CHAUCER
By Richard West

Constable - 2000
ISBN 0094794103 - HB
Nonfiction / History

Reviewed by: Rachel Hyde, MyShelf.Com
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Chaucer is well known as the author of The Canterbury Tales, but what else do we know about him?  This year is the 600th anniversary of his death and many people have compared the times we live in with the 14th century with its great social changes, wars and plagues, the beginnings of the religious divide and peasants revolting at the Poll Tax.  Chaucer lived through all this and yet managed to stay cheerful and even define the English character with his witty caricatures, and gave us possibly the earliest example of humor in our own recognizable language.  Richard West paints a vivid portrait not only of the man himself but of the times he lived through.  And what an eventful life it was - he lived through the plague, worked for John of Gaunt, was at the Siege of Rheims where he was captured and ransomed by Edward III, went on diplomatic missions to Italy, witnessed the Peasants Revolt and was appointed Justice of the Peace in Kent.

Interspersed between these events and those happening around him West also tells of the writers who influenced him - for example two French poets who were defending Rheims - and the immortal Roman de la Rose which Chaucertranslated into English.  The themes encountered in Chaucer's work are examined too - was he a misogynist and a Jew-hater or is this judging him unfairly for being a product of his times?  He wrote of war and chivalry, religion, romance and humor.  In Troilus and Criseyde we see the early gleaming of what will become the English Novel with plot, character development and the dispensing of a conventional happy ending for something more realistic and perhaps satisfying; West even compares the story to Casablanca, the nearest modern parallel.  For we still enjoy today the same type of stories that Chaucer told, and he was continuing a tradition that looks backwards to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her Courts of Love where
troubadours sang of Arthur and pined away for the love of some fair damsel. And of course we love to laugh and read of current affairs.Chaucer gave us all this and more and in this book Richard West tells us all about his life and times.  It's a big task and of course there is a lot that isn't covered but this isn't supposed to be the ultimate scholarly opus - it is however a book that will appeal to anybody who wants to know more about Chaucer and his age and doesn't already know very much.  The last chapter of Notes for Further Reading could have been a little longer and fuller - a few websites might not have gone amiss either.  But this aside when I put the book down I felt I knew a lot more about  - as the book is subtitled on the cover – the life and times of the first English Poet.

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