The Portable Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Portable Chaucer by Geoffrey Chaucer

DESCRIPTION OF BOOK: CONTAINS THE CANTERBURY TALES AND THEFIVE BOOKS OF TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, AND HAS BEEN EXPANDED TO INCLUDE LARGER PORTIONS OF THE BOOK OF THE DUCHESS AND THE BIRDS' PARLIAMENT, AS WELL ASTHE SHORT POEM "NOBILITY".

“The most successful translations of Chaucer’s poetry that I have ever seen”—Chicago Tribune

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, the son of a wine-merchant, in about 1342, and as he spent his life in royal government service his career happens to be unusually well documented. By 1357 Chaucer was a page to the wife of Prince Lionel, second son of Edward III, and it was while in the prince's service that Chaucer was ransomed when captured during the English campaign in France in 1359-60. Chaucer's wife Philippa, whom he married c. 1365, was the sister of Katherine Swynford, the mistress (c. 1370) and third wife (1396) of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, whose first wife Blanche (d. 1368) is commemorated in Chaucer's ealrist major poem, The Book of the Duchess.

From 1374 Chaucer worked as controller of customs on wool in the port of London, but between 1366 and 1378 he made a number of trips abroad on official business, including two trips to Italy in 1372-3 and 1378. The influence of Chaucer's encounter with Italian literature is felt in the poems he wrote in the late 1370's and early 1380s – The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls and a version of The Knight's Tale – and finds its fullest expression in Troilus and Criseyde.

In 1386 Chaucer was member of parliament for Kent, but in the same year he resigned his customs post, although in 1389 he was appointed Clerk of the King's Works (resigning in 1391). After finishing Troilus and his translation into English prose of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, Chaucer started his Legend of Good Women. In the 1390s he worked on his most ambitious project, The Canterbury Tales, which remained unfinished at his death. In 1399 Chaucer leased a house in the precincts of Westminster Abbey but died in 1400 and was buried in the Abbey.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780140150810
ISBN 10	0140150811
Title	The Portable Chaucer
Author	Geoffrey Chaucer
Series	Portable Library
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	1977-05-26
Number of pages	624
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.