Chaucer, Geoffrey c.1345-1400
English poet best known for The Canterbury Tales, the most influential English poetry of the Middle Ages

Chaucer was born in London, the son of John Chaucer, a vintner and probably deputy to the king's butler. In 1357 and 1358 Geoffrey was a page in the service of the wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence; later he transferred to the household of Edward III. In 1359 he served in the war in France, was taken prisoner and was ransomed, the king contributing �16 towards the required amount. He returned home in 1360. About 1366 he married Philippa, a relative by marriage of John of Gaunt, who gave Chaucer his support throughout his life. In 1367 the king granted him a pension; he is described as 'our beloved yeoman', and as 'one of the yeomen of the king's chamber', and in 1368 he was one of the king's esquires.

His first work as a poet was the Book of the Duchess (1369), on the death by plague of John of Gaunt's first wife Blanche. In 1370 he went abroad on the king's service: in 1372-73 on a royal mission to Genoa, Pisa, Florence; in 1376, abroad again; in 1377, to Flanders and to France; and in 1378, to Italy again. Meanwhile in 1374 he was appointed Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Tanned Hides in the port of London; in 1382, Comptroller of the Petty Customs; and in 1385 he was allowed to nominate a permanent deputy. In 1374 the king granted him a pitcher of wine daily; and John of Gaunt conferred on him a pension of �10 for life. In 1375 he received from the Crown the custody of lands that brought him in �104. In 1386 he was elected a knight of the shire for Kent.

However about the end of 1386 Chaucer lost his offices, possibly owing to the absence abroad of John of Gaunt, and fell upon hard times. In 1389 he was appointed clerk of the King's Works, but this did not last and he fell into debt. In 1394 King Richard II granted him a pension of �20 for life; but the advances of payment he applied for, and the issue of letters of protection from arrest for debt, indicate his condition. On the accession in 1399 of Henry IV, he was granted a pension of 40 marks (�26 13s 4d), and his few remaining months were spent in comfort.

After his death he was laid in that part of Westminster Abbey which through his burial was thereafter called Poets' Corner. By common consent, his greatest achievement is the Prologue (1387) to The Canterbury Tales, which, as a piece of descriptive writing, is unique. Chaucer was the first great poet of the English race, and he established the southern English dialect as the literary language of England.

Bibliography: Chaucer's greatest work, probably begun in the late 1380s and not completed, was The Canterbury Tales, some 17,000 lines of verse and prose recounting, with a prologue, the tales told by a group of pilgrims on their journey to Canterbury. The work shows a profound understanding of human nature, ranging from the urbane to the bawdy, and is written in a variety of metres, principally the rhyming couplet.

In the period 1369-87 he wrote The Parliament of Fowls, The House of Fame, Troilus and Cressida and The Legend of Good Women; and also what ultimately appeared as the Clerk's, Man of Law's, Prioress's, Second Nun's and Knight's Tales in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's earlier writings, including his translation of part of the Roman de la Rose, followed the current French trends, but the most important influence on him during this middle period of his literary life came from Italy. Much of his subject matter he derived from his great Italian contemporaries, especially from Boccaccio, but it was the spirit, not the letter of these masters which he imitated. The crowning work of the middle period of his life is Troilus and Cressida - a work in which his immense power of human observation, his sense of humour, and his dramatic skill are lavishly displayed. The Legend of Good Women has an admirable prologue, but was never finished.

Other works have been ascribed to Chaucer, and were long printed in popular editions, that are certainly not his, eg The Court of Love, Chaucer's Dream, The Complaint of the Black Knight, The Cuckoo and Nightingale, The Flower and the Leaf, and much of the extant Romaunt of the Rose.

Bibliography: There is an enormous amount of literature on Chaucer. See especially D Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1992); B Rowland, A Companion to Chaucer Studies (1979); D S Brewer (ed), Geoffrey Chaucer (3rd edn, 1973).