When was geoffrey chaucer born

He needed to keep working in public service to earn a living and pay off his growing accumulation of debt. Critic J. 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 mids. 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. 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. 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.

Initially Chaucer had planned for each of his characters to tell four stories a piece. He served as a Member of Parliament from Kent. It is likely that Philippa died in Chaucer received his highest position, the clerkship of the royal works, in He served as clerk until he resigned in For a time thereafter he served as deputy forester for the royal forest at North Petherton, England.

The king granted him a pension of twenty pounds in , and in an annual cask of wine was added to this grant. King Henry IV — renewed and increased these grants in Between and Chaucer must have devoted much time to the writing of his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer gives his tale of pilgrimage, or journey to a sacred site, national suggestions by directing it toward the shrine of St.

Thomas Becket c. The humor is sometimes very subtle, but it is also often broad and out-spoken. His original plan for The Canterbury Tales called for two tales each from over twenty pilgrims people who travel to a holy site making a journey from Southwark, England, to the shrine of St.

Thomas Becket at Canterbury, England, and back. He later modified the plan to write only one tale from each pilgrim on the road to Canterbury, but even this plan was never completed. The tales survive in groups connected by prologues introductions and epilogues conclusions , but the proper arrangement of these groups is not altogether clear.

The series is introduced in a "General Prologue" that describes the pilgrimage and the pilgrims taking part in it. In addition to the translation and major works mentioned, Chaucer wrote a number of shorter poems and translated at least part of Roman de la rose, a late medieval French poem by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun.

Chaucer's interests also included science. He prepared a translation of a Latin article on the use of the astrolabe, an instrument for finding the latitude of the sun and planets. He may also have been the translator of a work concerning the use of an equatorium, an instrument for calculating the positions of the planets.

In October Chaucer died. He was born a commoner, but through his intellect and astute judgments of human character, he moved freely among the aristocracy. Although very little is definitely known about the details of his life, Chaucer was probably born shortly after Although the family name from French "Chaussier" suggests that the family originally made shoes, Chaucer's father, John, was a prosperous wine merchant.

Both Chaucer's father and grandfather had minor standing at court, and Geoffrey Chaucer's own name appears in the household accounts of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster and wife to Prince Lionel. As a household servant, Chaucer probably accompanied Elizabeth on her many journeys, and he may have attended her at such dazzling entertainment as the Feast of St.

George given by King Edward in for the king of France, the queen of Scotland, the king of Cyprus, and a large array of other important people. Chaucer had a high-born wife, Philippa, whom he probably married as early as Chaucer may also have had a daughter, Elizabeth, and two sons, "little Lewis" for whom he composed the Astrolabe, a prose work on the use of that instrument of an astronomer and Thomas. Chaucer was one of the most learned men of his time.

He made numerous translations of prose and verse, including Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy , saints' legends, sermons, French poetry by Machaut and Deschamps, and Latin and Italian poetry by Ovid, Virgil, Boccaccio, and Petrarch. American Poets Magazine. Poets Search more than 3, biographies of contemporary and classic poets.

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