Online Encyclopedia
Search over 40,000 articles from the original, classic Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (? 1340-1400)
Online EncyclopediaEncyclopedia Home :: CHA-CHR
del.icio.us it!
|
See also:CHAUCER, See also:GEOFFREY (? 1340-1400) , See also:English poet. The name Chaucer, a See also:French See also:form of the Latin calcearius, a See also:shoe-maker, is found in See also:London and the eastern counties as See also:early as the second See also:half of the 13th See also:century. Some of the London Chaucers lived in Cordwainer See also:Street, in the shoemakers' See also:quarter; several of them, however, were vintners, and among others the poet's See also:father See also: Philippa is usually said to have been one of two daughters of a Sir See also:Payne Roet, the other being Katherine, who after the See also:death of her first See also:husband, Sir See also:Hugh de See also:Swynford, in 1372, became governess to John of Gaunt's See also:children, and subsequently his See also:mistress and (in 1396) his wife. It is possible that Philippa was See also:sister to Sir Hugh and sister-in-See also:law to'3
Katherine. In either See also:case the See also:marriage See also:helps to See also:account for the favour subsequently shown to Chaucer by John of Gaunt.
In the See also: A See also:month before this See also:appointment, and probably in anticipation of it, he took (May 10, 1374) a See also:lease for See also:life from the See also:city of London of the dwelling-See also:house above the See also:gate of Aldgate, and here he lived for the next twelve years. His own and his wife's income now amounted to over £6o, the See also:equivalent of upwards of £r000 in See also:modern See also:money. In the next two years large windfalls came to him in the form of two wardships of Kentish heirs, one of whom paid him £104, and a grant of £71: 4: 6; the value of some confiscated See also:wool. In December 1376 he was sent abroad on the king's service in the See also:retinue of Sir John Burley; in See also:February 1377 he was sent to See also:Paris and See also:Montreuil in connexion probably with the See also:peace negotiations between England and France, and at the end of April (after a reward of £20 for his See also:good services) he was again despatched to France. On the See also:accession of Richard II. Chaucer was confirmed in his offices and See also:pensions. In See also:January 1378 he seems to have been in France in connexion with a proposed marriage between Richard and the daughter of the French king; and on the 28th of May of the same year he was sent with Sir Edward de See also:Berkeley to the See also:lord of See also:Milan and Sir John See also:Hawkwood to treat for help in the king's See also:wars, returning on the 19th of September. This was his last See also:diplomatic See also:journey, and the See also:close of a period of his life generally considered to have been so unprolific of See also:poetry that little beyond the Clerk's " See also:Tale of Grisilde," one or two other of the stories afterwards included in the See also:Canterbury Tales, and a few See also:short poems, are attributed to it, though the poet's actual absences from England during the eight years amount to little more than eighteen months. During the next twelve or fifteen years there is no question that Chaucer was constantly engaged in See also:literary See also:work, though for the first half of them he had no lack of See also:official employment. Abundant favour was shown him by the new king. He was paid £22 as a reward for his later See also:missions in Edward III.'s reign, and was allowed an See also:annual gratuity of 10 marks in addition to his pay of £10 as comptroller of the customs of wool. In April 1382 a new comptrollership, that of the petty customs in the Port of London, was given him, and shortly after he was allowed to exercise it by See also:deputy, a similar See also:licence being given him in February 1385, at the instance of the See also:earl of See also:Oxford, as regards the comptrollership of wool. In See also:October 1385 Chaucer was made a See also:justice of the peace for See also:Kent. In February 1386 we catch a glimpse of his wife Philippa being admitted to the fraternity of See also:Lincoln See also:cathedral in the See also:company of See also: In February 1394 he was granted a new pension of £20. It is possible, also, that about this time, or a little later, he was in the service of the earl of Derby. In 1397 he received from King Richard a grant of a See also:butt of wine yearly. For this he appears to have asked in terms that suggest poverty, and in May 1398 he obtained letters of See also:protection against his creditors, a step perhaps rendered necessary by an See also:action for See also:debt taken against him earlier in the year. On the accession of Henry IV. a new pension of 40 marks was conferred on Chaucer (13th of October 1399) and Richard II.'s grants were formally confirmed. Henry himself, however, was probably straitened for ready money, and no See also:instalment of the new pension was paid during the few months of his reign that the poet lived. Nevertheless, on the strength of his expectations, on the 24th of December 1399 he leased a See also:tenement in the See also:garden of St See also:Mary's Chapel, See also:Westminster, and it was probably here that he died, on the 25th of the following October. He was buried in Westminster See also:Abbey, and his See also:tomb became the See also:nucleus of what is now known as Poets' Corner.
