors — quite usual for the son of a wealthy London businessman. What is clear is that he came into manhood well read and fluent in several languages.

There is some evidence he served as a page in some noble household — a scenario often drawn on in his narrative tales. Certainly he had as many books as bottles around him growing up. As a young man he craved adventure and, inembarked on a military career in the armed forces of the Black Prince one of his two great poems, Troilus and Criseydeis set in the background of the greatest war in literature — that between the Greeks and Trojans.

In was released from a court case against him by a lady named Cecilia Chaumpayne. In February he was granted the great privilege of nominating a permanent deputies in these duties, perhaps through the patronage of Queen Anne, wife of Richard II. In Chaucer was elected a Knight of the Shire of Kent a member of the House of Commonsduring which time he was probably living in Greenwich.

That year Philippa Chaucer was admitted to the fraternity of Lincoln Cathedral. In Philippa Chaucer disappears from the records and his presumed to have died. They had been married for more than twenty years. Chaucer planned to write the essay in five parts but ultimately only completed the first two. Today it is one of the oldest surviving works that explain how to use a complex scientific tool, and is thought to do so with admirable clarity.

From toafter Richard II had ascended to the throne, Chaucer held a draining and dangerous position as Clerk of the Works. He was robbed by highwaymen twice while on the job, which only served to further compound his financial worries. To make matters even worse, Chaucer had stopped receiving his pension. With the money, Chaucer was able to lease an apartment in the garden of St.

He died of unknown causes and was 60 years old at the time. Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Prince Harry. Charli XCX.