surviving the Black Death, the French wars, the Peasants’ Revolt, the Lords
Appellants’ challenge to Richard II, and Richard’s deposition by Henry IV. Chaucer’s
writing reveals nothing of these, nor of his personal life. His mother married three
times. He himself married Philippa, daughter of a Flemish knight; her sister later
became John of Gaunt’s third wife. Geoffrey’s sister was a nun. Long after he died in
1400, his son Thomas became the most important royal servant in England.
Geoffrey’s career as a king’s man was not unusual, but he was unusually good at
his other calling, writing English verse. His first lines show his command: ‘It is the
Romance of the Rose / In which the art of love I close.’ He enjoys his chosen task,
the translation ofLe Roman de la Rose, the famous 13th-century love-encyclopedia.
Its dreamer dreams that he wakes early and goes out into a May landscape, with a
garden whose outer wall is painted with figures: Avarice, Envy, Age and Poverty. The
gate is kept by the porter, Idleness. Within is the exclusive Garden of Love, with
Gladness, Mirth, Beauty, Riches and other courtiers, the God of Love, and the Rose.
Chaucer stopped at line 1704, others continued the work.
The early poems are based on French dream visions:The Book of the Duchess is
based on Guillaume de Machaut. Eustache Deschamps called Chaucer le grand
translateur. Chaucer cannot sleep; he reads to
drive the night away;
For me thoughte it beter play
Than play either at ches or tables. draughts
And in this bok were written fables
That clerkes had in olde tyme,
And other poets, put in rime ...
He falls asleep reading Ovid’s story of Queen Alcyone, who dreamed that she
sought her dead husband King Seys. He dreams that he awakes in a May dawn, in a
chamber whose stained glass tells of Troy and ofThe Romance of the Rose. Going out,
he sees a hunt,and is led by a hound into a wood where he meets a man in black, a
king who complains eloquently about his beloved, one ‘goode faire White’. Chaucer
asks sympathetic questions,which lead to the revelation that White is dead. The
hunting horn blows, the black king rides back to ‘A lang castel with walles white /
By seynt Johan’. This identifies him as John of Lancaster, whose wife Blanche had
died. Chaucer wakes with a book in his hand, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The House of Fame is a three-part vision in which the dreaming poet finds himself
in a Temple of Venus, its glass walls engraved with the story of Dido and Aeneas. In
Book II, Chaucer is carried up in the air by an Eagle who discourses on the theory
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 57Chronology of Chaucer’s works
before 1372 The first part of The Romaunt of the Rose
1368–72 The Book of the Duchess
1378–83 The House of Fame
1380–2 The Parlement of Fowls
1382–6 Boeceand Troilus and Criseyde
1380–7 Palamon and Arcite
c.1387 The Legend of Good Women
1388–1400 TheCanterbury Tales