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Geoffrey Chaucer (/ ˈ tʃ ɔː s ər / CHAW-sər; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. [1] He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". [2]
There are records of an 'Adam Pynkhurst' (as it is usually spelled) from 1355 to 1399–1401. The earliest is a property sale by Pinkhurst, his wife Joanna, and another married couple in Dorking and Betchworth, Surrey; this suggests that he was probably born sometime in the mid-1330s at the latest.
Illustration of Robin the Miller, from The Miller's Tale, playing a bagpipe "The Miller's Tale" (Middle English: The Milleres Tale) is the second of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1380s–1390s), told by the drunken miller Robin to "quite" (a Middle English term meaning requite or pay back, in both good and negative ways) "The Knight's Tale".
"The Clerk's Tale" is one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, told by the Clerk of Oxford, a student of what would nowadays be considered philosophy or theology. He tells the tale of Griselda , a young woman whose husband tests her loyalty in a series of cruel torments that recall the biblical Book of Job .
Chaucer opens with the words "Lyte Lowys my sone". [16] [f] In the past a question arose whether the Lowys was Chaucer's son or some other child he was in close contact with. Kittredge suggested that it could be Lewis Clifford, a son of a friend and possible a godson of Chaucer's.
Chaucer worked, in part, from a translation of the Consolation into French by Jean de Meun but is clear he also worked from a Latin version, correcting some of the liberties de Meun takes with the text. The Latin source was probably a corrupt version of Boethius' original, which explains some of Chaucer's own misinterpretations of the work.
One question that splits critics is whether the Merchant's tale is a fabliau. [citation needed] Typically a description for a tale of carnal lust and frivolous bed-hopping, some would argue that especially the latter half of the tale, where Damyan and May have sex in the tree with the blind Januarie at the foot of the tree, represents fabliau.
Skeat is best known for his work in Middle English, and for his standard editions of Chaucer and William Langland's Piers Plowman. [7] Skeat was the founder and only president of the English Dialect Society from 1873 to 1896. [8] The society's purpose was to collect materials for the publication of The English Dialect Dictionary. The society ...