Chaucer

Ackroyd's Brief Lives #1

by Peter Ackroyd

Geoffrey Chaucer enjoyed an eventful life, serving with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His official posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King’s Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed.

He began to write in the 1360s, and his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales , dominated the last part of his life. He died in 1400.

Peter Ackroyd’s short biography, rich in drama and colour, evokes the medieval world of London and Kent, and provides an entertaining introduction to Chaucer’s poetry.


From the Hardcover edition.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Medieval, Biography Memoir, Classics, British Literature

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Peter Ackroyd CBE is an English novelist and biographer with a particular interest in the history and culture of London.

Peter Ackroyd's mother worked in the personnel department of an engineering firm, his father having left the family home when Ackroyd was a baby. He was reading newspapers by the age of 5 and, at 9, wrote a play about Guy Fawkes. Reputedly, he first realized he was gay at the age of 7.

Ackroyd was educated at St. Benedict's, Ealing and at Clare College, Cambridge, from which he graduated with a double first in English. In 1972, he was a Mellon Fellow at Yale University in the United States. The result of this fellowship was Ackroyd's Notes for a New Culture, written when he was only 22 and eventually published in 1976. The title, a playful echo of T. S. Eliot's Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948), was an early indication of Ackroyd's penchant for creatively exploring and reexamining the works of other London-based writers.

Ackroyd's literary career began with poetry, including such works as London Lickpenny (1973) and The Diversions of Purley (1987). He later moved into fiction and has become an acclaimed author, winning the 1998 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the biography Thomas More and being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987.

Ackroyd worked at The Spectator magazine between 1973 and 1977 and became joint managing editor in 1978. In 1982 he published The Great Fire of London, his first novel. This novel deals with one of Ackroyd's great heroes, Charles Dickens, and is a reworking of Little Dorrit. The novel set the stage for the long sequence of novels Ackroyd has produced since, all of which deal in some way with the complex interaction of time and space, and what Ackroyd calls "the spirit of place". It is also the first in a sequence of novels of London, through which he traces the changing, but curiously consistent nature of the city. Often this theme is explored through the city's artists, and especially its writers.

Ackroyd has always shown a great interest in the city of London, and one of his best known works, London: The Biography, is an extensive and thorough discussion of London through the ages.

His fascination with London literary and artistic figures is also displayed in the sequence of biographies he has produced of Ezra Pound (1980), T. S. Eliot (1984), Charles Dickens (1990), William Blake (1995), Thomas More (1998), Chaucer (2004), William Shakespeare (2005), and J. M. W. Turner. The city itself stands astride all these works, as it does in the fiction.

From 2003 to 2005, Ackroyd wrote a six-book non-fiction series (Voyages Through Time), intended for readers as young as eight. This was his first work for children. The critically acclaimed series is an extensive narrative of key periods in world history.

Early in his career, Ackroyd was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and, as well as producing fiction, biography and other literary works, is also a regular radio and television broadcaster and book critic.

In the New Year's honours list of 2003, Ackroyd was awarded the CBE.

Reviews

[Vaishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of Chaucer's privileged and acclaimed life. The book is best when Ackroyd paints details of a bustling, medieval London. It's more trying with his analysis of Chaucer's verse.

Excerpts :
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“From the age of fourteen to the end of his life he remained in royal service… and acted as a royal servant for three kings and two princes.”

“The urban parades and religious processions upon London’s streets, as well as the stridently colorful dress of the citizens… testify to a culture of spectacle and display.”

“In the spring of 1374, Edward III bestowed upon him the gift of a daily pitcher of wine, a pitcher in this instance meaning a gallon-size jug… which Chaucer continued to receive until the day of the king’s death.”

“In the suburbs of a town, he said, lurking in byways and blind alleys, where thieves and robbers instinctively live secretly and in fear…”

“All that can be said with some authority is that Chaucer was personally involved in the most pressing matters of the realm. He was not a poet who happened to be a diplomat and government official; he was a government official and diplomat who in his spare time happened to write poetry.”

"The English counter-offensive had begun... Chaucer was traveling to Lombardy (Italy) in order to find allies. He had with him a retinue of six officials and bodyguards."

