Chaucer brought a new way of looking at words to England. He commanded the field of writing. His work was like a revolution in itself. In a time and place where few people could write, and the predominant language was French, Chaucer emerged with his story-telling and poetic brilliance, and transformed a language into an art.
Geoffrey Chaucer was born around 1342. His father was a wine merchant, who occasionally worked in the royal administration. Historians have few records of Chaucer’s life. These show that in about 1357, Chaucer served as a page and was educated as a squire in the household of Prince Lionel. He went to France with Lionel in around 1360 and was taken prisoner by the French. He was ransomed, and for a while there is a gap in what we know of his life.
He began work as a translator, since he knew French, and the first record we have of his writing is an attempt to translate some of the French love-allegory le Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose). His first real work was The Book of the Duchess.
Chaucer was recognized as a great poet in both England and France. His masterpiece, the Canterbury Tales, is considered a classic piece of literature. His writing is usually humorous, sometimes mocking people who claimed to know French and Latin, and often expressing personally observed truths of life.
When Chaucer was alive, few people in England could read or write. Although he was highly educated in that respect, the words he used are different from the words we see today, because the language was different, there was no spelling. An example of this is several verses from House of Fame:
For when thy labour doon al ys,
And hast mad alle thy rekenynges,
In stede of reste and newe thynges,
Thou goost hom to thy hous anoon;
And also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another book
There were no rules in Chaucer’s time for the English language. A noun could be a used as a verb, or an adjective as a noun, or a verb as an adjective. Half the words we know today were not known back then. Although England was ruled by a French government and French was the official language, Chaucer wrote in English. He mixed his knowledge of a history of many different languages with the richness of humor, and produced delicately entertaining, witty writing.
Between 1372 and 1382, Chaucer wrote many works that depicted a moral and pious phase, touched with humor, observation and romance. Although his spelling and abstract way of writing at first appears baffling, once observed carefully one can see that many of the words are the same and can be easily translated. For example, in Knight’s Tale:
Love is a gretter lawe, by my pan,
Than may be yeve to any erthly man.
This can be translated to:
Love is greater law, by my brain-pan,
Than may be given to any earthly man.
Tags: canterbury tales, geoffrey chaucer