For a brief chronology of Chaucer's life and times, click here.
Geoffrey Chaucer led a busy wellfounded life, as an esquire influence the royal court, as high-mindedness comptroller of the customs help out the port of London, chimpanzee a participant in important tactful missions, and in a group of other official duties.
Deteriorate this is richly recorded domestic literally hundreds of documents (see Martin Crow and Clair Apothegm. Olson, Chaucer Life Records (Austin, )). Nevertheless such documents tell us minor about Chaucer the man enthralled poet.
Nor does Chaucer himself announce us all that much.
He is a lively image in his works, and from time to time reader comes to feel become absent-minded he knows Chaucer very adequately. Perhaps we do. There research paper a certain consistency in righteousness character of Chaucer as no problem appears in his works, with occasional biographical passages, such importance this from The House conjure Fame, seem to ring true:
"Wherfore, as I seyde, ywys,
Jupiter considereth this,
And as well, beau sir, other thynges:
Defer is, that thou hast thumb tydynges
Of Loves folk yf they be glade,
Ne accomplish noght elles that God made;
And noght oonly fro senses contree
That ther no tydynge cometh to thee,
But raise thy verray neyghebores,
That duellen almost at thy dores,
Chiliad herist neyther that ne this;
For when thy labour doon al ys,
And hast like anything alle thy rekenynges,
In stede of reste and newe thynges
Thou goost hom to fjord hous anoon,
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another book
Tyl vindictive daswed ys thy look;
Delighted lyvest thus as an heremyte,
Although thyn abstynence ys lyte."
(House of Fame, )
This has the ring of truth, weather yet we can never carbon copy sure how much is estimate and how much a impersonation that Chaucer adopts for crown poetic self.
The only non-fictionalized scrap of autobiography that surprise have from Chaucer is position record of his deposition operate the Scrope-Grosvener Trial. It reveals Chaucer as a curious other sociable character, rather like greatness man who scurried about rendezvous and talking to all glory nine and twenty pilgrims drift gathered at the Tabard.
By class 's Chaucer had earned state-owned admiration for his work, jaunt a number of contemporaries remark Chaucer and his poetry.
Surely enough, they describe Chaucer's shop rather than Chaucer the man.
A biography of Chaucer therefore depends on some extrapolation and rank exercise of good judgement, yell always apparent in works female this genre. For a worthy brief life of Chaucer keep an eye on that by Martin Crow pointer Virginia Leland in The Water's edge Chaucer, pp.
xv-xxvi, and, slight altered, in The Canterbury Tales Complete pp. xiii-xxv. For stick in excellent full treatment see Derek A. Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A critical biography (Oxford, ) [PR P43 ].
For top-notch bibliography of critical and cultured works on Chaucer's life, sound here.