Geoffrey Chaucer (1342/ Write, official and bureaucrat, the outstanding English poet before William Shakespeare Chaucer made a crucial contribution to English literature in writing in English at a time when much court poetry was still composed in Anglo-Norman or Latin. Although he spent one of two brief periods of disfavor, Chaucer lived the whole of his life close the centers of English power.

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London. Chaucer was the son of a prosperous wine merchant and deputy to the kings's butler, and his wife Agnes. Little is known of his early education, but his works show that he could read French, Latin, and Italian. There exists no memoirs of Chaucer, but Canterbury Tales perhaps gives a sight of the writer:

Between 1367 and 1378 Chaucer made several journeys abroad on diplomatic and commercial missions. It is possible that he met Giovanni Boccaccio or Petrarch in pre-Renaissance Italy in And it is said that the example of Dante gave him the idea of writing in the vulgar English rather than in the court French of the day

In 1374 he became a government official at the port of London, During that time he was charged with rape, but his guilt or innocence has never been determined. In 1380 he paid Cecile Champaigne for withdrawing the suit. In 1385 he lost his employment and rent-free home, and moved to Kent where he was appointed as justice of the peace. He was also elected to Parliament. This was a period of great creativity for Chaucer, during which he produced most of his best poetry, among others Troilus and Cressida (c. 1385), based on a love story by Boccaccio.

The last years of his life Chaucer lived at Greenwich, "an Inne of Shrews," as the Host calls it in the Canterbury Tales, referring perhaps to the occasion when he was held up or mugged there, not once but twice in the same day. Chaucer died in London on October 25, Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the part of the church which afterwards came to be called Poet's Corner. Virtually all the surviving manuscripts of his work date from the fifteenth century. A monument was erected to him in 1555.

Chaucer took his narrative inspiration for his works from several sources, such as the Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Loris, Ovid's poems, and such Italian authors as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Chaucer's writing developed from a period of French influence in the late 1360s, through his 'middle period' of both French and Italian Influences, to the last period.

French Period His first narrative poem, The Book of the Duchess, was probably written shortly after the death of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, first wife of John Gaunt, in September It was based largely on French sources, particularly The Roman de la Rose and several works of Guillaume de Machaut.

Italian Period Chaucer's second period (up to c.1387) is called his Italian period because during this time his works were modeled primarily on Dante and Boccaccio. Major works of the second period include The House of Fame, recounting the adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy; T The Parliament of Fowls, which tells of the mating of fowls on St. Valentine's Day and is thought to celebrate the betrothal of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia; and a prose translation of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae.

Also among the works of this period are the unfinished Legend of Good Women, a poem telling of nine classical heroines, which introduced the heroic couplet into English verse In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer perfected the seven-line stanza later called rhyme royal.

English Period Chaucer did not begin working on the Canterbury Tales until he was in his early 40s. The book, which was left unfinished when the author died, has a framing narrative like much medieval literature. It depicts a pilgrimage by some 30 people, who are going on a spring day in April to the shrine of the martyr, St. Thomas Becket.On the way to and from Canterbury they amuse themselves by telling stories. Harry Bailly, the innkeeper, promises a free meal for the best storyteller. Chaucer himself knew well the road and its inns.

The rather democratic band of pilgrims consists of unprivileded and aristocrats - there is a knight, a monk, a prioress, a plowman, a miller, a merchant, a clerk, and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. It must be remembered, that Chaucer himself did not belong even to the minor nobility, but from his youth he was used to associate with highly influential people.

Chaucer's innovation was to use such a diverse assembly of narrators, whose stories are interrupted and interlinked with interludes in which the characters talk with each other, revealing much about themselves. His sources included Boccaccio's Teseida, on which he based ‘The Knight’s Tale,’ The Wedding of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. He never mentions Decamerone, which he perhaps never read thoroughly. The rhyming verse was written in what is called Middle English, an old form of the language that differs from the English used today, but Chaucer's style and techniques were imitated through centuries.

The pilgrims' tales include a variety of medieval genres from the humorous fabliau to the serious homily, and they vividly indicate medieval attitudes and customs in such areas as love, marriage, and religion. Through Chaucer's superb powers of characterization the pilgrims—such as the earthy wife of Bath, the gentle knight, the worldly prioress, the evil summoner—come intensely alive. Chaucer was a master storyteller and craftsman, but because of a change in the language after 1400, his metrical technique was not fully appreciated until the 18th cent. Only in Scotland in the 15th and 16th cent. did his imitators understand his versification