Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant. Chaucer is most famous as the author of The Canterbury Tales. He is sometimes credited with being the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language, rather than French or Latin.

See also The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde

Quotes

Ful craftier to pley she was
Than Athalus, that made the game
First of the ches: so was his name.
- The Book of the Duchess, l. 662

Soun is noght but air y-broken,
And every speche that is spoken,
Loud or privee, foul or fair,
In his substaunce is but air;
For as flaumbe is but lighted smoke,
Right so soun is air y-broke.
- The House of Fame, bk. 2, l. 257

Now purs, that be to me my lyves light,
And saveour, as doun in this worlde here,
Out of this toune help me through your might.
- The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse, l. 15

For I am shave as nye as any frere.
But yit I pray un-to youre curtesye:
Beth hevy ageyn, or elles mot I die.
- The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse, l. 19

Hard is his herte that loveth nought
In May.
- The Romaunt of the Rose, l. 85

Your yën two wol slee me sodenly,
I may the beautè of hem not sustene,
So woundeth hit through-out my herte kene.
- Merciles Beaute, l. 1

Sin I fro Love escaped am so fat,
I never thenk to ben in his prison lene;
Sin I am free, I counte him not a bene.
- Merciles Beaute, l. 37

Madame, ye ben of al beautè shryne
As fer as cercled is the mappemounde;
For as the cristal glorious ye shyne,
And lyke ruby ben your chekes rounde.
- To Rosemounde, l. 1

Therwith ye ben so mery and so iocounde,
That at a revel whan that I see you daunce,
It is an oynement unto my wounde,
Thogh ye to me ne do no daliaunce.
- To Rosemounde, l. 5

Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse,
Suffyce unto thy good, though hit be smal;
For hord hath hate, and climbing tikelnesse,
Prees hath envye, and wele blent overal.
- Truth: Balade de Bon Conseyl, l. 1

Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste, out of thy stal!
Know thy contree, look up, thank God of al;
Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede:
And trouthe shal delivere, hit is no drede.
- Truth: Balade de Bon Conseyl, l. 18

Parlement of Foules

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne,
Th' assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The dredful joy, that alwey slit so yerne,
Al this mene I by love.
- l. 1; cf. Hippocrates, Aphorisms 1:1 (Ars longa, vita brevis)

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh al this newe science that men lere.
- l. 22

Nature, the vicar of th' Almightie Lorde.
- l. 379

Now welcom somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres weders over-shake,
And driven awey the longe nightes blake!
- l. 680

The Legend of Good Women

A thousand tymes have I herd men telle,
That ther is joye in heven, and peyne in helle;
And I acorde wel that hit is so;
But natheles, yit wot I wel also,
That ther nis noon dwelling in this contree,
That either hath in heven or helle y-be,
Ne may of hit non other weyes witen,
But as he hath herd seyd, or founde hit writen;
For by assay ther may no man hit preve.
But god forbede but men shulde leve
Wel more thing then men han seen with yë!
Men shal nat wenen every-thing a lyë
But-if him-self hit seeth, or elles dooth;
For, god wot, thing is never the lasse sooth,
Thogh every wight ne may hit nat y-see.
Bernard the monk ne saugh nat al, parde!
- Prologue, l. 1

And if that olde bokes were a-weye,
Y-loren were of remembraunce the keye.
- Prologue, l. 25
  The 25 Good Women, quoted in Edward of Norwich, The Master of Game (ed. 1909), prologue: "By writing have men mind of things passed, for writing is the key of all good remembrance." Cf. Roman de la Rose (ed. Méon), l. 9669

And as for me, thogh that I can but lyte,
On bokes for to rede I me delyte,
And to hem yeve I feyth and ful credence,
And in myn herte have hem in reverence
So hertely, that ther is game noon
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon,
But hit be seldom, on the holyday;
Save, certeynly, whan that the month of May
Is comen, and that I here the foules singe,
And that the floures ginnen for to springe,
Farwel my book and my devocioun!
- Prologue, l. 29

Of all the floures in the mede,
Than love I most these floures whyte and rede,
Swiche that men callen daysies in our toun.
- Prologue, l. 41

