The birthday of Geoffrey Chaucer, the first great English poet and - TopicsExpress



          

The birthday of Geoffrey Chaucer, the first great English poet and author of The Canterbury Tales, is unknown, and so we instead remember him on the anniversary of his death, this day in the year 1400. He was buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey in London, where he was a tenant and a member of the parish. Chaucers fame increased after his death. He was called the father of English poetry, and many other British poets began to be buried in the south transept of the abbey, which is now known as Poets Corner. Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, and Rudyard Kipling are all buried here; and William Wordsworth, John Keats, Jane Austen, and William Shakespeare all have memorials. Chaucer was born in the middle of the 14th century, to a wealthy merchant family. He joined the kings army and took part in a large-scale invasion of France in 1359. He came back to England, got married, and became a high-ranking royal official. He ran errands for King Edward III in France and Italy, where he read the classic literature of those countries. He began writing poetry and became a favorite of the kings, who in 1374 granted Chaucer a gallon pitcher of wine each day for the rest of his life. Not much poetry was being written in English during Chaucers time, but almost everything he wrote was in his mother tongue. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a series of stories told by an assortment of English men and women on their way to a pilgrimage site. The Canterbury Tales begins: Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tender croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (So Priketh hem Nature in hir corages), Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages ...
Posted on: Fri, 25 Oct 2013 11:56:31 +0000

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