Geoffrey Chaucer is a poet I feel to be really modern, somebody whose company I could sit down and enjoy. He was born shortly after 1340 and died in 1400. He had a sly, dry sense of humour, he was deeply religious but mocked superstition and credulity, he had travelled much, learnt foreign languages, had wide experience, was at ease with people of every social class, was the friend of royalty and nobility, and had studied science. All this appears in the most famous of his works, The Canterbury Tales, with its brilliant Prologue.

In all literature there is nothing that touches or resembles the Prologue. It is the concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, male and female, lay and clerical, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous, land and sea, town and country, but without extremes. Apart from the stunning clarity, touched with nuance, of the characters presented, the most noticeable thing about them is their normality. They are the perennial progeny of men and women. Neville Coghill

Chaucer does not actually describe the pilgrims who are on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket in Canterbury. We know them by the way they speak and act. Chaucer seems to lose himself in his characters. The stories they tell to pass the time on the road are elevated, affectedly refined or coarse and bawdy according to the people who tell them. Here is his description of the prioress, superior of a convent of nuns, obviously of common stock but now putting on airs of refinement, thanks to the great social mobility that was possible in the Church.

There was also a Nun, a Prioress,

That of her smiling was full simple and coy;

Her greatest oath was but by Saint Loy;

And she was clepéd Madame Eglantine.

Full well she sang the servicé divine,

Entunéd in her nose full seemely;

And French she spake full fair and fetisly,

After the school of Stratford atté Bow,

For French of Paris was to her unknow,

At meaté well y-taught was she withal;

She let no morsel from her lippés fall,

Ne wet her fingers in her saucé deep.

Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep,

That no dropé ne fell upon her breast.

In courtesy was set full much her lest.

Her over lippé wipéd she so clean,

That in her cuppé was no ferthing seen

Of greasé, when she drunken had her draught.

Note that words often do not have exactly the same meaning as in modern English; for example meat means food in general and very means true, authentic, adverb verily.

The brazen self-assurance of the hypocritical mendicant friar in the Summoner’s Tale appears when he enters the house of a peasant:

And from the bench he drove away the cat,

And laying down his pointed staff and hat,

His scrip as well, he settled softly down.

(The quotations in modern English are taken from Neville Coghill.)

He plays upon the credulity of the peasant’s wife when she tells him that their baby boy has died:

‘I know, I saw his death by revelation,’

Replied the friar, ‘in our dormitory,

I saw the little fellow borne to glory...

Our sexton and our infirmarian,

They saw it too, both friars boy and man

These fifty years, thank God. ...

I rose at once, in fact the entire place

Rose, and the tears were trickling down my face.

There was no noise, no clattering bells were rung,

But a Te Deum – nothing else – was sung.

The friar goes on in a way to suggest that such supernatural phenomena are normal occurrences in the friary he is begging for, thanks to the sanctity of its community and their powers of intercession with the Divine. The humour that follows is far less subtle, of a kind that the prioress no doubt pretended not to hear, but also shows that Chaucer knew something of the science of physics. Exasperated by the friar’s begging, the peasant, who is ill in bed, says that he has something for the friary hidden under his back, which however must be divided equally between all twelve members of the community. The friar puts down his hand, expecting to find a packet of coins, but receives instead a noisy blast.

Furious, he hies himself off to the castle of the local baron to complain of the disgusting behaviour of the lord’s serf, adding that to add insult to injury the man had said his donation should be divided equally among the twelve friars, which was impossible since “a fart or any other sound is only air reverberating round.” While the lord and his lady struggle to keep a straight face, an attendant page suggests a hilarious solution, one however not at all to the liking of the mendicant priest.

The Miller’s Tale contains humour that is far more bawdy, yet not merely obscene thanks to the wit and the skill in telling. One wanders what sort of scenes there were when Chaucer was reading these stories aloud to the royal court. The queen and her ladies must have been hysterical with laughter.

As far as women are concerned, in all literature and science of psychology, only one author stands comparison with Chaucer for understanding of a woman’s mind and that is Shakespeare. The introduction to the story told by the wife of Bath, where the boisterous good lady tells how she treated her husbands, is a masterpiece.

Like Shakespeare, we see that Chaucer was neither a tormented, lonely soul whose works were the result of inner brooding, nor one given to theories, schools of art and the egotistic satisfaction of standing on a lonely pedestal. Both enjoyed the real world and real people. How did Chaucer come to be such a happy extrovert?

He was born in a London small by modern standards but international, full of life and in a small space abounding with people of every description and following every kind of activity. He received an education in Latin in a school under the shadow of the 450ft high towers of St. Paul’s Cathedral (destroyed in the Great Fire of London and replaced at the end of the seventeenth century by the present monument of Sir Christopher Wren.). Then he mingled with merchants, clergy, lawyers and royal officials who thronged the shops, churches, law courts and taverns, and with the travellers from all over Europe alighting from the ships borne up the river Thames by the rising tide. He could cross the broad stream by London Bridge and gaze upon the mighty walls of the frowning Tower of London.

Records show that in 1357 Chaucer became page in the court of Lionel Duke of Clarence, second son of the reigning King Edward III, taking part in royal pageantry and learning polite manners and etiquette in the course of his duties. In 1360 he was made prisoner during the siege of Rheims in France and then released for a ransom paid in part by King Edward himself. He must have already been held in considerable esteem and in the same year was entrusted with letters from Calais for Duke Lionel.

Less is known about the next few years of Geoffrey Chaucer’s life, but apparently he prepared in the Inner Temple for his future career as an official by studying law, Bible, history, singing, dancing and such sports as were considered suitable in court circles. In 1366 he married Philippa, daughter of Sir Payne Roet, lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa of Hainault, and future sister-in-law of no less a person than John of Gaunt himself. In 1369 he saw more military service and subsequently visited Florence and Genoa, learning Italian and reading Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. He received more favours at home, where two sons were born to him. For twelve years Chaucer was Controller of Customs. He was confirmed in his post when Richard II became king in 1377 and was sent on missions to France and Italy. Other honours followed, the most important of which was becoming Clerk of the King’s Works, 1389-1391.

With all these heavy responsibilities, Chaucer became nonetheless the Father of English Poetry. Perhaps these duties and the contacts they involved explain an outstanding feature of Chaucer’s work; while strongly supporting orthodox faith and morals and all the virtues that make up a noble character, he showed kindly and amused tolerance of human failings and was never cruel or contemptuous. In short, his Christian conviction made him look on his fellow human beings with LOVE!

Appearing in NDU Spirit #43, revue of Notre Dame University, Lebanon.