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Richard West.
Chaucer 1340-1400: The Life and Times of the First English Poet.
London: Constable, 2000.
ISBN 009479103;
ISBN-13: 9780094794108.
Hardback, stitch bound.
Printed in the EU.
164x240x27mm.
xvii,302pp.
Main language: English.
Unused bargain: some wear to the dustjackets on these copies.
[Paperback in print at £7.99]
661g.
First published in 2000, the 600th anniversary of the death of Geoffrey Chaucer. This first and some would say greatest poet of the English language stands at the gateway of the early modern age. He lived and worked at a time when French and Latin were at last giving way to English, not just as the vernacular, but now used in the law, and in literature - and his robust command of it has kept his work in the forefront of our literary consciousness ever since.
Richard West weaves a fascinating picture of an age in his quest to reveal the nature of this extraordinary man, whose own character has always puzzled lovers of his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales. How did he remain so apparently cheerful and serene, through one of the cruellest eras of history? As a child he survived the Black Death, later he fought in France during the Hundred Years War, served as a diplomat in Italy during the turmoil leading up to the papal schism, and became a Member of Parliament at the angry beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, the bloody Peasants' Revolt and the overthrow and murder of Richard II. The book begins and ends in Canterbury, the scene of Becket's martyrdom and a focal point of English history for more than two thousand years.
All these events are mirrored in Chaucer's work, as is his attitude to social phenomena such as fourteenth-century antisemitism and feminism - the latter caricatured in his immortal Wife of Bath.
Richard West sees Chaucer as the creator not only of English poetry, of the national character and humour, the forerunner of Shakespeare and Dickens - and in the cultural world, as the first Englishman.
Contents: Canterbury pilgrims; Edward III goes to war; Rise of the English merchant; Black Death - Chaucer & the Jews - Why it was soon forgotten; Chaucer as schoolboy & soldier; Romance of the Rose; Chaucer in Florence; Chaucer in Lombardy; Wyclif & the friars; Peasants' Revolt; Troilus - war & chivalry; Chaucer & the novel; The Knight's Tale; Wife of Bath on women & marriage; A trueborn Englishman.
Notes: no
Tables: no
Illustrations: 8 pages of monochrome plates
Maps & plans: 1
Genealogies: no
Chronology: yes
Glossary: no
Bibliography: 3pp
Index: yes
[BML/UB]
See also | Chaucer |
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