of the Virgin concerning a boy murdered by the
Jews); two tales told by the pilgrim Chaucer that
effectively write him out of the competition,
Sir Thopas (a parody of popular romance) and
the prose Melibee (Prudence’s discourse on the
need for reconciliation, translated from a French
version of Albertanus of Brescia); Monk’s Tale
(the falls of great men from biblical, secular, and
contemporary history); Nun’s Priest’s Tale (the
beast fable of the cock and the fox).
VIII. Second Nun’s Tale (the life of St. Cecilia,
written earlier and incorporated into the Tales);
Canon’s Yeoman’s Ta l e (the autobiography of an
alchemist’s assistant and an account of alchemi-
cal frauds).
IX. Manciple’s Tale (of Phoebus and the crow, from
Ovid’s Metamorphoses).
X. Parson’s Tale (a prose penitential tract epito-
mized from Latin treatises); Chaucer’s Retrac-
tions (which combines recording the canon of
his works with revoking “worldly vanitees”).The various tales cover most possible source areas
(prose and verse, classical and contemporary, English
and continental, sacred and secular), fi ve prosodic forms
besides prose itself (couplets, rime royal, tail rhyme, the
eight-line Monk’s Tale stanza, and the virtuoso rhyme
scheme of the Clerk’s Tale “Envoy”), most available
genres, and a wide range of rhetoric and style. Each
tale also gives a distinct moral and linguistic reading
of the world and humankind’s goals within it, often
appropriate to its teller, in a way that makes the whole
work resistant to univocal interpretation.
Chaucer’s shorter poems and balades are a mixture
of serious and playful love poems, addresses to friends,
patrons, and a scribe, and moral and religious pieces.
Together with the Dantesque prologues to the Prioress’s
Tale and the Second Nun’s Tale, his strongest expres-
sions of Christian devotion are An ABC to the Virgin
(adapted from Guillaume de Deguilevilles’ Pèlerinage
de vie humaine) and the Balade de Bon Conseyl, also
called “Truth.” A longer fragmentary poem, Anelida
and Arcite, is notable for its technical experimentation.
Chaucer also wrote what is possibly the fi rst English
vernacular textbook, the Treatise on the Astrolabe; a
second, The Equatorie of the Planetis, may also be
his. Further works were falsely attributed to him in the
15th and 16th centuries, among them some antieccle-
siastical works that gave him a reputation as a proto-
Protestant.
Dissemination and Infl uence
No manuscripts of Chaucer’s works survive from his
lifetime, but they were widely copied throughout the
15th century. The Tales survives in some eighty manu-
scripts, Troilus in sixteen, The Parliament in fourteen,
Anelida in thirteen, The Book of the Duchess and The
House of Fa me in three. The Tales was among the fi rst
books printed by Caxton, and everexpanding editions
of the complete works appeared from 1483, notably
Thynne’s (1532), Stow’s (1561), and Speght’s (1598,
the fi rst to contain a glossary). Chaucerian scholarship
effectively began with Tyrwhitt’s edition of the Tales
(1775–78).
Chaucer’s infl uence made itself felt from his own
lifetime. It may show in works by his contemporaries
Froissart, Oton de Grandson, and Gower, though the
direction of the infl uence is unclear. Lydgate and the
“aureate” poets of the 15th century owed an explicit
debt to him, usually phrased in terms of his mastery
of rhetoric. Some of the major works of early Scottish
literature, such as The Kingis Quair and Henryson’s
Testament of Cresseid, would have been impossible
without him. Numerous poets, including Bokenham,
Hawes, and Skelton, praised the poetic trinity of Chau-
cer, Gower, and Lydgate. He was the leading model for
poetry throughout the 16th century, not least for Spenser,
until the Elizabethan poets established their own stan-
dards of excellence. His preeminence has never been in
question; he is the only ME author to have been read and
praised in an unbroken tradition. There have been many
adaptations and modernizations of his work, including
samples by Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth. His unique
combination of accessibility and depth is indicated by
has being the only poet to fi gure frequently both in
British primary school teaching and as a key example
in modern critical theory, and, in Pasolini’s Canterbury
Tales, as a box-offi ce hit.
See also Boccaccio, Giovanni; Dante Alighieri;
Gower, John; Guillaume de Lorris; Henryson, RobertFurther ReadingPrimary Sources
Benson, tarry D., gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3d ed. Boston:
Houghton Miffl in, 1987 [based on The Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer, ed. RN. Robinson].
Coghill, Nevill, trans. Troilus and Criseyde. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1971.
Ruggiers, Paul G., and Donald C. Baker, gen. eds. A Variorum
Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1979–.
Windeatt, Barry A., ed. Troilus and CriseydeA New Edition of
“The Book of Troilus.” London: Longman, 1984.
Wright, David, trans. The Canterbury Ta l e s. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985.
Secondary Sources
New CBEL 1: 557–628
Allen, Mark, and John H. Fisher. The Essential Chaucer: AnCHAUCER, GEOFFREY