Chaucer's Tale
1386 and the Road to Canterbury
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- 4,49 €
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- 4,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A lively microbiography of Chaucer that tells the story of the tumultuous year that led to the creation of The Canterbury Tales
In 1386, Geoffrey Chaucer endured his worst year, but began his best poem. The father of English literature did not enjoy in his lifetime the literary celebrity that he
has today—far from it. The middle-aged Chaucer was living in London, working as a midlevel bureaucrat and sometime poet, until a personal and professional
crisis set him down the road leading to The Canterbury Tales.
In the politically and economically fraught London of the late fourteenth century, Chaucer was swept up against his will in a series of disastrous events that would ultimately leave him jobless, homeless, separated from his wife, exiled from his city, and isolated in the countryside of Kent—with no more audience to hear the
poetry he labored over.
At the loneliest time of his life, Chaucer made the revolutionary decision to keep writing, and to write for a national audience, for posterity, and for fame.
Brought expertly to life by Paul Strohm, this is the eye-opening story of the birth one of the most celebrated literary creations of the English language.
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In 1386, when Geoffrey Chaucer lost his bureaucratic job in wool customs and the attached housing the little-known poet left his native London and began his remarkable work, The Canterbury Tales, in exile. Strohm, an emeritus professor of medieval literature at Oxford and Columbia Universities, focuses on this one significant year in Chaucer's life and covers his Aldgate neighborhood and London political intrigue in minute detail. Strohm relates Chaucer's themes in specific works to life in London, and uses both a current translation and the Middle English version for each selection, which makes it easy for modern readers to follow. An unforgiving portrait of Chaucer's royal brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, appears to be based largely on one contemporary source; in fact, Gaunt's patronage of Chaucer allowed him to live comfortably when his income ebbed, since the writer was either comparatively honest or inept at corruption. Strohm's well chosen public documents and contextual excerpts from Chaucer's work offer a glimpse into Chaucer's personal life and literary ambition as well as insight into the horrible year that launched his greatest work. Strohm really shines at literary criticism, which he saves until the end, but this work is probably best for those who already harbor a deep interest in medieval literature or history.