"Chaucer was at the center of events at a time of huge instability."

"In 1377 Chaucer had gone to negotiate yet another of Richard's marital propositions..."


Cool Quote
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"I am not concerned with literary devices, but with substantial matter."

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[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative book easily digestible for any budding Chaucer scholar. Most of the contents is known facts of Chaucer but it does make for a general insight into Chaucer the man, the civil servant and the poet without over reliance on The Canterbury Tales of his other poems.
Interesting illustrations to give some context and the break apart the text. Much in the fitting with Ackroyd’s life work with London, even the architecture and areas of London get a special mention. This is where this work excels as is expected

[Roxana Chirilă · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent, short biography - combined with a bit of history, short descriptions of medieval life in the period, literary influences on Chaucer, Chaucer's literary influences on others, all gathered together in a coherent, readable story.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every time I spy a Peter Ackroyd book on the library shelf I pick it out to read. His books on 'London-The Biography' & 'Thames-Sacred River' are splendid works. I've also read his 'Poe-A Life Cut Short' in this Brief Lives series. 'Chaucer', published in 2004, is another little gem.
In just over one hundred and sixty pages it is certainly short and sweet. Ackroyd writes with assured authority and brings life to Geoffrey Chaucer, his fourteenth century courtly world and his poetic achievements. In such a concise work, and one that projects back down the centuries, it is quite remarkable how much detail this biography contains.
For readers who wish for an introduction to the very first poet writing in the English language, whose genius produced a template for Shakespeare and a metrist that still influences the verse of English folk song today.

[Karen Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always thoroughly enjoyed Peter Ackroyd’s work. It is well written, researched and erudite. This shortish book on the medieval poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, is no exception. Able to succinctly portray what was a varied life and view it through the lens of both contemporary sources and, at times, the man’s own works, Ackroyd gives the reader a well-rounded portrait of the man who earned the trust of royals, the loyalty of the most powerful house in the kingdom (Lancaster), the love of English people for his prose and earned, as a consequence, literary longevity.

Ackroyd also makes some delicious suppositions about Chaucer’s life, which were original and convincing (especially to do with the paternity of his second son, Lewis and the “raptus” charge against him brought by Cecily Champain). There are also fascinating titbits, such as the fact Chaucer is credited with introducing St Valentine’s Day to Britain. I also confess to enjoying the occasional bits of gossip Ackroyd presented and which you can’t help but feel that someone like the Chaucer he presents, a man with great insights and tolerance for human nature in all its foibles, would also have enjoyed.

An engaging and fascinating read. Highly recommended.

[Brian Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quickly and energetically surveys the times that Chaucer lived in and the works he produced. Chaucer was an insider. That is not a popular term in 2016, but in 1380, it allowed Chaucer to make a living and to see the behaviors and characters that would populate his fiction and poetry. Other than these connections, he seemed to have a lot in common surprisingly with Shakespeare. His marriage may have possibly been an unhappy one as they spent several years apart. He was involved in multiple lawsuits. He was acknowledged in his time as a literary star. Credible romantic entanglements outside of marriage are possible (though ultimately unproveable). Nevertheless, many of the details are irrecoverable.

Ackroyd nails it in this "short biography" where he covers a fair amount of ground. I learned a lot of things I did not know. He hits all of the poetical works and get right to the core of what makes them work without obsessive detail like a full sized biography. In fact, the only way that you could expand this book would be to devote scores of pages to those works. Recommended for anybody interested in an easy and quick yet thorough overview of Chaucer's life.

[Illiterate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Easy going and evocative rather than deeply researched and argued. Still, I like Ackroyd’s prose and sensibility.

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Currently rereading Peter Ackroyd's great little bio of Chaucer--the man how seems to have done everything--in his life and in his works. Ackroyd's book brings you right into the heart of London in the 14th century; it's a fascinating look at an author, his city, and the transforming (then and now) English language.

[Tom Metz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Ackroyd's history is the best history, brisk, personable, and plausible. This is a convincing interpretation of the thin documented record on Chaucer, a character as intriguing as any of his Canterbury pilgrims. Ackroyd does a wonderful job charting his probable path through a treacherous patch of English history.

[Carrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been mildly fascinated by Chaucer since being assigned a creative project on The Knight's Tale in high school. (I still have a 6-inch paper doll of Sir Palomon down in the basement somewhere.) Then came an English degree and an entire graduate level class on The Canterbury Tales, and my interest took root. This was the perfect biography of Chaucer I didn't know I had been looking for: pocket sized, breezy, and just enough lit crit to remind me of the good parts of college. Thanks for putting it out on the free shelf, Webster Groves library--I am shelving it proudly next to my Riverside Chaucer.

[David]

I wonder if there are others in the series. I had never heard of it before. I found this one by chance in a "bookshelf library." Engaging in the usual Ackroyd manner of biography. Some interesting details about the Chaucer of administrative responsibilities, etc., generally less well known than details about either the poet or the poetry.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved every juicy detail He had an amazing life.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great primer if you don’t know all that much about Chaucer, as I didn’t. But if this wets your appetite, it may be time to tackle Turner’s much more detailed biography, as I am doing now.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick and enjoyable read--there's not a whole lot of extant detail to build a life of Chaucer around, but Ackroyd does a nice job mixing history, literary criticism, biography, and some conjecture in a highly engaging prose style. I'll look for others in this "Brief Lives" series.

[Kipi (the academic stitcher) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Interesting. It will make certain aspects of The Canterbury Tales more understandable and does offer some thoughtful insights that were new to me. Will definitely be worth rereading at a later date after I have read Ackroyd's translation of The Canterbury Tales.

[Scott Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author of the Canterbury Tales (among other works), Geoffrey Chaucer is a pioneer of the English language from the late middle ages. He is eclipsed in his innovations perhaps only by William Shakespeare. Peter Ackroyd is a modern British historian and a worthy biographer of this giant. In this accessible series (read: short books), Ackroyd provides us with a great summary of what there is to know about Chaucer from historical records.

Chaucer was not only a fine poet; he was also and principally a diplomat in the king’s service. In that role, he travelled across the mainland of Europe, including Italy. In Italy, he came in contact with early humanist leaders of what became the Renaissance. Of course, they weren’t known as humanists at that time. They were just interesting writers to Chaucer, a fellow journeyer. He borrowed their methods into his writing and laid a foundation for future authors in the English language to build upon.

Aside from the peerless Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote poems of love in an era when true love was harder than today. Ackroyd focuses his attention on all of Chaucer’s work in an attempt to get to know the man from the influences of his time. As a diplomat, his life and his wife’s life were also recorded in English records. Ackroyd examines these as well in an attempt to get to know Chaucer outside of his bookish side (a side he reveled in). We learn of where Chaucer might have gotten inspirations for his ingenious writings. We also learn that Chaucer was probably not educated in the modern hierarchical sense, though his role in diplomacy would have certainly have required learning the ways of European court.

To Ackroyd and many before him, Chaucer is a great social contributor to English national life and one of the founders of the English language. Like the Norman conquerors, he brought the ways of the European mainland into mixture with those of the Anglo-Saxons. And like the great Bard, he brought the English language out of middle English into its modern forms. Through his writing, he taught English civilization about the ways of the church, the ways of women, and the ways of society. We are all richer because of Chaucer; I am likewise richer having read this book.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short biography is rather dry in tone and while it flatters the reader by assuming at least a basic grasp of Middle English, in actuality it leaves the casual reader (such as me) feeling uncomfortably inadequate while floundering among the unfamiliar words and spellings. Fortunately, the direct quotes are translated and listed at the back of the book! (I did not discover these until after I struggled with the text.)

I get that the verifiable facts of Chaucer's life are somewhat scanty, but I felt the narrative of his story could have benefited from some livening up. Even so, he seems like a spirited, personable fellow who managed to provide Royal service over a period of three reigns, Edward III, Richard II & Henry IV. He comes across as the quintessential diplomat, gracious, but self-effacing, who generally managed to achieve his missions to foreign courts.

The discussions regarding his poetry and contributions to English literature in the vernacular of his day, are enlightening. During his career, the popular demand for poetry veered from hearing it performed vocally to the more intimate experience of reading it privately. He excelled at both types and created forms and rhythms that influence writing to this day. The author makes it clear that Chaucer often, indeed mostly, elaborated on and was inspired by works originally written by others, most notably the famous Italians of his day, such as: Dante, Petrarch & Boccaccio.

