 Brought to you by Penguin. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Translated and with an introduction by Neville Cockhill Read by Leslie Manville, Derek Jacobi, Michael Balagon, Jay Bernard, Soroka Davis, Daniel Wayman and Roy McMillan Introduction I have translated some parts of his works only that I might perpetuate his memory or at least refresh it amongst my countrymen. If I have altered him anywhere for the better, I must at the same time acknowledge that I could have done nothing without him. John Dryden On Translating Chaucer Preface to the Fables, 1700 And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be? Alexander Pope Essay on Criticism, 1711 1. Chaucer's Life Geoffrey Chaucer was born about the year 1342. The exact date is not known. His father John and his grandfather Robert had associations with the wine trade and more tenuously with the court. John was deputy butler to the king at Southampton in 1348. Geoffrey Chaucer's mother is believed to have been Agnus the Copton, niece of an official at the Mint. They lived in London in the parish of St. Martin's in the Vintry, reasonably well to do, but in a humbler walk of life than that to be adorned so capably by their brilliant son. It is thought that Chaucer was sent for his early schooling to St. Paul's Almanry. From there he went on to be a page in the household of the Countess of Ulster, later Duchess of Clarence, wife of Lionel, the third son of Edward the Third. The first mention of Geoffrey Chaucer's existence is in her household accounts for 1357. She had bought him a short cloak, a pair of shoes, and some party-coloured red and black britches. To be a page in a family of such eminence was a coveted position. His duties as a page included making beds, carrying candles, and running errands. He would there have acquired the finest education in good manners, a matter of great importance not only in his career as a courtier, but also in his career as a poet. No English poet has so manily an approach to his reader. As a page he would wait on the greatest in the land. One of these was the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Throughout his life he was Chaucer's most faithful patron and protector. In 1359 Chaucer was sent abroad, a soldier in the egg, on one of those intermittent forays into France that made up so large a part of the Hundred Years' War. He was taken prisoner near Rince and ransomed in the following year. The King himself contributed towards his ransom. Well-trained and intelligent pages did not grow on every bush. It is not known for certain when Chaucer began to write poetry, but it is reasonable to believe that it was on his return from France. The elegance of French poetry and its thrilling doctrines of Amour Courtois seem to have gone to his impressionable amorous and poetical heart. He set to work to translate the gospel of that kind of love and poetry, though Romand de la Rose, a 13th-century French poem begun by Guillaume de Loris, and later completed by Jean de Meurre. Meanwhile he was promoted as a courtier. In 1367 he was attending on the King himself and was referred to as delectus valetus nostre, our dearly beloved valet. It was towards that year that Chaucer married. His bride was Philippe de Roe, a lady in attendance on the Queen and sister to Catherine Swinford, third wife of John of Gaunt. Chaucer wrote no poems to her so far as is known. It was not in fashion to write poems to one's wife. It could even be debated whether love could ever have a place in marriage. The typical situation in which a courtly lover found himself was to be plunged in a secret, an illicit, and even an adulterous passion for some seemingly unattainable and pedestalised lady. Before his mistress a lover was prostrate, wounded to death by her beauty, killed by her disdain, obliged to an illimitable constancy, marked out for her dangerous service. A smile from her was in theory a gracious reward for twenty years of painful adoration. All Chaucer's heroes regard love when it comes upon them as the most beautiful of absolute disasters, an agony as much desired as bemoaned, ever. Sample complete. Ready to continue?