The portrait of Chaucer, which the See also:affection of his See also:disciple, Thomas Hoccleve, caused to be painted in a copy of the latter's Regement of Princes (now Harleian MS. 4866 in the See also:British Museum), shows him an old See also:man with See also: Henry IV.'s promise of an additional pension was doubtless elicited by the Compleynt to his Purs, in the See also:envoy to which works. Chaucer addresses him as the " conquerour of Brutes Albioun." Thus within the last year of his life the poet was still See also:writing. Nevertheless, as early as 1393-1394, in lines to his friend Scogan, he had written as if his day for poetry were past, and it seems probable that his longer poems were all composed before this date. In the preceding fifteen—or, if another view be taken, twenty—years, his literary activity was very See also:great, and with the aid of the lists of his works which he gives in the Legende of Good See also:Women (lines 414-431), and the talk on the road which precedes the " Man of Law's Tale " (Canterbury Tales, B. 46-76), the See also:order in which his See also:main works were writtencan be traced with approximate certainty,' while a few both of these and of the See also:minor poems can be connected with definite See also:dates. The development of his See also:genius has been attractively summed up as comprised in three stages, French, See also:Italian and English, and there is a rough approximation to the truth in this See also:formula, since his earliest poems are translated from the French or based on French See also:models, and the two great works of his See also:middle period are borrowed from the Italian, while his latest stories have no such obvious and See also:direct originals and in their See also:humour and freedom anticipate the typically English See also:temper of Henry See also:Fielding. But Chaucer's indebtedness to French poetry was no passing phase. For various reasons—a not very remote French origin of his own See also:family may be one of them—he was in no way interested in older English literature or in the work of his English contemporaries, See also:save possibly that of " the moral See also:Gower." On the other See also:hand he knew the See also:Roman de la See also:rose as modern English poets know See also:Shakespeare, and the full extent of his debt to his French contemporaries, not merely in 1369, but in 1385 and in 1393 (the dates are approximate), is only gradually being discovered. To be in See also:touch throughout his life with the best French poets of the day was much for Chaucer. Even with their stimulus alone he might have See also:developed no small part of his genius. But it was his great good fortune to add to this continuing French See also:influence, lessons in See also:plot and construction derived from See also:Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseide, as well as some glimpses of the higher See also:art of the Divina Commedia. He shows acquaintance also with one of Petrarch's sonnets, and though, when all is said, the Italian books with which he can be proved to have been intimate are but few, they sufficed. His study of them was but an See also:episode in his literary life, but it was an episode of unique importance. Before it began he had already been making his own See also:artistic experiments, and it is noteworthy that while he learnt so much from Boccaccio he improved on his originals as he translated them. Doubtless his busy life in the service of the See also:crown had taught him self-confidence, and he uses his Italian models in his own way and with the most triumphant and assured success. When he had no more Italian poems to adapt he had learnt his See also:lesson. The art of See also:weaving a plot out of his own See also:imagination was never his, but he could take what might be little more than an See also:anecdote and lend it See also:body and life and See also:colour with a skill which has never been surpassed.
