What the records show
Geoffrey Chaucer is unusual among medieval poets because his life is documented in some detail, though not by literary sources. We know a good deal about him from official records: payments, appointments, witness statements and royal grants. These records show a working civil servant. They say much less about his writing, and we have no direct word about when he composed most of his poems.
Early life
Chaucer was born in London, probably in the early 1340s, into a family of wine merchants. His father, John, was a vintner, a member of the prosperous middle ranks of the city. The family was not noble, but they were comfortable and connected. By his teens, Geoffrey was in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, a member of the royal circle, where he served as a page. Such service was a common path into court life, and gave access to courtly manners, languages and patrons.
His youth fell during the Hundred Years War between England and France, and the plague years of 1348 to 1349 hit London when he was a child. The Black Death killed a large share of the population, though estimates vary. Chaucer rarely mentions it, and we cannot say how it affected his family directly.
Soldier, servant, diplomat
In 1359 and 1360, Chaucer served in an English military expedition to France and was captured. Edward III contributed to the ransom that freed him, which suggests he was already valued. From the 1360s he was a member of the royal household. He married Philippa, a lady of the queen’s household, and her sister later became the partner and eventually the wife of John of Gaunt, the powerful son of Edward III. This tie to Gaunt linked Chaucer to one of the major political families of the age, and the poet’s later fortunes rose and fell partly with Gaunt’s.
Chaucer traveled abroad on royal business. He was sent to France and, in the 1370s, to Italy, including visits to Genoa and Florence. These journeys exposed him to Italian poetry. Historians generally agree that he came to know the work of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, though exactly when and how deeply is debated.
A public career in London
From 1374 Chaucer held the post of controller of customs on wool and hides in the Port of London, a significant job in a wool-exporting country. He lived in rooms above one of the city gates, Aldgate, for a time. He later served as a justice of the peace and as a member of Parliament for Kent in the 1380s. In 1389 he was appointed clerk of the king’s works, in charge of royal building projects. His career was not smooth. He lost some posts when political fortunes changed, and had periods of debt.
He lived through major events. The Peasants Revolt of 1381 affected London directly, when rebels entered the city. Chaucer does not describe it in his poems, except for a light allusion in one tale. He also lived under Richard II, who was deposed in 1399. When Henry IV took the throne, Chaucer’s pension was confirmed, a sign that he moved safely between regimes. He died in 1400 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in a place that later became known as Poets’ Corner.
Language and audience
Chaucer wrote at a time when English was gaining ground as a language of literature. French had long been the language of the English upper class, and Latin was the language of the church and learning. By the later fourteenth century, English was widely spoken at all levels, and was becoming more acceptable for serious writing. Chaucer chose it for his major poems, which suggests an audience that valued it. Other writers were doing the same, including the author of Piers Plowman and the poet who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, so he was one of several, not a lone pioneer.
His readers were probably courtiers, civil servants, lawyers and wealthy Londoners, men and women who shared his world. The poems seem to assume listeners who enjoy wordplay, understand classical references and know the pleasures and annoyances of court. They were read aloud, and at least one early manuscript is thought to show Chaucer reading to an audience, though that image is idealized. The language of his poems is Middle English as spoken in London, and the dialect helped make it a model for later writers.
Writing
His early poems drew on French models, such as the dream vision. The Book of the Duchess is widely thought to mourn Blanche, John of Gaunt’s first wife. Later work reflects his reading in Italian, and Troilus and Criseyde and the Canterbury Tales are his two major achievements. He also wrote scientific prose, including a treatise on the astrolabe, and translated the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.
Chaucer’s reputation grew after his death. Fifteenth-century poets called him a master, and Caxton printed the Canterbury Tales in the 1470s. Whatever he made of his own work, which he questions in a closing retraction, it quickly became a standard.
A life between worlds
Chaucer was neither a nobleman nor a craftsman. He was a middle-ranking official who lived close to power without holding it. That position, at the meeting point of city and court, may help explain the range of characters in his poems and the mix of respect and irony in the way he treats them. Whether it did is a matter of interpretation, because he never explains himself.