Geoffrey Chaucer
(1343–1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer has been called the father of English poetry. His dazzling skill in a broad array of literary forms made him the greatest writer in Middle English, the transitional form of the language that developed after the Norman invasion of England in 1066.

The son of a prosperous London wine merchant, Chaucer was born around 1343 and probably attended school in London. At the age of 14, he entered the service of Lionel, the Earl of Ulster and the king's second son. Two years later, Chaucer served as a soldier in King Edward III's invasion of France, was taken prisoner and ransomed. In 1366, he went on a diplomatic mission to Spain. Also in this year, Chaucer married Philippa, the daughter of a knight.

Chaucer's marriage brought him even more connections with the English nobility and gentry. He secured a number of positions in the royal service, including that of customs inspector for the Port of London. Philippa's sister became the third wife of the powerful nobleman John of Gaunt, King Edward III's fourth son and the father of the future King Henry IV. John of Gaunt became Chaucer's most influential patron, and it was probably to commemorate the death of John's first wife that Chaucer composed his first major work, The Book of the Duchess, around 1369.

In 1372, Chaucer traveled on a diplomatic mission to Italy. This journey marked a turning point in his career as a poet. Not only was Chaucer exposed to the culture of the Italian Renaissance—the "rebirth" of art and literature that was to spread through Europe during the next two centuries—but he also became familiar with the works of three literary giants: Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca (known as Petrarch), and Giovanni Boccaccio. The influence of Boccaccio was especially important. Chaucer used the framing device of Boccaccio's masterpiece, The Decameron, for The Canterbury Tales, and he based two of his greatest poems, "The Knight's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde, on works by Boccaccio.

In the 1380s and 1390s, Chaucer served as a justice of the peace and as a forester for the royal forests. He probably started his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, in 1386 when he was living in Greenwich, near London. From his house, he may have been able to see the pilgrim road leading from London to Canterbury.

His original plan called for 120 tales, with two stories told by each pilgrim on the journey from London to Canterbury and two more on the way back. In fact, the poet lived to complete only twenty-two tales; two others survive in fragmentary form. The variety of the tales he did finish and the diversity of the storytellers make The Canterbury Tales an unforgettably rich portrait of medieval life. Chaucer died in 1400; he was buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

The pilgrims' destination in The Canterbury Tales was a small town about 70 miles southeast of London. In the late fourteenth century, Canterbury had been an international pilgrimage center for 200 years, since Archbishop Thomas Becket (c.1118–1170) had been murdered in the cathedral by four knights in the service of King Henry II. When the king wanted clergymen accused of wrongdoing to be tried in civil courts, Becket, himself a former chancellor of England, insisted on upholding the jurisdiction of special ecclesiastical courts. He and the king quarreled bitterly. Becket's violent death shocked Europe, and in 1173 the Pope declared him a saint and a martyr. King Henry was forced to do public penance at Becket's tomb.

In the twentieth century, the conflict between Becket and Henry II served as the basis for several notable plays, including Murder in the Cathedral (1936) by T. S. Eliot, and Becket (1959) by the French dramatist Jean Anouilh. The latter was made into a popular film. Today, Canterbury is the seat of the Anglican Communion, which includes the Church of England as well as the Episcopal Church in the United States.

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