" Geoffrey Chaucer"

  "Geoffrey Chaucer"

Geoffrey Chaucer ( 1343 -London – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature, is considered the greatest English poet of the Middle ages and was the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner (Angolo dei poeti) of Westminister Abbey.


He was the son of a wine merchant and he worked as a controller of the customs for the Port of London and took part in important diplomatic missions.


He found employment in the house of John of Gaunt,son of King Edward III of England. In response to the death of John of Gaunt's first wife, he wrote one of his most important works, The Book of the Duchess.


One of his important poems is The Cantebury Tales (ca. 1387-1400). It is unfinished narrative poem and it tells the story of the Pilgrims. They went to Cantebury.

Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter, a style which had developed since around the 12th century as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. 

Chaucer is known for metrical innovation, inventing the rhyme royal l, and he was one of the first English poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter, in his work, with only a few anonymous short works using it before him.
What characterizes the poetic style of Chaucer is detachment (staccamento) from allegory and by the rules of the chivalric literature of the Middle Ages.(Norme della letteratura cavalleresca del Medioevo).


Some scholars also argue that Chaucer was the first author to have proved the legitimacy of English literature in the vernacular. In an era in which England poetry was written mainly in Latin, French and Anglo-Norman. Chaucer made use of the vernacular raising (elevando) the English language of his time to literary language.

Fact-file:

Born:Ca. 1343

London, England.

Died: 25 October 1400 (aged 56–57).

Resting place: Westminister Abbey, London.

Occupation: Author, poet, philosopher,bureaucrat, diplomat.

Spouse(s) : Philippa Roet.

Children: Elizabeth Chaucer and

Thomas Chaucer.

Parent(s): John Chaucer

Romeo and Juliet: The Sonnet Form

The Sonnet Form

Form:  Shakespearean form

Prologue: Poem with 14 lines in jambic pentameter. 

Specific ryme: (abab-cdcd-dfdf-gg).

It can be broken down  in  3 quatrains and a rhyming couplet.

-First quatrains: Introduces the poem and gives informations.

-Second quatrains:  Elaborates on the details.

-Third quatrains: Introduces the conflict.

-The rhyming couplet: Concludes the sonnet.

Prologue:

Two households, both alike in dignity, (a)

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, (b)

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, (a)

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. (b)

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes (c)

A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; (d)

Whole misadventured piteous overthrows (c)

Do with their death bury their parents' strife. (d)

The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, (e)

And the continuance of their parents' rage, (f)

Which, but their children's end, nought could remove(e)

Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage (f)

The which if you with patient ears attend,  (g)

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. (g)