Geoffrey Chaucer ( /ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, alchemist and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works, which include The Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde, he is best known today for The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer is a crucial figure in developing the legitimacy of the vernacular, Middle English, at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
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Famous quotes by geoffrey chaucer:
“A poore widow, some deal stape in age,
Was whilom dwelling in a narrow cottage,
Beside a grove, standing in a dale.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this new corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)
“when I see the beauty of your face,
Ye been so scarlet red about your eyen,
It maketh all my dreade for to dyen;”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“whan he rood, men myghte his brydel heere
Gynglen in a whistlynge wynd als cleere
And eek as loude as dooth the chapel belle.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Murder will out, this my conclusion.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)