The Age of Chaucer

Historical Background

The period between 1343 and 1450 is known as the Age of Chaucer. It marked the first
significant literary age in English literature. It heralded a new era of learning. Chaucer’s age also
witnessed many social, political, and religious challenges.

There was a strong dislike for the Papal or Church’s interference, which had previously been the citadel
of moral authority, social prestige but now suffered from corruption, turpitude and superstitions.

There were strong nationalistic passions due to the 100 Years’ War between England and France.

There was also the charged atmosphere due to the Peasant upheavals in England.

The middle class also emerged as a strong social stratum.

All of this represented a transition from a feudal social setup toward a free society where men and
women could exercise their individual whims and fancies without fear of reprimand.

There is a transition from the age of Medievalism to the age of Modernism. Geoffrey Chaucer was the
night star of the former and the morning sun of the latter.

Another significant event of the age was the Black Death or plague that affected a third of the country’s
population. This affected various social dynamics like limiting labour and employable bodies.

CHAUCER'S LIFE

Early Life
Poet Geoffrey Chaucer was born circa 1340, most likely at his parents’ house on Thames Street in
London, England. Chaucer’s family was of the bourgeois class, descended from an affluent family who
made their money in the London wine trade. According to some sources, Chaucer’s father, John, carried
on the family wine business.

Geoffrey Chaucer is believed to have attended the St. Paul’s Cathedral School, where he probably first
became acquainted with the influential writing of Virgil and Ovid.

In 1357, Chaucer became a public servant to Countess Elizabeth of Ulster, the Duke of Clarence’s wife,
for which he was paid a small stipend—enough to pay for his food and clothing. In 1359, the teenage
Chaucer went off to fight in the Hundred Years’ War in France, and at Rethel he was captured for
ransom. Thanks to Chaucer’s royal connections, King Edward III helped pay his ransom. After Chaucer’s
release, he joined the Royal Service, traveling throughout France, Spain and Italy on diplomatic missions
throughout the early to mid-1360s. For his services, King Edward granted Chaucer a pension of 20
marks.
In 1366, Chaucer married Philippa Roet, the daughter of Sir Payne Roet, and the marriage conveniently
helped further Chaucer’s career in the English court.

Public Service
By 1368, King Edward III had made Chaucer one of his esquires. When the queen died in 1369, it served
to strengthen Philippa’s position and subsequently Chaucer’s as well.  From 1370 to 1373, he went
abroad again and fulfilled diplomatic missions in Florence and Genoa, helping establish an English port in
Genoa. He also spent time familiarizing himself with the work of Italian poets Dante and Petrarch along
the way. By the time he returned, he and Philippa were prospering, and he was rewarded for his
diplomatic activities with an appointment as Comptroller of Customs, a lucrative position. Meanwhile,
Philippa and Chaucer were also granted generous pensions by John of Gaunt, the first duke of Lancaster.

In 1377 and 1388, Chaucer engaged in yet more diplomatic missions, with the objectives of finding a
French wife for Richard II and securing military aid in Italy. Busy with his duties, Chaucer had little time
to devote to writing poetry, his true passion. In 1385 he petitioned for temporary leave. For the next
four years he lived in Kent but worked as a justice of the peace and later a Parliament member, rather
than focusing on his writing.

When Philippa passed away in 1387, Chaucer stopped sharing in her royal annuities and suffered
financial hardship. He needed to keep working in public service to earn a living and pay off his growing
accumulation of debt.
The legendary 14th century English poet Geoffrey Chaucer died October 25, 1400 in London, England.
He died of unknown causes and was 60 years old at the time. Chaucer was buried in Westminster
Abbey. His gravestone became the center of what was to be called Poet’s Corner, a spot where such
famous British writers as Robert Browning and Charles Dickens were later honored and interred.

Major Works: 'The Canterbury Tales'

The precise dates of many of Chaucer’s written works are difficult to pin down with certainty, but one
thing is clear: His major works have retained their relevancy even in the college classroom of today.

Chaucer’s body of best-known works includes the Parliament of Fouls, otherwise known as

the Parlement of Foules, in the Middle English spelling. Some historians of Chaucer’s work assert that it
was written in 1380, during marriage negotiations between Richard and Anne of Bohemia. Critic J.A.W.
Bennet interpreted the Parliament of Fouls as a study of Christian love. It had been identified as
peppered with Neo-Platonic ideas inspired by the likes of poets Cicero and Jean De Meun, among
others. The poem uses allegory, and incorporates elements of irony and satire as it points to the
inauthentic quality of courtly love. Chaucer was well acquainted with the theme firsthand—during his
service to the court and his marriage of convenience to a woman whose social standing served to
elevate his own.

Chaucer is believed to have written the poem Troilus and Criseyde sometime in the mid-1380s. Troilus
and Criseyde is a narrative poem that retells the tragic love story of Troilus and Criseyde in the context
of the Trojan War. Chaucer wrote the poem using rime royal, a technique he originated. Rime royal
involves rhyming stanzas consisting of seven lines apiece. 

Troilus and Criseyde is broadly considered one of Chaucer’s greatest works, and has a reputation for
being more complete and self-contained than most of Chaucer’s writing, his famed The Canterbury
Tales being no exception.