The most direct example of Chaucer's French studies is his See also:translation of Le Roman de la rose, a poem written in some 4000 lines by See also:Guillaume Lorris about 1237 and extended to over 22,000 by See also:Jean Clopinel, better known as Jean de Meun, See also:forty years later. We know from Chaucer himself that he translated this poem, and the extant English fragment of 7698 lines was generally assigned to him from 1532, when it was first printed, till its authorship was challenged in the early years of the Chaucer Society. The ground of this See also:challenge was its wide divergence from Chaucer's practice in his undoubtedly genuine works as to certain niceties of See also:rhyme, notable as to not rhyming words ending in -y with others ending -ye. It was subsequently discovered, however, that the whole fragment was divisible linguistically into three portions, of which the first and second end respectively at lines 1705 and 581o, and that in the first of these three sections the See also:variations from Chaucer's accepted practice are insignificant. Lines 1-1705 have therefore been provisionally accepted as Chaucer's, and the other two fragments as the work of unknown translators (See also: See also:Machault's Le Dit du See also:lion, has perished altogether. The strength of French influence on Chaucer's early work may, however, be amply illustrated from the first of his poems with which we are on sure ground, the Book of the Duchesse, or, as it is alternatively called, the Deth of Blaunche. Here not only are individual passages closely imitated from Machault and See also:Froissart, but the See also:dream, the May See also:morning, and the whole machinery of the poem are taken over from contemporary French conventions. But even at this See also:stage Chaucer could prove his right to See also:borrow by the skill with which he makes his materials serve his own purpose, and some of the lines in the Deth of Blaunche are among the most See also:tender and charming he ever wrote. Chaucer's A.B.C., a poem in honour of the Blessed Virgin, of which the stanzas begin with the successive letters of the See also:alpha-See also:bet, is another early example of French influence. It is taken from the Pelerinage de la See also:vie humaine, written by Guillaume de Deguilleville about 1330. The occurrence of some magnificent lines in Chaucer's version, combined with evidence that he did not yet possess the skill to translate at all literally as soon as rhymes had to be considered, accounts for this poem having been dated sometimes earlier than the Book of the Duchesse, and sometimes several years later. With it is usually moved up and down, though it should surely be placed in the 'seventies, the Compleynt to Pity, a See also:fine poem which yet, from its slight obscurity and absence of Chaucer's usual ease, may very well some day prove to be a translation from the French. While Chaucer thus sought to reproduce both the See also:matter and the See also:style of French poetry in England, he found other materials in popular Latin books. Among his lost works are renderings of " Origenes upon the Maudeleyne," and of See also:Pope See also:Innocent III. on " The Wreced Engendring of Mankinde " (De miseria conditionis humanae). He must have begun his attempts at straightforward narrative with the Lyf of Seynt Cecyle (the weakest of all his works, the second See also:Nun's Tale in the Canterbury See also:series) from the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, and the See also:story of the See also:patience of Grisilde, taken from Petrarch's Latin version of a tale by Boccaccio. In both of these he condenses a little, but ventures on very few changes, though he lets his readers see his impatience with his originals. In his story of See also:Constance (afterwards ascribed to the Man of Law), taken from the Anglo-See also:Norman See also:chronicle of See also:Nicholas See also:Trivet, written about 1334, we find him struggling to put some substance into another weak tale, but still without the courage to remedy its See also:radical faults, though here, as with Grisilde, he does as much for his heroine as the conventional exaltation of one virtue at a time permitted. It is possible that other tales which now stand in the Canterbury series were written originally at this period. What is certain is that at some time in the 'seventies three or four Italian poems passed into Chaucer's See also:possession, and that he set to work busily to make use of them. One of the most interesting of the poems reclaimed for him by See also:Professor See also:Skeat is a fragmentary " Compleynt," part of which is written in terza rima. While he thus experimented with the See also:metre of the Divina Commedia, he made his first See also:attempt to use the material provided by Boccaccio's Teseide in another fragment of great See also:interest, that of Quene Anelida and Fals Arcyte. More than a third of this is taken up with another, and quite successful, metrical experiment in Anelida's " compleynt," but in the introduction of Anelida herself Chaucer made the first of his three unsuccessful efforts to construct a plot for an important poem out of his own See also:head, and the fragment which begins so well breaks off abruptly at See also:line 357. For a time the Teseide seems to have been laid aside, and it was perhaps at this moment, in despondency at his failure, that Chaucer wrote his most important See also:prose work, the translation of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boethius. Reminiscences of this helped to enrich many of his subsequent poems, and inspired five of his shorter pieces (The Former Age, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse and Lak of Stedfastnesse), but the translation itself was only a partial success. To borrow his own phrase, his " Englysh was insufficient " to reproduce such difficult Latin. The translation is often barely intelligible without the See also:original,and it is only here and there that it flows with any ease or See also:rhythm. If Chaucer See also:felt this himself he must have been speedily See also:con-sold by achieving in See also:Troilus and Criseyde his greatest artistic See also:triumph. Warned by his failure in Anelida and Arcyte, he was content this time to take his plot unaltered from the Filostrato, and to follow Boccaccio step by step through the poem. But he did not follow him as a See also:mere translator. He had done his See also:duty manfully for the See also:saints " of other holinesse " in Cecyle; Grisilde and Constance, whom he was forbidden by the rules of the See also:game to clothe with See also:complete flesh and See also:blood. In this great love-story there were no such restrictions, and the characters which Boccaccio's treatment See also:left thin and conventional became in Chaucer's hands convincingly human. No other English poem is so See also:instinct with the See also:glory and tragedy of youth, and in the details of the story Chaucer's gifts of vivid colouring, of humour and pity, are all at their highest.
