Geoffrey Chaucer :: Biographies Poet Poetry Essays

Geoffrey Chaucer Before William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer was the preeminent English poet, and still retains the agency as the most significant poet to write in Middle English. Chaucer was born(p) in the early 1340s to a middle-class family. His father, John Chaucer, was a vintner and deputy to the moguls butler. His familys financial success came from work in the wine and lash businesses. Little information exists about Chaucers education, but his writings demonstrate a close familiarity with a number of im interfaceant books of his contemporaries and of earlier times. Chaucer was apt(predicate) fluent in several languages, including French, Italian and Latin.Chaucer first appears in human race records in 1357 as a member of the house of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster. This was a established arrangement in which sons of middle-class households were placed in royal table service so that they may obtain a courtly education. Two long tim e later Chaucer served in the army under Edward III and was captured during an unsuccessful funky at Reims, although he was later ransomed. Chaucer served under a number of diplomatical missions. By 1366 Chaucer had married Philippa Pan, who had been in service with the Countess of Ulster. Chaucer married well for his position, for Philippa Chaucer genuine an annuity from the queen consort of Edward III. Chaucer himself secured an annuity as yeoman of the king and was listed as one of the kings esquires.Chaucers first published work was The Book of the Duchess, a poem of over 1,300 lines that is an elegy for the Duchess of Lancaster. For this first of his important poems, which was published in 1370, Chaucer used the dream-vision form, a genre made popular by the exceedingly influential 13th-century French poem of courtly love, the Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated into English. passim the following decade, Chaucer continued with his diplomatic career, traveling to Ital y for negotiations to open a Genoa port to Britain as well as military negotiations with Milan. During his missions to Italy, Chaucer encountered the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, which were later to take a leak profound influence upon his own writing. In 1374 Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the usage and subsidy of wool, skins, and tanned hides for the Port of London, his first position away from the British court.