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Unit 2: The Age of Chaucer

Chaucer’s first published work was “The Book of the Duchess”, a poem of over 1,300 lines, supposed Notes
to be an elegy for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, addressed to her widower, the Duke. For this first
of his important poems, which was published in 1370, Chaucer used the dream-vision form, a
genre made popular by the highly influential 13th-century French poem of courtly love, the
Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated into English. Throughout the following decade,
Chaucer continued with his diplomatic career, traveling to Italy for negotiations to open a Genoa
port to Britain as well as military negotiations with Milan. During his missions to Italy, Chaucer
encountered the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, which were later to have profound influence
upon his own writing. In 1374 Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of
wool, skins, and tanned hides for the Port of London, his first position away from the British court.
Chaucer’s only major work during this period was House of Fame, a poem of around 2,000 lines in
dream-vision form, which ends so abruptly that some scholars consider it unfinished.
According to Derek Pearsall, “the one biographical fact everyone remembers about Chaucer” is
his brush with the law, when, in a deed of May 1st 1380, he is released from culpability in the raptus
or rape of Cecily Chaumpaigne. No one knows exactly what the accusation — despite attempts to
mistranslate “raptus” as “abduction” — precisely amounted to, still less whether it was rooted in
truth. But it casts an ominous shadow over an otherwise pure-white biography, and, rather like the
presence of the Pardoner and the Manciple in the Tales, gives a discordant dark wash to our image
of Chaucer.
In October 1385, Chaucer was appointed a justice of the peace for Kent, and in August 1386 he
became knight of the shire for Kent. Around the time of his wife’s death in 1387, Chaucer moved
to Greenwich and later to Kent. Changing political circumstances eventually led to Chaucer
falling out of favor with the royal court and leaving Parliament, but when Richard II became King
of England, Chaucer regained royal favor.
During this period Chaucer used writing primarily as an escape from public life. His works
included Parliament of Foules, a poem of 699 lines. This work is a dream-vision for St. Valentine’s
Day that makes use of the myth that each year on that day the birds gather before the goddess
nature to choose their mates. This work was heavily influenced by Boccaccio and Dante.
Chaucer’s next work was Troilus and Criseyde, which was influenced by The Consolation of
Philosophy, which Chaucer himself translated into English Chaucer took some the plot of Troilus
from Boccaccio’s Filostrato. This 8,000-line rime-royal poem recounts the love story of Troilus, son
of the Trojan king Priam, and Criseyde, widowed daughter of the deserter priest Calkas, against
the background of the Trojan War.

The Canterbury Tales secured Chaucer’s literary reputation. It is his great literary accomplishment,
a compendium of stories by pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.
Chaucer introduces each of these pilgrims in vivid, brief sketches in the General Prologue and
intersperses the twenty-four tales with short dramatic scenes with lively exchanges. Chaucer did
not complete the full plan for the tales, and surviving manuscripts leave some doubt as to the exact
order of the tales that remain. However, the work is sufficiently complete to be considered a
unified book rather than a collection of unfinished fragments. The Canterbury Tales is a lively mix
of a variety of genres told by travelers from all aspects of society. Among the genres included are
courtly romance, fabliaux, saint’s biography, allegorical tale, beast fable, and medieval sermon.
Information concerning Chaucer’s descendants is not fully clear. It is likely that he and Philippa
had two sons and two daughters. Thomas Chaucer died in 1400; he was a large landowner and
political officeholder, and his daughter, Alice, became Duchess of Suffolk. Little is known about
Lewis Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer’s youngest son. Of Chaucer’s two daughters, Elizabeth became
a nun, while Agnes was a lady-in-waiting for the coronation of Henry IV in 1399. Public records
indicate that Chaucer had no descendants living after the fifteenth century.

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