Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabe for his ten-year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. He is best known today for The Canterbury Tales.
Chaucer's work was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.
“But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught; but first he folwed it himselve.”
General Prologue, l. 529
The Canterbury Tales
General Prologue, l. 295-300
The Canterbury Tales
Book 5, line 1793-1798
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
“For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde,
Ay fleeth the tyme; it nyl no man abyde.”
The Clerk's Tale, l. 62-63
The Canterbury Tales
“But all thing which that shineth as the gold
Ne is no gold, as I have herd it told.”
The Chanones Yemannes Tale, l. 16430
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Canterbury Tales
“Go, little booke! go, my little tragedie!”
Book 5, line 1798
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
Book 2, line 645-651
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
“Harde is his herte that loveth nought
In Mey, …”
The Romaunt of the Rose, Lines 85-86 http://books.google.com/books?id=bGhZAAAAYAAJ&q=%22harde+is+his+herte+that%22+%22nought+in+mey%22&pg=PA215#v=onepage
Book 2, line 1335-37
The earliest known near-usage in English of the proverb "Great oaks from little acorns grow."
Troilus and Criseyde (1380s)
“Wide was his parish, and houses fer asonder.”
General Prologue, l. 493
The Canterbury Tales
“Fie on possession,
But if a man be vertuous withal.”
The Franklin's Tale, l. 10998
The Canterbury Tales
“The firste vertue, sone, if thou wilt lere,
Is to restreine and kepen wel thy tonge.”
The Manciples Tale, l. 17281
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Canterbury Tales
The Knight's Tale, lV 2177 - 2186
The Canterbury Tales
