Chaucer - A European Life

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 centre 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