The period of time over which Chaucer penned The Legend of Good Women is uncertain, although most
scholars do agree that Chaucer seems to have abandoned it before its completion. The queen
mentioned in the work is believed to be Richard II’s wife, Anne of Bohemia. Chaucer’s mention of the
real-life royal palaces Eltham and Sheen serve to support this theory. In writing The Legend of Good
Women, Chaucer played with another new and innovative format: The poem comprises a series of
shorter narratives, along with the use of iambic pentameter couplets (seen for the first time in English).

The Canterbury Tales is by far Chaucer’s best known and most acclaimed work. Initially Chaucer had
planned for each of his characters to tell four stories a piece. The first two stories would be set as the
character was on his/her way to Canterbury, and the second two were to take place as the character
was heading home. Apparently, Chaucer’s goal of writing 120 stories was an overly ambitious one. In
actuality, The Canterbury Tales is made up of only 24 tales and rather abruptly ends before its
characters even make it to Canterbury. The tales are fragmented and varied in order, and scholars
continue to debate whether the tales were published in their correct order. Despite its erratic
qualities, The Canterbury Tales continues to be acknowledged for the beautiful rhythm of Chaucer’s
language and his characteristic use of clever, satirical wit.

A Treatise on the Astrolabe is one of Chaucer’s nonfiction works. It is an essay about the astrolabe, a tool
used by astronomers and explorers to locate the positions of the sun, moon and planets. Chaucer
planned to write the essay in five parts but ultimately only completed the first two. Today it is one of the
oldest surviving works that explain how to use a complex scientific tool, and is thought to do so with
admirable clarity.

Contemporaries
Almost contemporary with Chaucer were two other poets. One of them is identified as William Langley
or Langland was Chaucer’s own equal, if not superior in intensity, though far less inferior in range and in
art. The second one was John Gower.

The most vibrant of dream allegories comes from the pen of William Langland who wrote Piers
Plowman. The dream vision mode facilitated an unrestricted movement for Langland as he drew upon
the ideas of Christian theology to organize a thesis to discuss human conduct. The use of dream-vision
format however, is not consistent as Langland moves in and out of reality to suit his argument. The
picture organized in the poem is organized through a complex mix of allegory, exemplum and exegesis.
Social responsibility, faith and individual salvation constitute the primary themes in this poem. The quite
assuredness of the poem is one of its most remarkable characteristics and is undoubtedly placed among
the marvels of medieval literature.

John Wycliffe, Wycliffe also spelled Wycliff, Wyclif, Wicliffe, or Wiclif, (born c. 1330, Yorkshire, England

—died December 31, 1384, Lutterworth, Leicestershire), English theologian, philosopher, church
reformer, and promoter of the first complete translation of the Bible into English.
Little is known of the life of Wyclif before he arrived at Oxford, where he remained throughout most of
his life. It seems most probable that he derived from a family of the lesser gentry in the area around
Richmond. In 1356 he completed his arts degree at Oxford as a junior fellow of Merton College. Soon he
shifted his affiliation to Balliol College, where, before 1360, he was elected master. During the summer
of 1361 Wyclif resigned that position to accept the richest benefice within the gift of that college,
namely, the rectorship of Fillingham In Lincolnshire. On the basis of that income he rented rooms in
Queen's College and pursued his theological degree, which he completed in 1372. Although eventually
critical of pluralism and absenteeism, as a student he held more than one benefice at a time and was not
always conscientious enough to pay a vicar to perform the services for which he was receiving the
revenues.

John Gower, (born 1330? ... —died 1408, London?), medieval English poet in the tradition of courtly
love and moral allegory, whose reputation once matched that of his contemporary and friend Geoffrey
Chaucer, and who strongly influenced the writing of other poets of his day.
Gower’s three major works are in French, English, and Latin, and he also wrote a series of
French balades intended for the English court. The Speculum meditantis, or Mirour de l’omme, in
French, is composed of 12-line stanzas and opens impressively with a description of the devil’s marriage
to the seven daughters of sin; continuing with the marriage of reason and the seven virtues, it ends with
a searing examination of the sins of English society just before the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381: the
denunciatory tone is relieved at the very end by a long hymn to the Virgin.
Gower’s English poems include In Praise of Peace, in which he pleads urgently with the king to avoid the
horrors of war, but his greatest English work is the Confessio amantis, essentially a collection
of exemplary tales of love, whereby Venus’ priest, Genius, instructs the poet, Amans, in the art of both
courtly and Christian love.

John Gower was the writer of the three famous poems- Speculum Meditantis (French), Vox Clamantis
(Latin) and Confessio Amantis (English). He used different languages for each poem.
The French poem (Speculum Meditantis) is an allegory dealing with the attack of Seven Deadly Sins upon
man. The moral vigour of the poem is remarkable in that it undercuts the descriptions of corruption with
great alacrity. His Latin poem shows the position of the landowner who faced the wrath of the peasants
following the administration of such dictatorial decrees as the Statue of labourers. The poem is
interesting because it presents the aristocratic position. The English poem is also centered on the Seven
Deadly Sins. The poem is of confessional mode and the tales are drawn from various sources that form a
part of the narratives.

Verdict
There was a noticeable social change. Starting from an era of transition, the unimaginable progress of
nationalism, Black Death wiping out the 3rd population of England, famine and social disturbance, the
corruption of church and reformation, ending up with the new ray of progress, knowledge,
development, and learning.