Life of Chaucer

The following material was co-written with a former student teacher, Mr. James Steed, in 2003, before the days of the blog, when we used to cut and paste good ole fashioned handouts.  I'm getting Medieval on ya'll, going old school.

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1340, the son of a wine maker.  His father became a bottler, or butler, to King Edward III.

As a teen Geoffrey was made a page to the Countess of Ulster, wife of one of King Edward's sons.  In 1359 Chaucer served as squire to a knight in the invasion of France.  While at war in France he met two great French poets, Deschamps and de Machaut, and was captured.  (The details of this event raise some questions.  In the middle of a war he managed to get captured by two French poets?)  He was finally ransomed by King Edward.  The price of his ransom was sixteen pounds, or about $24.50 at current exchange rates.

Chaucer was not of royal stuff, but he was popular with the right people.  His poetry and personality seem to have kept him popular.  Reading his biographies I get the picture of a man of supreme wit, a man of great feeling for the broad spectrum of humanity.  In his day it was common to see hangings, beheadings, burnings at the stake.  Drawing-and-quartering, public whipping, blindings and castrations were normal punishments.  Prison meant being chained in total darkness for years.  An adulteress would be punished by having her nipples cut off, or by branding with a red hot iron on her forehead.  Chaucer, any day of the week, would have seen the hanged bodies of criminals, men, women and even children, left hanging for days, weeks, covered with flies, eaten by birds.  For him to protest such inhumane punishments would have been simply to to join them, hanged for being disloyal to the crown.

Chaucer avoided this.  He possessed a talent for seeing opportunity, getting ahead when others were losing a head.  One rumor has it that Chaucer's son Thomas was actually the bastard son of the king, placed in Chaucer's household to cover up the king's indiscretion.  Thomas never used Chaucer's coat of arms, but instead used his mother's.  (And he received many favors from the king.)  Chaucer stayed popular with the crown, living off a modest royal allowance.  Through his writing he brought sly wit, rich humor, and keen observation of the people around him and the bleak world he inhabited.