That wel by reson men hit calle may
The 'dayesye' or elles the 'ye of day,'
The emperice and flour of floures alle.
- Prologue, l. 183

My lady cometh, that al this may disteyne.
- Prologue, l. 255 (Balade)

And she was fair as is the rose in May.
- Cleopatra, l. 30

Misattributed

Your duty is, as ferre as I can gesse.
- The Court of Love, l. 178

O little booke, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede?
- The Floure and the Leafe, l. 59

For iii may keep a counsel if twain be away.
- The Ten Commandments of Love, st. 7
  Cf. Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, act II, sc. iv, l. l. 186. Titus Andronicus, act 4, sc. 2, l. 144: "Two may keep counsel when the third's away." Herbert, Jacula Prudentum. Heywood, Proverbs, pt. 2, ch. 5. Franklin, Poor Richard (1735): "Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead."

Quotes about Chaucer

The father of English poetry.
—John Dryden

Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible;—he owes his celebrity, merely to his antiquity, which he does not deserve so well as Pierce Plowman, or Thomas of Ercildoune.
- Lord Byron, from a memorandum book dated 30 November 1807, in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, ed. T. Moore (1830), p. 36

The worshipful father and first founder and embellisher of ornate eloquence in our English.
- William Caxton, Epilogue to Boethius' De Consolacione Philosophie (1478)

Chaucer was one of the most original men who ever lived. There had never been anything like the lively realism of the ride to Canterbury done or dreamed of in our literature before. He is not only the father of all our poets, but the grandfather of all our hundred million novelists.
- G. K. Chesterton, Chaucer (1959), p. 34

As he is the Father of English Poetry, so I hold him in the same Degree of Veneration as the Grecians held Homer, or the Romans Virgil: He is a perpetual Fountain of good Sense; learn'd in all Sciences; and, therefore speaks properly on all Subjects: As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a Continence which is practis'd by few Writers, and scarcely by any of the Ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace. ... Chaucer follow'd Nature every where, but was never so bold to go beyond her.
- John Dryden, Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

'Tis sufficient to say according to the Proverb, that here is God's Plenty.
- John Dryden, Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

That noble Chaucer, in those former times,
The first enriched our English with his rhymes,
And was the first of ours that ever broke
Into the Muses' treasures, and first spoke
In weighty numbers, delving in the mine
Of perfect knowledge.
- Michael Drayton, Epistle to Henry Reynolds (1627)

He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
   The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
   Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
   Of lark and linnet, and from every page
   Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Chaucer", l. 9. The Masque of Pandora, &c. (1875)

One of those rare authors whom, if we had met him under a porch in a shower, we should have preferred to the rain.
- James Russell Lowell, My Study Windows (1871), p. 229

One... characteristic of medieval space must be noted: space and time form two relatively independent systems. First: the medieval artist introduced other times within his own spatial world, as when he projected the events of Christ's life within a contemporary Italian city, without the slightest feeling that the passage of time has made a difference, just as in Chaucer the classical legend of Troilus and Cressida is related as if it were a contemporary story. When a medieval chronicler mentions the King... it is sometimes difficult to find out whether he is talking about Caeser or Alexander the Great or his own monarch: each is equally near to him. ...the word anachronism is meaningless when applied to medieval art... in Botticelli's The Three Miracles of St. Zenobius, three different times are presented upon a single stage.
- Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934)

I read Chaucer still with as much pleasure as almost any of our poets. He is a master of manners, of description, and the first tale-teller in the true enlivened natural way.
- Alexander Pope, as quoted in Joseph Spence's Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men, ed. ‎S. W. Singer (1820), p. 19

Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled
On Fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be filed.
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Bk. IV, Canto ii, st. 32

Dan Geffrey, in whose gentle spright
The pure well-head of poetry did dwell.
- Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Bk. VII, Canto vii, st. 9

The morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;
Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "A Dream of Fair Women" (1832), ll. 3–8

It is pretty generally admitted that Geoffrey Chaucer, the eminent poet of the fourteenth century, though obsessed with an almost Rooseveltian passion for the new spelling, was there with the goods when it came to profundity of thought.
- P. G. Wodehouse, "Rough-Hew Them How We Will". The Man Upstairs, &c. (1914)