Talk:Geoffrey Chaucer

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[edit] Comments

I'd like to help with this the article's sourcing, spelling, fact-checking, whatever else is needed, etc. I'm not a registered user yet. Anything I can do? Queequeg79 (talk) 23:10, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

wow this article needs some serious work, lots of spelling errors...

Bear in mind, Middle English spelling is quite different from Modern English. Clevelander96 (talk) 18:06, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I changed The Roman of the Rose to the Romance of the Rose, which is misleading but at least in a single Italic textlanguage. I think that's the title used on most translations (both my copies are at the office). --MichaelTinkler

A "tenant" is someone who lives on somebody else's property. Chaucer isn't living in Poet's Corner, and I think the part he's using is probably his now. Would somebody please choose a better word for this? -- isis 31 Aug 2002

We should not forget the earliest extant original narrative we have by Chaucer, the dream vision called the "Book of the Duchess" (written before the "House of Fame" or the "Parliament of Fowls"). It fuses the genres of elegy and dream vision as never before (closest parallel being the theological allegory "Pearl"), and draws from the beginnings of several love visions by the French poets Machaut and Froissart, always setting the borrowed material in unexpected contexts, and deleting Love as the theme, thus setting up his own vision as a narrative description of the beginnings of Poetry -- maybe. Beware of those calling it derivative! Chaucer changes the whole ending of the story he borrows from Ovid's "Metamorphoses," and then uses its comedic potential to draw us uncritically into his siting of the origins of poetry in the Cave of Morpheus, the god of sleep. The poem's combination of beauty and oddity creates the inventive readers the rest of his poetry demands. Among the best of this poem's many imaginative readers are Wolfgang Clemen, Ellen E. Martin, A. C. Spearing. Wordsworth is indebted to it for some aspects of "Resolution and Independence" ("The Leech-Gatherer"), and Walter Scott alludes to it at length in his account of "The Antiquary." -- Jazzbojackson 06:11, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Which year was he born in? 1340 or 1343? --216.240.152.74 01:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

It is not known for certain. He says in 1386 that he is fourty years and more, while another comment suggests he was born after 1340 so 1343 is a traditional compromise date. I'll change the lead date to agree with the other two. MeltBanana 13:27, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Sorry for the major edit. The page is full of all sorts of small errors. Still left is the list of word coinages, which I assume is taken from the OED. The OED is a notoriously unreliable source for this kind of thing, because when it was written, the only consulted major works to find first usages, and so you tend to find the major writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and so on, being credited with the most introductions. Chaucer, in all likelihood, probably used the language that was around him, and is probably not responsible for many loan words or neologisms. Amans.

No need to apologise for your edits, someone as important as Chaucer needs all the editors he can muster, although I don't agree with all your edits. Chaucer did help to standadise the language just as all writers of the time did His influence in this area might be much smaller than is traditionally given to him but it is a well established and should be represented before being shot down. Also the word list is more to do with showing the importance of Chaucer in the corpus rather then as a crazed neologiser; I have tried to address this in the article.
One thing I have been thinking of adding that you may have some ideas on is a sample of his writing, probably the opening of the Tales. The only problem is finding a non-copyright source for a translation of the prologue for a side by side comparison. I though of offering my own translation but was worried I might do too much violence to it and breach the doctrine of no original research. If you have a good translation it might be worth adding. MeltBanana 01:10, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I only have this:
And when that April with his showers sweet,
Has quenched the drought of March in every root
And bathed each leaf and vein in that rich dew,
From which the flowers are born each year anew,
And when that Zephyrus with his sweet breath
Has so inspired in every holt and heath
The tender crops, and when the quick’ning sun
Has halfway through his course in Aries run,
And small birds are to melody inspired
To sleep all the night with wide open eyes
(So nature plucks at their hearts and spirit)
Then people long to go on pilgrimage
And palmers yearn to see strange sands,
To visit distant shrines in sundry lands;
And from each and every English shire’s end
To Canterbury all at once they wend,
To seek that martyr holy of heaven’s bliss
Whom aided them when they were all amiss
But it still needs work. And in any case, the problems you note arise. Incidentally, talking of new sections, I think that something on the development of Chaucer's versification might be appropriate: there is a very definite trend in the development of his style, similar to that of Shakespeare, which is hugely useful to know because it helps date his work. (Amans)
Yes a versification section with more detail in the development of his craft would be good. Although I doubt I could be of much help as meter and rhyme are details I have no great understanding of; I would not recognise a trochee if I fell over one. My own attempt at translating the opening of the Tales shows this by dispensing with the poetry and instead trying to do a word for word translation of the the difficult vocabulary.
When April with his showers sweet
Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquor
Of which virue is engendered in the flower;
When Zephyr also with his sweet breath
Breathed in to every wood and heath
The tender crops, and the young sun
Has in Aries half his course run,
And small fowls make melody,
That sleep all the night with open eye
(So Nature encourages them in their hearts),
Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
And pilgrims go to seek strange sands
To far shrines, known in sundry lands
And specially from every shire's end
Of England to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blessed martyr for to seek,
That has helped them when they were sick.
I'm not sure what is the best approach for a side by side translation but I don't know that original research should be too much of a concern, it is not like propounding a new theory. Also any non-copyright sources may well be a little too Victorian anyway. MeltBanana 16:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Need more on influence to present day. Much more can be gotten/linked to at TEAMS, especially on medieval Chaucer-influenced works. Dan Knauss

