The Life And Times Of Geoffery Chaucer
...English poet before William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer is remembered as the author of Canterbury Tales, which ranks as one of the greatest epic works of world literature. Chaucer made a crucial contribution to English literature in using English at a time when much poetry was written in Anglo-Norman or Latin. Although he spent one of two brief periods of disfavor, Chaucer lived the whole of his life close the centers of English power.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London. Chaucer was the son of a prosperous wine merchant and deputy to the kings's butler, and his wife Agnes. Little is known of his early education, but his works show that he could read French, Latin, and Italian. In 1359-1360 Chaucer went to France with Edward III's army during the Hundred Years' War. He was captured in the Ardennes and returned to England after the treaty of Brétigny in 1360. It it said that during this period he translated from the French the allegory Romaunt of the Rose, which was his first literary work. There is no certain information of his life from 1361 until c.1366, when he married Philippa Roet, the sister of John Gaunt's future wife, and one of Queen Philippa's ladies. Philippa apparently gave him two sons, 'little Lewis', to whom Chaucer addressed A Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391), and Thomas, who was later highly successful in public service. Philippa died in 1387 and Chaucer enjoyed Gaunt's patronage throughout his life. He was in the King's service, held a number of positions at court, and spent some time in Spain.
Between 1367 and 1378 Chaucer made several journeys abroad on diplomatic and commercial missions. It is then that he met Giovanni Boccaccio or Petrarch in pre-Renaissance Italy in 1372-73. And it is said that the example of Dante gave him the idea of writing in the vulgar English rather than in the court French of the day. In 1374 he became a...
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