Chaucer, Geoffrey,Fourteenth-century English poet and public servant Geoffrey Chaucer wrote verse renowned for its humor, understanding of human character, and innovations in poetic vocabulary and meter. His masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), tells the tale of English people on a pilgrimage to Saint Thomas Beckets shrine at Canterbury. The pilgrims emerge as complex characters through the stories they tell and through their interactions, which serve as transitions between the different tales. This excerpt from the Tales (read by an actor) comes from “The General Prologue,” in which Chaucer introduces the characters and establishes the framework of the poem.,Chaucer, Geoffrey (1343?-1400), one of the greatest English poets, whose masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, was one of the most important influences on the development of English literature. His life is known primarily through records pertaining to his career as a courtier and civil servant under the English kings Edward III and Richard II.,Significance,Chaucer greatly increased the prestige of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic vocabulary and meters. He was the first English poet to use the seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter known as rhyme royal and the couplet later called heroic. His system of versification, which depends on sounding many es in final syllables that are silent (or absent) in modern English, ceased to be understood by the 15th century. Nevertheless, Chaucer dominated the works of his 15th-century English followers and the so-called Scottish Chaucerians.,For the Renaissance, he was the English Homer. Edmund Spenser paid tribute to him as his master; many of the plays of William Shakespeare show thorough assimilation of Chaucers comic spirit. John Dryden, who modernized several of the Canterbury tales, called Chaucer the father of English poetry. Since the founding of the Chaucer Society in England in 1868, which led to the first reliable editions of his works, Chaucers reputation has been securely established as the English poet best loved after Shakespeare for his wisdom, humor, and humanity.,From The Canterbury Tales By Geoffrey Chaucer,From the General Prologue Whan that April with his showres soote The droughte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veine in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flowr; Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne,Exercises,Brief Comment on Chaucers historical position in Br. Literature and The General Prologue . Analyze metrical form in The Canterburys Tales. Choose one ballad from the textbook and make a brief comment on the style of it.,