Literary Influences on Chaucer's Poetry

Table of Contents

It is convenient to divide Chaucer's literary output into three stages, which show three distinct influences on the development of his poetry.

1. The French Period

Chaucer's early poetry was directly influenced by contemporary French poetry. He composed in his wild youthful days a number of love poems, none of which have survived, but which gave him some fame as a poet. It is supposed that A B C a prayer to the Virgin, is the first of his extant poems. He translated some portions of the famous French work Roman de la Rose, an elaborate love allegory. Its translation helped Chaucer to fashion his style. He cultivated an allegorical style. He learnt from French poetry the charm of fluent simplicity, complete correspondence of words and thoughts, and constant restraint in the expression of emotion and satire. Chaucer wrote 1369 The Book of Duchesses on the death of Blanche, John of Gaunt's wife. It is in allegory in the manner of the reigning French school, but Chaucer gave his elegy freshness and seeming sincerity.

2. The Italian Period (1372-1384) 

Chaucer's Italian period is characterised by a variety and new technical innovations in his poetry. During his visits to Italy Chaucer saw a new world of art and literature which had reached an astonishing excellence. He read Dante's Divine Comedia, Petrarch's Sonnets and Boccaccio's Decameron. In Italy, he saw the dawn of the Renaissance, which, to some extent, influenced his poetry which is secular and humanistic in spirit. Moody and Lovett remark: "The unquenchable curiosity of the men of Renaissance was his, more than a century before the Renaissance really began to affect England. He, too, shared their thirst for expression. The great books he had come to know in Italy gave him no peace until he should equal or surpass them.

The important works which he produced in emulation of the Italian masters are the House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Cryseyde and The Legend of Good Women. The House of Fame (1382) is a dream allegory, which shows Dante's influence. It is remarkable for the rare combination of lofty thought and simple, homely language, and the presentation of genuine Chaucerian humour. The Legend of Good Women (1385), the unfinished work, was originally planned to contain nineteen tales of virtuous women of antiquity. But in the extant volume, it consists of eight accomplished tales and the ninth only begun. It is conspicuous for its masterly narrative, particularly in the portion dealing with Cleopatra, and the skilful handling of the heroic couplet in English for the first time. Troylus and Cryseydc are founded on Boccaccio's Filostrato. It marks a significant development in Chaucer's poetic career. He uses his material very freely and with great artistic ability. In it he "reflects the ideals of his own age and society, and so gives to the whole story a dramatic force and beauty which it had never known before.

The characters of Cryseyde and Pandarus reveal a new subtlety of psychological development and reveal Chaucer's growing insight into human motives. Troylus and Cryseyde is considered Chaucer's best narrative work. The rhyme royal stanza is used with much deftness and beauty. Chaucer also wrote the Story of Griselda (The Clerk's Tale) and The Story of Constance during this period.

3. The English Period (1384-1390)

In this period Chaucer 

Becomes independent, relying upon himself entirely even for the use t which he puts his own borrowed themes.

A few smaller poems which belong to this period are Former Age, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse and The Lak of Steadfastness, but the crowning and monumental work of this period is The Canterbury Tales. The Plan of 

4. The Canterbury Tales

The plan of the Tales was probably adopted soon after 1386, in which year Chaucer composed the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. They are not, and cannot be looked on as a whole. Many were written independently, and they fitted into the framework of the Prologue. Many of what he intended to write were never written. The whole existing body of the Tales was completed before the close of 1390. The composition of the General Prologue to the tales is commonly associated with 1387. The manner in which Chaucer knitted the tales together was very simple and likely to please the English people. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four tales in verse and prose, some incomplete, told as entertainment by a group of pilgrims riding from London to the shrine of Thomas A. Beckett at Canterbury. Chaucer had probably made the pilgrimage to Canterbury in the spring of 1385 or 1387 and was led by this experience to the framework in which he set his pictures of life. For the general idea of the tales Chaucer was indebted to Boccaccio, 

In nearly every important feature the work is essentially English

To realise his purpose Chaucer grouped around the jovial host of the Tabard Inn twenty-nine pilgrims, including himself, of every class of society in England. He sat them on horseback to ride to Canterbury and home again, intending to make each of them tell tales. But the company never reaches Canterbury, and only twenty-three pilgrims get their turn. Some tales are left unfinished. There are two prose tales, Chaucer's own Tale of Melibeus and The Parson's Tale. The rest of the tales are composed in the decasyllabic or heroic couplet. In the famous Prologue, Chaucer makes us acquainted with the various characters of his drama. The twenty-nine characters are carefully chosen types, who represent various segments of contemporary society. Endowed with creative imagination Chaucer individualised his characters. All of them are fully realized figures with an importance of their own. 

5. F. N. Robinson remarks about Chaucer's characters

Chaucer's pilgrims are far more vivid and personal than the medieval figures with which they have been compared. 

William J. Long also remarks: 

Chaucer is the first English writer to bring an atmosphere of romantic interest in men and women and the daily work of one's own world, which is the aim of nearly all modern literature. Chaucer assigned to a pilgrim a tale suited to his character and vocation. The tales are of astonishing variety and give us a true and faithful picture of differing aspects of medieval life in England. 

6. Stopford A. Brooke remarks

The Tales themselves take in the whole range of poetry and the life of the middle ages; the legend of the saint, the romance of the knight, the wonderful fables of the traveller, the coarse tale of common life, the love story, the allegory, the animal-fable and the satirical lay.

Chaucer emerges as the first great storyteller in verse in The Canterbury Tales. All the best tales are told easily, gracefully and sincerely. The tales are remarkable for their dramatic quality. 

F. N. Robinson says

In fact, the pilgrimage is a continuous and lively drama, in which the stories contribute to the action. Because of this sustained dramatic interest and the vivid reality of the characters, as well as for the inclusive representation of English society, The Canterbury Tales has been called a Human comedy. The implied comparison with Balzac's great series of stories of the life of modern France is not inappropriate.

In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer made English into a true means of poetry and literature. He developed the resources of the English language for literary use and set an example which was followed by a long line of poets. In Tales Chaucer appears as a great humorist who has a consummate knowledge of human life. His humour is rich, tolerant, profound and sane, devoid of spite and cynicism. He also had a keen sense of pathos in human life. He can bring tears into our eyes, and he can make us smile or be sad as he pleases. The Canterbury Tales is the first finest poetic testament of England. It has the coherence and imaginative drive of a great work of literature and presents a firmly realized view of life. Of all medieval poems, The Canterbury Tales gives a modern reader the strongest sense of contact with the life and manners of fourteenth-century England.

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