Chaucer and His Times

Few poets have received more immediate and widespread recognition than Chaucer. Fifteenth-century poetry almost wholly dominated by his influence, and one united chorus of prais...

The sin of plagiary is a development of modern civilisation. To medieval authors, as to Elizabethan, the interest of a story lay in the telling, and while plot was of first-rate...

Like every other young poet Chaucer had to learn his trade, and in nothing is the development of his genius more clearly to be traced than in his treatment of character. The _Bo...

When Chaucer began to write, English literature was at a low ebb. The Norman Conquest had practically killed the old alliterative poetry, and the passion and mysticism of Old En...

The late fourteenth century was a time of social and political upheaval. The Church, over-rich and over-powerful for her own good, had become terribly corrupt. The fact that gre...

Critics may be divided in opinion as to Chaucer's right to be called the Father of English poetry, but there can be no question that he is the first great English humorist. As f...

"The biography of Chaucer is built upon doubts and thrives upon perplexities" according to one of the most famous of Chaucer scholars, and the more carefully we consider the evi...

From the earliest days of pre-Conquest literature, English poetry has always shown a strong feeling for nature. Nature, in those early days, has something wild and terrible abou...