Geoffrey Chaucer: Forget dusty scrolls and monks in robes – Geoffrey Chaucer was no cloistered scholar. He was a man of the world: a diplomat haggling in foreign courts, a civil servant navigating London's bustling streets. All those different faces he encountered, the knight with tarnished honor, the gossipy housewife...they found their way into his writing. See, before Chaucer, "important" stories were in Latin, meant for the high and mighty. But Chaucer, he wrote in English, the language of the tavern and the marketplace. He legitimized the everyday tongue, and in the process, helped shape the English we speak today. His greatest hit, "The Canterbury Tales," reads like a medieval road trip. A bunch of mismatched pilgrims, from a noble knight to a farting miller, all head to a shrine, telling stories to pass the time. These aren't tales of spotless heroes, but flawed, bickering, gloriously human messes, just like the rest of us. Chaucer painted life wit...
Comments
Post a Comment