Biography chaucer geoffrey pilgrim
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(1343-1400) The Greatest English Poet of the Middle Ages
Chaucer is widely acknowledged to be the father of English literature, and his best known work, the Canterbury Tales (Image 1), describes a group of pilgrims telling stories whilst making their way to visit Becket’s shrine at Canterbury cathedral. Across the modern city, Chaucer’s name is widely associated with hotels (Image 2), exhibitions (Image 3), a college (Image 4), a hospital and businesses (Image 5). Street name associations abound – in addition to Chaucer Road, Chaucer Close and Chaucer Mews, we find Wife of Bath Hill, Pardoner’s Close, and many others linked to character appearing in the Canterbury Tales.
The city museum shows examples of pilgrim badges (Image 6) and necklace phials used for carrying supposed dilutions of Becket’s blood (Image 7) – both are mentioned in the Tales. No other individual name is stamped so indelibly on the face of the city.
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E. Talbot Donaldson - "Chaucer the Pilgrim
VERISIMILITUDE in a work of fiction fryst vatten not without its attendant dangers, the chief of which fryst vatten that the responses it stimulates in the reader may be those appropriate not so much to an imaginative production as to an historical one or to a piece of reporting. History and reporting are, of course, honorable in themselves, but if we react to a poet as though he were an historian or a reporter, we do him somewhat less than justice. I am beneath the impression that many readers, too much influenced by Chaucer's brilliant verisimilitude, tend to regard his famous pilgrimage to Canterbury as significant not because it is a great fiction, but because it seems to be a remarkable record of a fourteenth-century pilgrimage. A remarkable record it may be, but if we treat it too narrowly as such there arc going to be certain casualties among the elements that make up the fiction. Perhaps first among these elements is the fictional rep
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Geoffrey Chaucer is widely regarded as England’s greatest medieval poet and has been called the father of the English language. Despite a great deal of scholarship, the exact details of Chaucer’s life are far from klar. The following provides an introduction to some of the key known moments in Chaucer’s life.
Early Life
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London c. 1340 to John Chaucer, a London wine merchant, and his wife Agnes. John and Agnes owned a house on Upper Thames Street which stands today between London Bridge and Monument Stations. John Chaucer supplied wine to King Edward III’s court and through this royal contact the young Geoffrey was employed in the household of Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster and wife of Lionel, a son of Edward III. In April 1357 he was granted a set of clothes and 2s. 6d. – suggesting he may have been a page in the household. Nonetheless, even at a ung age Chaucer was in an excellent position to observe people from across the socia