Terry
Jones.
Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery.
London:
Methuen,
2003.
Hardback ISBN
0413759105.
Publisher's
recommended price £20.00
With
Robert F. Yeager,
Terry Dolan, Alan Fletcher and Juliette Dor: A ground-breaking
historical
whodunnit about the mysterious death of England's greatest medieval
writer.
In
this enthralling
work of historical speculation Terry Jones investigates the mystery
surrounding
the death of Geoffrey Chaucer over 600 years ago. A diplomat, and
brother-in-law
to John of Gaunt - one of the most powerful men in the kingdom -
Chaucer
was celebrated as his country's finest living poet, rhetorician and
scholar:
the pre-eminent intellectual superstar of his time. And yet nothing at
all is known of his death.
In
1400 his name
simply disappears from the record. We don't know how he died, where or
when; there is no official confirmation of his death and no chronicle
mentions
it; no notice of his funeral or burial. He left no will and there's
nothing
to tell us what happened to his estate. He didn't even leave any
manuscripts.
How could this be?
What
if he was
murdered? What if he and his writings had become politically
inconvenient
in the seismic social shift that occurred with the overthrow of the
liberal
Richard II by the reactionary, oppressive regime of Henry IV. Would the
dogs of suppression, unleashed by Archbishop Arundel, have been
snapping
at the heels of a dangerous poet?
Written
with a
team of international Chaucer scholars, Terry Jones' daring and
controversial
hypothesis is the introduction to a remarkable reading of Chaucer's
writings
as evidence that might be held against him, interwoven with a brilliant
portrait of one of the most turbulent periods in English history, its
politics
and its personalities. Combining revelatory scholarship with the flair
for narrative that marks all his work, the result is an absorbing
synthesis
of history and literary analysis that is sure to be essential reading
for
years to come.
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