Geoffrey Chaucer :: Biographies Poet Poetry Essays

Geoffrey Chaucer Before William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer was the preeminent slope poet, and still retains the opinion as the most significant poet to write in Middle English. Chaucer was born in the early 1340s to a middle-class family. His father, can Chaucer, was a vintner and deputy to the kings butler. His familys financial success came from pass in the wine and leather businesses. Little information exists about Chaucers education, but his writings demonstrate a close familiarity with a number of all important(predicate) books of his generation and of earlier times. Chaucer was likely fluent in several languages, including French, Italian and Latin.Chaucer start-off appears in public records in 1357 as a member of the brook of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster. This was a conventional arrangement in which sons of middle-class households were placed in royal service so that they may obtain a imposing education. Two years later Chau cer served in the army under Edward iii and was captured during an unsuccessful offensive at Reims, although he was later ransomed. Chaucer served under a number of diplomatic missions. By 1366 Chaucer had get hitched with Philippa Pan, who had been in service with the Countess of Ulster. Chaucer married well for his position, for Philippa Chaucer received 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 urinate 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 familiar by the highly influential 13th-century French poem of courtly love, the papistical de la Rose, which Chaucer translated into English. Throughout the following decade, Chaucer continued with his diplomatic career, travelin g to Italy for negotiations to adequate to(p) 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 have profound influence upon his own writing. In 1374 Chaucer was ordained comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wool, skins, and tanned hides for the Port of London, his first position away from the British court.