Books by Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400) was an English poet, courtier, diplomat, and civil servant universally revered as the 'Father of English literature' and the greatest British poet of the Middle Ages. Living during the tumultuous era of the Hundred Years' War and the Black Death, Chaucer served the English royal court in various administrative and diplomatic capacities, traveling across France and Italy where he encountered the vibrant humanist writings of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. His crowning masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, framed an iconic pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury as a lively storytelling competition among travelers representing every stratum of medieval society. Composed in Middle English at a time when French and Latin dominated courtly and scholarly discourse, Chaucer’s verse demonstrated the rich poetic flexibility, psychological nuance, and humor of the English vernacular. His keen social satire, earthy realism, and technical virtuosity established the bedrock of the English poetic canon.