CHAUCER, Geoffrey. - English poet, born c. 1340, died probably in 1400. He served at court as a soldier in the Hundred Years' War, during which he was taken prisoner; as a diplomat he traveled several times to France and Italy; as a collector of duties and customs, and finally as superintendent of repair works on royal palaces, parks, and the banks of the Thames. This practical activity brought him into contact, on the one hand, with the nobility of the kingdom, and on the other, with the urban and rural bourgeoisie, whom he would skillfully portray in his works. Nor did his many occupations distract him from study; he takes pleasure in citing the books he read and in providing lengthy summaries of them.
His first original poem, *The Boke of the Duchesse*, was written on the occasion of the death (described by Boccaccio) of Blanche of Lancaster, the first wife of his patron, John of Gaunt, uncle of Richard II and father of the future usurper of the kingdom, Henry IV. In the then-common form of the *vision*, Chaucer has the praises of the wife narrated by the grieving widower. Traces of the influence of French poetry can be found in these verses. A passage from *The House of Fame* (perhaps written on the occasion of Richard’s betrothal to Anne of Bohemia) instead reveals the reading of Dante that Chaucer was undertaking. The poet narrates, still in the form of a dream, his flight between the talons of an eagle to the House of Fame and of Rumor, where he is allowed to witness the capricious judgments of the goddess, and where he prepares to contemplate other visions that are promised to be interesting, when the poem breaks off incomplete. Dante is still the model for some verses of the *Parlement of Foules* (where it seems the marriage of Richard and Anne is celebrated), which describes Valentine’s Day (14 February), when all the birds gather around Nature to choose each a mate. In this poem, too, literal translations of some octaves from Boccaccio’s *Thebaid* can be traced, an author whom Chaucer, though never naming him, held among his favorites. He does, however, name Dante as “the great poet of Italy,” who “describes everything, point by point,” and Petrarch, “whose sweet rhetoric illuminated all of Italy with poetry.” The subject of the *Thebaid* (the duel of Palamon and Arcite for the hand of fair Emilia) would later be retold by the knight in the *Canterbury Tales*. But Boccaccio’s presence is more vivid in the three cantos of the long poem titled *Troilus and Criseyde* (the source of Shakespeare’s drama of the same title), which takes up and expands the story of the *Filostrato*, with notable ethical and aesthetic variations.
The prologue of the *Legend of Good Women*, of Ovidian inspiration, returns to the fiction of the dream and presents the poet reproached by the god of Love for having spoken ill of love, both in *Troilus and Criseyde* and in his translation of the *Roman de la Rose*. The work was not completed, perhaps because the poet felt the urgent inspiration to begin his masterpiece, the *Canterbury Tales*, to which he devoted himself from 1386–87 until his death. To a group of pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark to journey to the tomb of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, the host proposes that each tell two tales on the way there and two on the return. Only twenty-four tales are complete. Notable are the prologues between one tale and another, where the characters of the narrators and listeners are completed (already admirably portrayed in the General Prologue), along with their various reactions and comments on what has been said and what is intended to be said. The sources of the tales are the usual ones from which all medieval storytellers drew, and the stories are tales of love, clever or cruel jokes, terrible revenges, devotions of wives, heroism of virgins, and courage of lovers. The tales of a religious character are narrated by the Prioress (the pious legend of the little schoolboy, slaughtered by Jews for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin) and by the Second Nun (the legend of St. Cecilia). In the figure of the country parson, Chaucer delineates a model of evangelical poverty and zeal for souls. Nothing is said of the parson’s outward behavior, which is instead presented solely through his soul. He was “rich in works and holy thoughts,” “did not rage over tithes,” “did not hasten to London to St. Paul’s to secure a prebend for souls,” taught “discreetly and kindly,” and “led the people to heaven with grace.”
The religious problem did not impose itself on Chaucer in its speculative theological aspects, but in those that touch men in moments of particular pathos (such as the problem of providence), or when a character’s special relation to religious life more insistently draws attention to his character, as is the case with the country parson and the Prioress. Hence the predominantly ethical presentation of religion in Chaucer’s poetry.