An Introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer

1. Chaucer’s Life and Times

1 Chaucer’s Life and Times Had his surname been translated, the Father of English Literature would be known as Geoffrey Shoemaker. The more elegant surname Chaucer, from the Old French chaucier, to shoe, derived from the Latin calceus, shoe, suggests that Geoffrey Chaucer’s forebears labored in the shoe and leather trade.1 The extant records of Chaucer’s life primarily address his administrative duties in royal households and public offices, and so it is difficult to discern a clear picture of his personal life beyond a fairly skeletal outline; nonetheless, it is clear that at some point the family switched their vocational interests from shoes to wine, for Chaucer’s father John was a successful wine merchant in London. In a document dated June 19, 1381, Chaucer refers to himself as “son of John Chaucer, Vintner of London,” and other such records illuminate the business interests and inheritances of his parents and grandparents.2 In an incident proving that medieval lives could be as melodramatic as modern soap operas, one of John Chaucer’s aunts kidnapped him at the tender age of twelve to marry him to her daughter, with the purpose of retaining assets within the family. It is fortunate for the history of English literature that John Chaucer did not marry this cousin but rather Agnes Copton, and their child Geoffrey was born in the early 1340s. Chaucer’s birth year has not been definitively ascertained, but in the Scrope-Grosvenor trial of 1386, in which two families contested ownership of a coat of arms, Chaucer testified that he was more than forty years old: “Geffray Chaucere esquier del age de xl ans et plus armeez par xxvii ans” [Geoffrey Chaucer, esquire, of the age of forty years and more, armed for twenty-seven years] (CLR 370). If Chaucer was older than forty in 1386, his birth year could be as late as 1345; most scholars agree on an earlier date of sometime between 1340 and 1342. No surviv- 2 An Introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer ing records detail Chaucer’s early childhood and education, but it is apparent from his court positions and literary endeavors that he was well educated. Learning in the Middle Ages focused on the Seven Liberal Arts, composed of the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the quadrivium (astronomy, geometry, music, and arithmetic), and Chaucer ’s literature reveals his extensive knowledge of these fields. In regard to languages, Chaucer was certainly a polyglot, who throughout his life was exposed to Latin, French, Italian, and English. Early records of Chaucer’s professional career include a document noting his position in the household of Prince Lionel and his wife Elizabeth de Burgh, Countess of Ulster. This receipt records the purchase of some articles of clothing for Chaucer in April 1357, as well as a small Christmas bonus (CLR 14–15). From these records, it appears that Chaucer served in a lowly position in the household, most likely as a page. Two years later he fought as a squire in Edward III’s invasion of France during early campaigns of the Hundred Years War; he was captured during the siege of Reims, and for his release the king paid a hefty ransom of sixteen pounds (CLR 23), which was the equivalent of almost 800 days of labor for a craftsman in the building trade.3 Chaucer disappears from court records during the period between 1360 and 1366, but he is recorded as a member of Edward III’s royal household in a document dated June 20, 1367, in which he receives an annuity (CLR 123). There is a general assumption that Chaucer studied law during this period, based on an intriguing incident documented in Thomas Speght’s 1598 edition of his literature: “not many yeeres since, Master Buckley did see a Record in the same house [the Inns of Court], where Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscane fryer [friar] in Fleetstreet.”4 This scene places Chaucer within a juridical environment, and the oblique reference to a legal education tangentially coincides with several points in Chaucer’s fictions, including his descriptions of the Sergeant of the Lawe (1.309–30) and the Manciple (1.568–86) in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Readers will likely never know why (or whether) Chaucer attacked this friar, but his satirical treatments of the Friar in the General Prologue (1.208–69) and in the Summoner ’s Prologue and Tale could likewise be traced...