Geoffrey Chaucer (Galfridus Chaucer, El Jefe, L.L. Cool Geoff) (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales. Sometimes called the "father of English literature", Chaucer is widely credited as first demonstrating the artistic legitimacy of the vernacular (post-Conquest) (Late Middle) English language as opposed to French or Latin, and thus, he is the one who made stories accessible to the general, uneducated, illiterate-in-English-let-alone-Latin-or-French average Joe.note Chaucer's works were among the earliest printed in English, which did much to establish his southern dialect as "correct" written English. He is buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. He is in fact the reason it is called the Poet's Corner. Of course, he owed his Westminster Abbey grave to his services to the crown (or at least to John of Gaunt), not his literary eminence.
As a character, Chaucer appears in A Knight's Tale, where he is played by Paul Bettany.
He hath a blog, too. And eke doth tweet, by'r Lady!
He ended at #81 in One Hundred Greatest Britons.
Works by Geoffrey Chaucer:
Other works by Geoffrey Chaucer provide examples of:
- Author Avatar: Chaucer appears as a character in nearly all of his own poems.
- Creepy Uncle: Pandarus in Troilus and Criseyde
- Floating Continent: The House of Fame is basically this.
- Let's Just Be Friends: In Troilus and Criseyde, Criseyde says this to Troilus after she dumps him for Diomede.
- The Mourning After: The attitude of the Man in Black in The Book of the Duchess.
- Name and Name: Troilus and Criseyde
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Chaucer uses this trope a lot in his own self-portrayals.
- Polly Wants a Microphone: In The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls, among others.
- You Bastard!: In Troilus and Criseyde, Pandarus contrives various tricks and deceptions in order to bring the two lovers together, which is what the readers (with whom he's conflated — he sits around reading a romance during one scene) want to see happen.