An unfortunate theory that the reference in the Legende of Good Women to " al the love of Palamon and Arcyte " is to a hypothetical poem in seven-line stanzas on this theme, which Chaucer is imagined, when he came to See also:plan the Canterbury Tales, to have suppressed in favour of a new version in heroic couplets, has obscured the close connexion in temper and See also:power between what we know as the " See also:Knight's Tale " and the Troilus. The poem may have been more or less extensively revised before, with admirable fitness, it was assigned to the Knight, but that its main See also:composition can be separated by several years from that of Troilus is aesthetically incredible. Chaucer's art here again is at its highest. He takes the plot of Boccaccio's Teseide, but only as much of it as he wants, and what he takes he heightens and humanizes with the same skill which he had shown in trans-forming the Filostrato. Of the individual characters See also:Theseus himself, the arbiter of the plot, is most notably developed; Emilie and her two lovers receive just as much individuality as' they will bear without disturbing the See also:atmosphere of See also:romance. The whole story is pulled together and made more rapid and effective. A comparison of almost any See also:scene as told by the two poets suffices to show Chaucer's immense superiority. At some subsequent period the " See also:Squire's Tale " of Cambuscan, the See also:fair Canacee and the See also:Horse of See also:Brass, was gallantly begun in some-thing of the same See also: Meanwhile, in connexion (as is reasonably believed) with the See also:betrothal or marriage of See also:Anne of Bohemia to Richard II. (i.e. about 1381-r38z), Chaucer had brought to a successful completion the See also:Parlement of Foules, a charming See also:sketch of 699 lines, in which the other birds, on See also:Saint See also:Valentine's day, counsel the " Formel Egle " on her choice of a See also:mate. His success here, as in the case of the Deth of Blaunche the Duchesse, was due to the absence of any need for a climax; and though the materials which he borrowed were mainly Latin (with some help from passages of the Teseide not fully needed for Palamon and Arcyte) his method of handling them would have been quite approved by his See also:friends among the French poets. A more ambitious venture, the Hous of Fame, in which Chaucer imagines himself See also:borne aloft by an See also:eagle to Fame's See also:temple, describes what he See also:sees and hears there, and then breaks off in apparent inability to get See also:home, shows a curious mixture of the poetic ideals of the Roman de la rose and reminiscences of the Divina Commedia.
As the Hous of Fame is most often remembered and quoted for the See also:personal touches and humour of Chaucer's conversation with the eagle, so the most-quoted passages in the See also:Prologue to the Legende of Good Women are those in which Chaucer professes his affection for the See also:daisy, and the attack on his See also:loyalty by See also:Cupid and its See also:defence by Alceste. See also:Recent discoveries have shown, however, that (besides obligations to Machault) some of the touches about the daisy and the controversy between the partisans of the See also:Flower and of the See also:Leaf are snatches from poems by his friends Froissart and See also:Deschamps, which Chaucer takes up
and returns to them with See also:pretty compliments, and that he was indebted to Froissart for some of the framework of his poem.' Both of the two versions of the Prologue to the Legende are charming, and some of the tales, notably that of See also:Cleopatra, See also:rank with Chaucer's best work. When, however, he had written eight and part of the ninth he tired of his See also:scheme, which was planned to celebrate nineteen of Cupids faithful " saints," with See also:Alcestis as their queen. With his usual hopefulness he had overlooked the See also:risk of monotony, which obviously weighed heavily on him ere he See also:broke off, and the loss of the other ten stories is less to be regretted than that of the celebration of Alceste, and a possible See also:epilogue which might have exceeded in See also:charm the Prologue itself.
