Chaucer: A European Life

Written by Marion Turner

Narrated by Marion Turner

A groundbreaking biography that recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English poets More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the center of political life?yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781980035886

Reviews for Chaucer

[QO · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is excellent: Turner's research is deep and close-reading is excellent, brimming with insights. Honestly, this is an extremely productive achievement. Overall, much-needed in the field of Chaucer studies.

[Michael Steger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An astonishingly good book, not only on Chaucer but on 14th C England and Europe. And an excellent reading. It is a real pleasure to listen to the author read the Middle English passages.

[waltzmn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Middle English was a language very much in flux when Geoffrey Chaucer came and reshaped the language. So maybe, by "biography," Marion Turner meant "geography."As in, this is a "Life" of Chaucer largely organized by places, not by events -- the chapters range from "Vintry Ward, London" to "Lancaster," "Genua and Florence," "Milky Way" (!), "South of the Thames," to the final "Tomb." It's an impressive way to show all the places Chaucer went, and all the areas his mind explored. As Turner says in the very last sentence, "I've written about many of Chaucer's places in this book -- one of those places being the here and the now." Hard to deny, of the person who gave English its first great work, who wrote what are still the greatest romances extant in the language, who, for pity's sake, brought iambic pentameter into English!This is a masterful view of Chaucer's world; I learned a tremendous amount.The only question is... did I learn about Chaucer? Turner explicitly denies trying to understand Chaucer, because (as she correctly points out) we have no real contact with Chaucer the person; we have his writings (some of them; some, such as the Book of the Lion, have been lost) and we have various references to activities, but we don't have direct statements about who he was.And yet, the writings do tell us something; it is clear that Chaucer was extremely clever, quite knowledgeable, generally open-minded, inventive, and humorous. He was also, probably, cautious and sometimes a bit of a worry-wart. And, I think, he sometimes made social assumptions that were not correct. This fact might throw light on such things as the charge of raptus against him (which does not automatically mean "rape"; it might mean that he went off with a girl, even helping her escape an abusive situation. Which might make some sense for the most feminist writer of the English Middle Ages).I also think that Turner makes occasional gratuitous assumptions. The most obvious one being that Chaucer wrote the end of the Canterbury Tales "at the end" -- i.e. that it was the last thing written. I am not saying this is definitely wrong -- but there is certainly an alternative. I, for instance, don't write linearly; I write by transitions. That is, I have various things I want to say, and the whole is assembled by realizing that I can connect this item to that, and that item to a third, and gradually all the pieces come together. This is certainly what the Canterbury Tales looks like; it would explain why there are so many fragments of three or four tales, and why one fragment (the Cook's Tale) ends in the middle. In such a case, it is quite possible that the beginning and the end were almost the first thing written, and the middle gradually filled in -- just as, with a jigsaw puzzle, one usually starts by assembling the edges, and then fill in the center. repeat, I am not sure this is the case -- but it feels right to me, and it offers a different perspective on a few of Turner's ideas.I don't say that to imply that this is a bad book (although it can be a little heavy at times). It is a very good book. But it's not exactly a Life, and sometimes there are alternatives to what it says. So read it while trying to find other ways of viewing things.That, after all, is one thing we know Geoffrey Chaucer did.

[quondame · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An exploration of the life, times, culture, influences, and writings of Geoffrey Chaucer. Detailed and wide ranging, the writing is mostly compelling enough to bear up for about 600 pages, plus citations and index - and notes, lots and lots of notes. Only when discussing a handful of interrelated people does the writing bog down to the point where careful tracking is absolutely necessary.