Geoffrey Chaucer
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 containing the words geoffrey chaucer, geoffrey and/or chaucer:
“Macrobius, that writ the avision
In Afrique of the worthy Scipio,
Affirmeth dreams, and sayeth that they been
Warning of thinges that men after seen.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“I change, and so do women too;
But I reflect—which women seldom do.
Tobacco is a filthy weed,
That from the devil doth proceed;
That drains your purse, that burns your clothes,
That makes a chimney of your nose.”
—Anonymous. “Written on a Looking Glass,” from Geoffrey Grigson’s Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, Faber & Faber (1977)
“Curteis he was, lowely, and servysable,
And carf biforn his fader at the table.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)