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:
“‘Woman is mannes joy and all his bliss.’
For when I feel a-night your softe side,
Albeit that I may not on you ride,
For that our perch is made so narrowe, alas!
I am so full of joy and of solace
That I defye bothe sweven and dream.’”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“And certes, if there were no seed ysowe,
Virginitee, thanne wherof sholde it growe?”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“I wol nat lye;
A man shal winne us best with flaterye;
And with attendance, and with bisinesse,
Been we ylymed, bothe more and lesse.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Alas! ye lordes, many a false flatterer
Is in your courts, and many a losenger,
That pleasen you well more, by my faith,
Than he that soothfastness unto you saith.
Readeth Ecclesiasticus of flattery;
Beeth ware, ye lordes of her treachery.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“I have yfounde in myn astrologye,
As I have looked in the moone bright,
That now a Monday next, at quarter night,
Shal falle a rain, and that so wilde and wood,
That half so greet was nevere Noees flood.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)