Chaucer's failure to complete the scheme of the Legende of Good Women may have been partly due to the attractions of the Canterbury Tales, which were probably taken up in immediate See also:succession to it. His guardianship of two Kentish wards, his justiceship of the peace, his representing the See also:county in the See also:parliament of 1386, his commissionership of the See also:river-See also:bank between Greenwich and Woolwich, all make it easy to understand his dramatic use of the merry crowds he saw on the Canterbury road, without supposing him to have had recourse to Boccaccio's Decamerone, a book which there is no See also:proof of his having seen. The pilgrims whom he imagines to have assembled at the See also:Tabard See also:Inn in See also:Southwark, where Harry See also:Bailey was See also:host, are said to have numbered " wel nyne and twenty in a company," and the Prologue. gives full-length sketches of a Knight, a Squire (his son), and their Yeoman; of a Prioress, See also: Each of these, with Chaucer himself making the twenty-ninth, was pledged to tell two tales, but including one second attempt and a tale told by the Yeoman of a See also:Canon, who overtakes the pilgrims on the road, we have only twenty finished stories, two unfinished and two interrupted ones. As in the case of the Legende of Good Women, our loss is not so much that of the additional stories as of the completed framework. The wonderful See also:character sketches of the Prologue are carried yet farther by the Talks on the Road which See also:link the different tales, and two of these Talks, in which the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner respectively edify the company, have the importance of See also:separate Tales, but between the Tales that have come down to us there are seven links missing,' and it was left to a later and weaker hand to narrate, in the " Tale of Beryn," the adventures of the pilgrims at Canterbury. The reference to the Lyf of Seynt Cecyle in the Prologue to the Legende of Good Women gives See also:external proof that Chaucer included earlier work in the scheme of the Canterbury Tales, and mention has been made of other stories which are indisputably early. In the absence of any such metrical tests as have ' The French influences on this Prologue, its connexion with the Flower and the Leaf controversy, and the priority of what had previously been reckoned as the second or " B " form of the Prologue over the " A," were demonstrated in papers by Prof. Kittredge on " Chaucer and some of his Friends " in Modern See also:Philology, vol. i. (See also:Chicago, 1903), and by Mr J. L. Lowes on " The Prologue to the See also:Legend of Good Women " in Publications of the Modern See also:Language Association of See also:America, vol. xix., December 1904. 2 The Talks on the Road show clearly that only one Priest in attendance on the Prioress, and two tales to each narrator, were originally contemplated, but the " Prestes lhre " in line 164 of the Prologue, and the bald See also:couplet (line 793 sq.) explaining that each See also:pilgrim was to tell two tales each way, were probably both alterations made by Chaucer in moments of amazing hopefulness. The journey was reckoned a 31 days' ride, and eight or nine tales a day would surely have been a sufficient See also:allowance. 3 The absence of these links necessitates the See also:division of the Canterbury Tales into nine See also:groups, to which, for purposes of See also:quotation, the letters A to I have been assigned, the line numeration of the Tales in each group being continuous.proved useful in the case of Shakespeare, the dates at which several of the Tales were composed remain doubtful, while in the case of at least two, the Clerk's tale of Grisilde and the Monk's tragedies, there is evidence of early work being revised and supplemented. It is fortunately impossible to separate the prologue to the charmingly told story of " See also:yonge Hugh of Lincoln " from the tale itself, and with the "quod sche" in the second line as proof that Chaucer was here writing specially for his Prioress we are forbidden to limit the new stories to any one metre or See also:tone. There can be no doubt, however, that what may be called the Tales of the Churls (Miller, Reeve, Summoner, Friar, &c.), and the conversational outpourings of the Pardoner and Wife of Bath, form, with the immortal Prologue, the most important and distinctive additions to the older work. In these, and in the Pardoner's story of Death and the Three Revellers, and the Nun's Priest's masterly handling of the See also:fable of the See also:Cock and See also:Fox, both of them See also:free from the grossness which marks the others, Chaucer takes stories which could have been told in a short See also:page of prose and elaborates them with all the skill in narration which he had sedulously cultivated. The conjugal reminiscences of the Wife of Bath and the Reeve's Tale with its abominable climax (lightened a little by Aleyn's farewell, lines 316—319) are among the great things in Chaucer, as surely