{"id":822,"date":"2021-12-16T21:39:57","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T21:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/?page_id=822"},"modified":"2024-02-14T20:11:55","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T20:11:55","slug":"chaucer-a-biographical-portrait","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/chaucer-a-biographical-portrait\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaucer: A Biographical Portrait"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(miniature from British Library, Harley 4866, f. 88)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Introduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What follows is a brief account of the highlights of Chaucer\u2019s historical life. There is always a distinction to be made between this Chaucer and Chaucer the poet since the written records for these two people seldom intertwine. We have 499 documents that name Chaucer in his roles as a servant, bureaucrat and what we might call a legal person (as he was involved in various disputes recorded in court records) but they never refer to him as a \u2018poet\u2019.  We have over 100 medieval manuscripts that preserve Chaucer\u2019s literary writing in which scribes name him and he sometimes refers to himself but it is really on only one occasion that he refers to his life as a bureaucrat (falling asleep over his reading, after a hard day\u2019s work). There is some reason to say, then, that the historical Chaucer does not matter to any reader of his poetry and prose writings. But there is occasional overlap, and, even more interestingly, a distinct lack of engagement with the highly politicized and rich social world in which Chaucer moved. It can be as interesting to track these absences as it might be to try to tease out historical reference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much has been written about Chaucer\u2019s life elsewhere, and more detailed, but still short, accounts can be found in by Martin Crow and Virginia Leland in The Riverside Chaucer<\/em>, pp. xv-xxvi,  \u201cThe Life of Chaucer\u201d in the Oxford Chaucer<\/em> or by Christopher Cannon in \u201cThe Lives of Geoffrey Chaucer\u201d in The Yale Companion to Chaucer<\/em>, ed. Seth Lerer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 31-54 or by Christopher Cannon and James Simpson, in the \u201cThe Life of Chaucer\u201d in the Oxford Chaucer <\/em>(Oxford, 2023). For a more in-depth treatment, see Derek A. Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A critical biography<\/em> (Oxford, 1992) or the more recent, award-winning, Marion Turner, Chaucer: A European Life<\/em> (Princeton, 2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A useful bibliography of other articles and books on Chaucer\u2019s life can be found here on this Harvard website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timeline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While it is impossible to capture the rich unfolding of Chaucer\u2019s life \u2014 its cross-currents, contexts, and cultures \u2014 within something as flat as a list, this much-condensed timeline highlights some of the key dates in his life, and presents them alongside concurrent historical events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Timeline<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(miniature from British Library, Harley 4866, f. 88) Introduction What follows is a brief account of the highlights of Chaucer\u2019s historical life. There is always a distinction to be made between this Chaucer and Chaucer the poet since the written records for these two people seldom intertwine. We have 499 documents that name Chaucer in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":88,"parent":0,"menu_order":5,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-822","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2138,"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/822\/revisions\/2138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.krieger.jhu.edu\/chaucer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}