Chau·cer

(chô′sər), Geoffrey 1340?-1400.

English poet whose writing presents a richly varied picture of life and values in late-medieval England. His works include The Book of the Duchess (c. 1370), Troilus and Criseyde (c.1385), and his masterpiece, the unfinished Canterbury Tales (c. 1385-c. 1400).

Chau·cer′i·an (chô-sîr′ē-ən) adj. & n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Chaucer

(ˈtʃɔːsə)

(Biography) Geoffrey. ?1340–1400, English poet, noted for his narrative skill, humour, and insight, particularly in his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales. He was influenced by the continental tradition of rhyming verse. His other works include Troilus and Criseyde, The Legende of Good Women, and The Parlement of Foules

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Chau•cer

(ˈtʃɔ sər)
n.

Geoffrey, 1340?–1400, English poet.

Chau•ce′ri•an (-ˈsɪər i ən)

adj., n.

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Noun

Chaucer - English poet remembered as author of the Canterbury Tales (1340-1400)

Geoffrey Chaucer

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This man was Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was a poet, and is generally looked upon as the first great English poet.

But although Chaucer was a great poet, we know very little about his life.

We know nothing at all of Chaucer as a boy, nothing of where he went to school, nor do we know if he ever went to college.

Of what befell Chaucer in France we know nothing, except that he was taken prisoner, and that the King, Edward III, himself gave

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It was not so with Chaucer, whom I loved from the first word of his which I found quoted in those lectures, and in Chambers's 'Encyclopaedia of English Literature,' which I had borrowed of my friend the organ-builder.

In fact, I may fairly class Chaucer among my passions, for I read him with that sort of personal attachment I had for Cervantes, who resembled him in a certain sweet and cheery humanity.

Compared with the meaner poets the greater are the cleaner, and Chaucer was probably safer than any other English poet of his time, but I am not going to pretend that there are not things in Chaucer which a boy would be the better for not reading; and so far as these words of mine shall be taken for counsel, I am not willing that they should unqualifiedly praise him.

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It is the assertion, the development, the product of those very different indispensable qualities of poetry, in the presence [8] of which the English is equal or superior to all other modern literature--the native, sublime, and beautiful, but often wild and irregular, imaginative power in English poetry from Chaucer to Shakespeare, with which Professor Minto deals, in his Characteristics of English Poets (Blackwood), lately reprinted.

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It is pretty generally admitted that Geoffrey Chaucer, the eminent poet of the fourteenth century, though obsessed with an almost Rooseveltian passion for the new spelling, was there with the goods when it came to profundity of thought.

Across the centuries Paul Boielle shook hands with Geoffrey Chaucer.

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'Sir John Mandeyille's' 'Voyage.' Chaucer, 1338-1400.

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This company of pilgrims resembled Chaucer's in this: that it had in it a sample of about all the upper occupations and professions the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume.

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