as Troilus, and Palamon and Arcyte and the Prologue. They help notably to give him the width of range which may certainly be claimed for him. In or soon after 1391 Chaucer wrote in prose for an elevenyear-old reader, whom he addresses as " Litel Lowis my son," a See also:treatise on the use of the See also:Astrolabe, its short prologue being the prettiest specimen of his prose. The wearisome tale of " Melibee and his wyf Prudence," which was perhaps as much admired in English as it had been in Latin and French, may have been translated at any time. The See also:sermon on Penitence, used as the Parson's Tale, was probably the work of his old age. " Envoys " to his friends Scogan and See also:Baton, a translation of some balades by Sir Otes de Granson, and the Compleynt to his Pura complete the See also:record of his minor poetry. We have his own statement that in his youth he had written many Balades, Roundels and Virelayes in honour of Love, and the two songs embedded respectively in the Parlement of Foules and the Prologue to the Legende of Good Women are charming and musical. His extant shorter poems, however, whether early or See also:late, offer no excuse for claiming high rank for him as a lyrist. He had very little sheer singing power, and though there are fine lines in his short poems, See also:witness the famous " Flee fro the prees and dwell with soothfastnesse," they lack the sustained concentration of great work. From the See also:drama, again, Chaucer was cut off, and it is idle to argue from the innumerable dramatic touches in his poems and his See also:gift of characterization as to what he might have done had he lived two centuries later. His own age delighted in stories, and he gave it the stories it demanded invested with a humanity, a See also:grace and strength which See also:place him among the See also:world's greatest narrative poets, and which bring the England of his own day, with all the colour and warmth of life; wonderfully near to all his readers. The part played by Chaucer in the development of the English language has often been overrated. He neither corrupted it, as used to be said, by introducing French words which it would otherwise have avoided, nor See also:bore any such Influence. part in fixing it as was afterwards played by the translators of the See also:Bible. When he was growing up educated society in England was still bilingual, and the changes in vocabulary and See also:pronunciation which took place during his life were the natural results of a society, which had been bilingual with a See also:bias towards French, giving an exclusive preference to English. The See also:practical identity of Chaucer's language with that of Gower shows that both merely used the best English of their day with the care and slightly conservative tendency which befitted poets. Chaucer's service to the English language lies in his decisive success having made it impossible for any later English poet to attain fame, as Gower had done, by writing alternatively in Latin and French. The claim which should be made for him is Canter-See also:bury Tales. that, at least as regards poetry, he proved that English was " sufficient." Chaucer borrowed both his See also:stanza forms and his " decasyllabic " couplets (mostly with an extra syllable at the end of the line) from Guillaume Machault, and his See also:music, like that of his French See also:master and his successors, depends very largely on assigning to every syllable its full value, and more especially on the due pronunciation of the final -e. The slower See also:movement of See also:change in Scotland allowed time for Chaucer to exercise a potent influence on Scottish poetry, but in England this final -e, to which most of the earlier grammatical forms by Chaucer's time had been reduced, itself See also:fell rapidly into disuse during the 15th century, and a serious barrier was thus raised to the appreciation of the artistic value of his See also:verse. His disciples, Hoccleve and See also:Lydgate, who at first had caught some echoes of his rhythms, gradually yielded to the change in pronunciation, so that there was no living tradition to hand down his See also:secret, while successive copyists reduced his See also:text to a state in which it was only by See also:accident that lines could be scanned correctly. For fully three centuries his reputation was sustained solely by his narrative power, his warmest panegyrists betraying no consciousness that they were praising one of the greatest technical masters of poetry. Even when thus maimed, however, his works found readers and lovers in every See also:generation, and every improvement in his text has set his fame on a surer basis. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
» Add information or comments to this article.
Please link directly to this article:
Highlight the code below, right click, and select "copy." Then paste it into your website, email, or other HTML. Site content, images, and layout Copyright © 2006 - Net Industries, worldwide. |
|
|
[back] CHATTI |
[next] CHAUDESAIGUES |