Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was one of the founding figures of English literature, a poet, diplomat, and royal official whose extraordinary command of language helped establish English as a vehicle for serious literary art. Born in London around 1343 into a prosperous family of wine merchants, he entered royal service as a young man and spent much of his life moving between the worlds of commerce, politics, and the aristocratic court. His travels through France and Italy brought him into contact with the literary traditions of continental Europe, particularly the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. At a time when Latin and French dominated learned and courtly writing in England, Chaucer chose to compose his greatest works in Middle English, revealing its remarkable capacity for humour, psychological subtlety, and poetic expression.

His masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, brought together a wonderfully varied company of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket, whose stories exposed the ambitions, hypocrisies, virtues, and absurdities of medieval society. Other important works, including Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and The Parliament of Fowls, explored love, fortune, dreams, and the uncertain relationship between appearance and reality. Combining classical learning with a profound sympathy for human complexity, Chaucer created characters whose voices remain startlingly alive across the centuries. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where his tomb became the centre of what is now known as Poets' Corner. Revered as the father of English poetry, his influence extends through Shakespeare, Spenser, and the entire subsequent tradition of English literature.