A courtier and diplomat for several English kings, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343–1400) was better known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, an influential collection of short fictional stories that was a milestone in the development of the English language.
The stories, written in Middle English, were among the first literary works to use the everyday vernacular language of the English people. Most previous writers in England had used either Latin or French.
Chaucer was born in London into a relatively prosperous merchant family. He served in the English army under Edward III (1312–1377) during the Hundred Years’ War and was taken prisoner by the French in 1360. He was ransomed back to his family the next year, during a lull in the fighting.
After his return to England, Chaucer wed one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, Philippa Roet, a marriage that brought him into the king’s inner circle. He served as Edward III’s envoy to several courts in Italy in the 1370s; the monarch’s decision in 1374 to award Chaucer a gallon of wine daily for the rest of his life seems to indicate that he was a successful diplomat.
Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales in the 1380s while continuing to work for Edward III’s successor, Richard II (1367–1400). The tales are a series of vignettes about pilgrims on their way to the cathedral at Canterbury, a major religious site in England. The pilgrims represented a cross-section of English society: Chaucer depicts a knight, a student, a lawyer, an innkeeper, and many other ordinary people.
Richard II was overthrown by his cousin, who crowned himself King Henry IV (1366–1413) in 1399. As an ally of Richard, Chaucer probably suffered as a result of the coup and may have lost his pension. He died the next year of unknown causes.
ADDITIONAL FACTS
- When Chaucer was captured by the French and ransomed back to his family for sixteen pounds, Edward paid the ransom, which suggests Chaucer’s high social status.
- Chaucer was played by Paul Bettany (1971–) in the 2001 hit movie A Knight’s Tale, which also starred Heath Ledger (1979–2008) as a champion jouster.
- The exact circumstances of Chaucer’s death have long been a mystery. In 2005, Monty Python comedian and medieval scholar Terry Jones (1942–) published a book—Who Murdered Chaucer?—in which he theorized that the author was assassinated by allies of Henry IV because his writings ridiculed the church.
