On several counts, one particular collection of French lyrics made in France in the late fourteenth century, University of Pennsylvania MS 15, is the most likely repository of Chaucer's French poems. It is the largest manuscript anthology extant of fourteenth-century French lyrics in the formes fixes (balade, rondeaux, virelay, lay, and five-stanza chanson) with by far the largest number of works of unknown authorship.
Translation of fifteen lyrics marked "Ch" found in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, along with a detailed inventory of the contents and a study of English and Chaucerian connections. When Chaucer began his service in the English courts in the late 1350s, the French lyric in the formes fixes of ballade, rondeau, virelay, and chant royal was the poetry of the court. Chaucer no doubt composed such poetry. Among extant anthologies of lyrics in the fixed forms from that time, University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, comprising 310 poems of which about half are anonymous, seems the most likely to contain works written by Chaucer. To add to the likelihood, fifteen of the best anonymous poems - ten ballades, four chants royaux, and a rondeau - have the intriguing initials "Ch" entered just beneath the rubrics. Besides editions and translations of the fifteen lyrics, Chaucer and the Poems of "Ch" provides a record of the numerous filiations of the Pennsylvania MS collection with Chaucer and England. This record includes text of a fascinating exchange of poems between Chaucer's early contemporaries, Philippe de Vitry and Jean de la Mote, the text of Granson's Cinq Balades Ensievans in the closest version extant to Chaucer's Complaint of Venus, and an analysis of the contents of the MS as they relate to Chaucer. Chaucer and the Poems of "Ch" concludes with a detailed inventory of this little-studied MS with particular note of Chaucerian aspects of it.
The Book of the Duchess is a surreal poem that was presumably written as an elegy for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster's (the wife of Geoffrey Chaucer's patron, the royal Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt) death in 1368 or 1369. The poem was written a few years after the event and is widely regarded as flattering to both the Duke and the Duchess. It has 1334 lines and is written in octosyllabic rhyming couplets.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer from Coterie Classics All Coterie Classics have been formatted for ereaders and devices and include a bonus link to the free audio book. “Then you compared a woman's love to Hell, To barren land where water will not dwell, And you compared it to a quenchless fire, The more it burns the more is its desire To burn up everything that burnt can be. You say that just as worms destroy a tree A wife destroys her husband and contrives, As husbands know, the ruin of their lives. ” ― Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales are collection of stories by Chaucer, each attributed to a fictional medieval pilgrim.
"More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life--yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales." -- Publisher's description.
Richard Neuse here explores the relationship between two great medieval epics, Dante's Divine Comedy and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He argues that Dante's attraction for Chaucer lay not so much in the spiritual dimension of the Divine Comedy as in the human. Borrowing Bertolt Brecht's phrase "epic theater," Neuse underscores the interest of both poets in presenting, as on a stage, flesh and blood characters in which readers would recognize the authors as well as themselves. As spiritual autobiography, both poems challenge the traditional medieval mode of allegory, with its tendency to separate body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus Neuse demonstrates that Chaucer and Dante embody a humanism not generally attributed to the fourteenth century. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1991.
