Concept
Geoffrey Chaucer
Overview
Geoffrey Chaucer (; JEF-ree CHAW-sər; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, writer and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the 'father of English literature', or alternatively, the 'father of English poetry'. He was the first writer to be buried in what has since become Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his ten-year-old son, Lewis. He maintained a career in public service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat and member of the Parliament of England, having been elected shire knight for Kent.
Amongst his other works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Criseyde, and Parlement of Foules. A prolific writer, Chaucer has been seen as crucial in legitimising the literary use of Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still Anglo-Norman French and Latin. His contemporary Thomas Hoccleve hailed him as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage" (i.e., the first one capable of finding poetic matter in English). Almost two thousand English words are first attested in Chaucerian manuscripts.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
There are numerous glosses and explanations of particular passages, which seem to be interpolated by Chaucer himself. Thus he explains what is meant by the _heritage of Socrates_ (p. 10, 11); he gives the meaning of _coemption_ (p. 15); of _Euripus_ (p. 33); of the _porch_ (p. 166).[I-11] Some of his definitions are very quaint; as,…
Boethius, Chaucer's Translation of Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophiae"
States what Geoffrey Chaucer is; the author is tied to Geoffrey Chaucer in the knowledge graph.
Nor is that the principal characteristic of a poet, although he is the more to be praised for aiming at the excellences of an orator, when he is more fettered by verse. But, although the language of some poets is grand and ornamented, still I think that they have greater licence than we have in making and combining words, and I think too that they often, in their expressions, pay more attention to the object of…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Geoffrey Chaucer is.
They all failed in the solution; but with some of them he was thus brought into terms of intimacy, and with Cavalcanti of the closest friendship. Some new grace of style in Dante's verse, some art in the presentation of his mystical meaning that escapes the modern reader, may have revealed to the middle-aged man of letters that a new genius had arisen. It was by Guido's advice that the poems of which this sonnet…
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri
The author is tied to Geoffrey Chaucer in the knowledge graph.
Philosophers who discussed Geoffrey Chaucer
Related ideas
- French language
- Florence
- Treatise
- G. K. Chesterton
- Gospel
- Merton College, Oxford
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- John Milton
- John Wycliffe
- Latin
- Middle Ages
- Boethius
- Lord Chancellor
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Old English
- Harold Bloom
- Short story
- Friar
- William Shakespeare
- Milan
- Cambridge
- Beowulf
- British English
- Genoa
Place in the tradition
Part of Morality.