Chaucer
Before the opening of the A2 Boughton bypass in 1976, Boughton lay on the main route between London and Canterbury. As well as this, having passed through the village and climbed Boughton Hill, it is the first place from which one is able to see the towers of Canterbury Cathedral if one is travelling from the direction of London. Due to this it is mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in 'The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue'.
Boughton under Blean is also mentioned in the context of Chaucer in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune: "For a time he amused himself by reviewing Chaucer's route from London to Canterbury, listing the places from Southwark: two miles to the watering-place of St. Thomas, five miles to Deptford, six miles to Greenwich, thirty miles to Rochester, forty miles to Sittingbourne, fifty-five miles to Boughton under Blean, fifty-eight miles to Harbledown, and sixty miles to Canterbury. It gave him a sense of timeless buoyancy to know that few in his universe would recall Chaucer or know any London except the village on Gansireed."
Read more about this topic: Boughton Under Blean
Famous quotes containing the word chaucer:
“O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up-groweth with your age,
Repeyreth hoom fro worldly vanitee,
And of your herte up-casteth the visage
To thilke God that after his image
Yow made, and thynketh al nis but a faire
This world, that passeth sone as floures faire.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340–1400)
“On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater than his reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shakespeare, for he would have held up his head in their company.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“With hym ther rood a gentil pardoner
Of Rouncivale, his freend and his compeer,
That streight was comen fro the court of Rome.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)