The Life and Times of Chaucer.

Chaucer's Age

Chaucer's life in the Middle Ages would today strike us as queer and uncivilized in every way. In a time when French was still the more commonly used language, before English was to exhibit it's potential to be a language of intellectual conversation; or to be a language for nothing more than greeting a friend. The Middle Ages Chaucer lived in, as he shows through his work, was a time of unorthodox practices ranging from burning people at the stake, to public beheading. To label the Middle Ages as just mad would be a gross understatement, and as Chaucer shows us it was much more.
Chaucer was born, probably in London, around the time of 1340, three years after the start of the war Chaucer himself would later fight in and be taken captive as a prisoner of the French, called the Hundred Years War. Chaucer was placed, by his parents, in the household of the wife of Prince Lionel, a son of King Edward III, where he served as an attendant. Chaucer himself was familiar with a couple of different languages including French. Despite knowing these languages he choose to write his works and translate the works of others including “The Romance of the Rose”, a famous medieval French verse poem, Being one of the first great writers of the English language he made an enormous impact of both the language and literature of England. While reading works by Chaucer like “The Canterbury Tales” you get an idea of the kind of people that lived in the Middle Ages, was what their life was like. “The Canterbury Tales” is an excellent example of life in the Middle Ages because through the pilgrims on the journey to the shrine of Thomas a' Becket the whole of Middle Age society is represented from the knights down to the farmers. The sights and sound of horrific acts like people being drawn and quartered, public whippings, trials-by-combat, or imprisonment in chains and darkness without hope of deliverance was a common place in the streets of Middle Age cites. In Chaucer's time disease, filth, and plague was ramped, not a setting commonly associated with Chaucer, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante's work, all great minds who despite the general hobbled intellect of the time, the bubonic plague, and privative superstitions of the age still managed to write some of, if not the best works we have today. Chaucer's work paints the reader a clear picture of his world, not a distorted romantic version of knights and lades, but of a city with bird-scarred, fly bitten corpse lining the streets. If Chaucer was to take a walk about the city to clear his head or pass the time he would have been assaulted by the sights and sounds of torture and death, in a city where the corpse of men, women, and children were hung up in the street for their crimes, left to drape their shadows across the crowded city square. If the crime was political, the corpse would be tarred to prevent decay before full shame could be brought. It is difficult to imagine let alone believe Chaucer lived in such a barbaric age that even after the Italian Renaissance, a time of great achievement in art, music, and literature was as quirky and as eccentric as any character Chaucer could have written. Looking at the original “Canterbury Tales” that Chaucer wrote you see how the language of Chaucer's time was vastly different from today, as seen in the original intro compared to a version translated to modern English,

"When that Aprille with his showers soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote..."

"When in April the sweet showers fall,
And perice the drought of March to the root..."

A good deal can be said about the progression of language, customs, and society since the Middle Ages. Chaucer's age was very much a time of privative madness, but during this time many great works of literature were written, works that today are loathed by most in high school English classes, loved by many, and rivaled by none of todays writers. Chaucer's works helps the reader to understand the surroundings he lived, and worked in, and what a fascinating time it was.