About Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet and bureaucrat who is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He lived from around 1343 to 1400 CE. His works inspired a generation of famous authors including William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and such.
Why is Geoffrey Chaucer Called The Father of English Poetry?
Geoffrey Chaucer was the first English poet to establish the legitimacy and potential of the English language as a medium for serious literary art. Before Chaucer, English was not typically considered suitable for poetry compared to Latin and French.
He greatly contributed to raising the prestige and standardization of English as a literary language at a time when it was evolving out of Anglo-Saxon into Middle English. His poetic works helped shape Middle English and influenced the future development of the language.
His most famous work The Canterbury Tales was written in Middle English and helped establish it as a literary language. It showed that English could be used in sophisticated poetic forms to discuss complex ideas and themes.
He introduced new poetic forms like rhyme royal into English poetry and showed the potential for narrative framing devices that influenced later poets. His verse forms set standards that became models for poets.
He had a profound influence on later English writers not just in medieval times but through to modern literature. Poets like Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare built on the advances he made in establishing English as a language of poetry.
He single-handedly revolutionized English poetry and laid much of the groundwork that allowed English to eventually develop into one of the world’s most rich and influential poetic languages. So he is justly recognized as the progenitor of English poetry.
Geoffrey Chaucer was the foremost English poet of the late Middle Ages and the founder of our poetic tradition.
References:
- Geoffrey Chaucer, Britannica.
- Who was Chaucer? The Guardian.