[edit] Suggestions

At the moment, some sections are far too large and unwieldy and need to be trimmed down and/or split, while other stubby sections could be amalgamated. I suggest:

0. Lead to be expanded to perhaps twice the current size

1. Life to have content split into 2 or 3 subsections

2. Works fine as stands

3. Influence: Chaucer's English section to be absorbed into Literary and Linguistic; Monuments and Tributes to be absorbed into Historical reception

4. Historical reception and representation to be renamed something snappier - Critical Reception or Critical Reputation (the latter is what they use over at FA Shakespeare); also, Printed editions needs to be drastically pruned...there may even be enough to spawn a new article, Textual/Publication History of Chaucer's Works or similar (if that were done, Manuscripts would go with it). Modern scholarship could do with expanding - I feel the Riverside Chaucer should be mentioned as the best modern edition, and a nod towards D.S. Brewer's prodigious work on Chaucer.

5. List of works and 6. Chaucer in Popular Culture can probably stay as they are for now.

I'll start doing the above bit by bit over the next week, please do lend a hand if you can. Thanks to Clevelander96 for his ideas on the above. Hadrian89 (talk) 20:36, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Chaucer in Kent

He is thought to have started work on The Canterbury Tales in the early 1380s (the Pilgrims' Way used by his fictional characters on their way to Canterbury Cathedral passes through Kent).

This requires editing. The Pilgrims' Way (so called - it's a prehistoric trackway, not a pilgrim route) runs from Winchester to Canterbury. Chaucer's pilgrims travelled from Southwark to Canterbury, and thus along the Watling Street which runs from London to Canterbury. (And since Canterbury is in Kent, any route used by Chaucer's pilgrims must, inevitably, have passed through Kent!)JMB196 (talk) 17:26, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I'll attend to that. Clevelander96 (talk) 00:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Remark

I love thy illustrious anglicus poeta, yet... you put Chaucer was a poet, a philosopher (?), a courtier, a bureaucrat, etc. etc. And Dante, for example, in thy opinion, merely "a poet"? A little unaware of the actual importance for western culture of a great lot of extra-anglophone people? It is not the first time I observe this incapability amongst people of the english speaking world and, therefore, in the english wikipedia. For instance, as soon as ye define "philosopher" Chaucer, ye ought to be conscious that Dante was very much more a deep thinker in comparison (and, indeed, even a political man, a scholar of language and literature, a courtier, a visionary utopian,etc.): and many other (non anglophone) writers could be described as "philospohers". Mr. Y.M.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.30.133.41 (talk) 20:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] O.E.-related comments: bone to pick

"Chaucer is credited by some scholars as the first author to demonstrate the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular English language, rather than French or Latin."

This comment does not provide the proper historical context in the language's near deprecation in England's occupation. Moreover, I would think that I'm not at all alone in thinking that the statement will be interpreted by most as inclusive of Old English, and thus is misleading.

"Although Chaucer's language is much closer to modern English than the text of Beowulf, it differs enough that most publications modernise his idiom."

This statement is trivial, given that Beowulf is written in Old English (ca. 5th-12th c.) and the subject at hand is the literary landmark of the boundary between Middle and Modern English. It's comparing two apples to an orange just because you can.

LokiClock (talk) 00:07, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Agree we should talk about the deprecation of English under Norman French rule -- and its resurrection during the era in which Chaucer wrote, and in no small degree on account of his work (along with that of Gower and the Pearl Poet). I will work on this.
But the comparison with Beowulf makes sense; it's being used as an example of very remote sort of English. Clevelander96 (talk) 01:25, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
It makes sense as an example of something remote to compare it to, but the comparison itself doesn't make a point, besides, "Well the English language 6 centuries ago is closer to the living tongue than it was 16-8 ago." If one just wants to make a remark on perspective, you could say something along the lines of, "while Chaucer's language may be updated by modern editions to ease intelligibility, Old English must be translated to be understood by a modern reader." But the way the statement is used in by the rest of the sentence is what bothers me. I don't know how to articulate it, but I'll say that it would be relevant to include the comparison if it were comparing it to, say, The Peterborough Chronicle. If you took out the comparison as is, but otherwise already understood that the older the form of the language the less intelligible to modern speakers, then the sentence would stand just fine. LokiClock (talk) 12:23, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
In a technical sense, I see your point -- but among general readers, no one has heard of the Peterborough Chronicle. When I teach my survey of British literature, it runs "from Beowulf to 1800," and between Beowulf and Chaucer the centuries pass in the blink of an eye; aside from a few snippets about the changes in English from William of Nasyngton and a sample of Layamon's Brut, it's pretty much a single leap. This isn't because there's not a great deal of interesting literature in the gap, but because most of it is either a) in French; or b) in a transitional form of English that's very hard for undergraduates to understand. No one teaches Beowulf in Old English in a survey class; most people teach Chaucer in the original language. That's really the contrast/gap here -- comparing one familiar canonical text with another which, for all these reasons, are more or less 'adjacent' to the average college English major, and by extension to the audience of non-specialists consulting the Wikipedia on the matter. Clevelander96 (talk) 14:54, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
How about a chained comparison, then? While Chaucer is more or X-much intelligible without aid, the Peterborough Chronicle Y-much obscure, and Beowulf mutually unintelligible with contemporary English. That way you have a reference point for change across period as well as that well-known reference age of disconnection. But if you only mention distant beginning and end states it doesn't say much meaningful at all. LokiClock (talk) 15:51, 10 December 2009 (UTC)
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