The Portable Chaucer

“The most successful translations of Chaucer’s poetry that I have ever seen.”—Chicago Tribune

Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, the son of a wine-merchant, in about 1342. His life in royal government service means his career is unusually well documented. By 1357, Chaucer was a page to the wife of Prince Lionel, second son of Edward III. While in the Prince’s service, Chaucer was ransomed after being captured during the English campaign in France in 1359-60.

Chaucer’s wife, Philippa, whom he married around 1365, was the sister of Katherine Swynford. Katherine was the mistress (c. 1370) and third wife (1396) of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. John of Gaunt’s first wife, Blanche (died 1368), is commemorated in Chaucer’s earliest major poem, The Book of the Duchess.

From 1374, Chaucer worked as controller of customs on wool in the port of London. Between 1366 and 1378, he undertook several official trips abroad, including two to Italy in 1372-3 and 1378. The influence of Chaucer’s encounter with Italian literature is evident in the poems he wrote in the late 1370s and early 1380s, such as The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, and a version of The Knight’s Tale. This influence found its fullest expression in Troilus and Criseyde.

In 1386, Chaucer served as a member of parliament for Kent. In the same year, he resigned his customs post. However, in 1389, he was appointed Clerk of the King’s Works, a position he held until 1391. After completing Troilus and his English prose translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, Chaucer began his Legend of Good Women.

During the 1390s, he worked on his most ambitious project, The Canterbury Tales, which remained unfinished at his death. In 1399, Chaucer leased a house within the precincts of Westminster Abbey. He died in 1400 and was buried in the Abbey.

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