I found it very interesting that the traces of Chaucer's civilian life, like Shakespeare's two hundred years later, are found to be most detailed in court records! Chaucer had a few run-ins with the law, ironically enough even when he was acting as a lawyer or witness for some other case at the same time!

The book concludes with a quick overview of the construction of The Canterbury Tales. The "tales" were never finished and I think that has probably frustrated many of his biographers who would like to present a nice, tidy ending to his greatest achievement. But real life is like that and sometimes there are loose ends that will remain untied forever.

[Steven Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very short and very well-written, this little tome tells you probably all that can be definitively known about Chaucer--which ain't a lot, and perhaps speaks of this book's length. I'd just finished Ackroyd's definitive biography of Shakespeare, which is a lot longer, though not as long as his biography of Dickens, which totals more than 1,000 pages and can be used as a weapon.

Ackroyd has a breezy but classical tone, which means you feel like you're learning something from a guy who's comfortable with his subject, and who knows a lot about it, because he's researched the hell out of it, and added a good deal of common sense when necessary. This is different from, say, Bill Bryson, who's even breezier, and who also knows of what he speaks, but who comes across as more Wikipedia learned, if you know what I mean. In his defense, he never testifies otherwise, and seems to be trying always for an intelligent breeziness. He evokes incredulity more often than common sense.

At any rate, this book brings Chaucer the man and his courtly jobs--of which there were a great many--to life, and it evokes the Middle Ages well. If you want to know a little bit about London, circa 1370-1400, here you are. Chaucer exclusively comes to light in documents of the king's court and of the legal court, and that's it, as he and his Canterbury Tales became famous after he died. He wrote much more than the Tales, and was known for his long poems, but apparently only in the king's court. One of his duties, the book attests, was to entertain the court with them. They seem to be made for performance, and for print, in turns. Weird.

He was a contemporary of William Langland, and his Piers Plowman, and of John Gower, so we're really going backaways. Canterbury Tales seems newer than that, which speaks of Chaucer's urbanity, another point of Ackroyd's. When the few writings of the time were about farmers and rural folk, the Tales was about the London that Chaucer knew. I often feel like the Tales, in its frame structure, could be emulated today, so it seems new, despite its age.

[Zulfiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read Ackroyd in a while, and it was somewhat of a refreshing experience to understand how good of a writer he is.
He has been mostly foraying into the field of non-fiction, and this is the first book in the series of short biographies.

So much has already been written about Chaucer, the first poet and the founder of the English literature in English, that one might have thought that there was nothing else and new to offer. However, Ackroyd combines Chaucer's biography with his maturation as an author, and as a worldly person, Chaucer formed and matured as an author with the influence of the world he lived it.

I found that passages about the literary influence of other great authors the most inspiring and interesting - the imitation of style, the literary tribute to the early Renaissance great ones, and the influence of Chaucer on the literary trends after his death.

There is something soothing in Ackroyd's narrative style as well, and it is a part of his charm that helped me enjoy this book.

[Geoff Boxell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the book is brief, 163 pages, it covers Chaucer's life, inspirations and writing style well. The problem with Chaucer is, his life would appear to be intensely interesting, especially the private and secret missions he undertook for the Crown, but so little is actually known, that one has to just speculate on what he was actually doing. Auckroyd avoids making said speculation and just allows you to know that there was more to Geffrey's life than we will ever know. Given the paupacy of knowledge on Chaucer, who, indeed, in his own writings seems to want to not give much away, I think the 163 pages were just right.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm glad this is a 'brief life' as I get the impression it would be hard to write an entertaining biography of Chaucer that was any longer. What we know of Chaucer (other than from his poems) seems to mainly come from accounts and law suits, so I've come away from this book with a sense that Chaucer's poems are much more interesting than Chaucer himself. I read this as an accompaniment to Ackroyd's retelling of 'The Canterbury Tales' and it's done it's job. It's well written and scholarly, as you'd expect from Ackroyd, and his distinctive voice comes through clearly. I just wasn't particularly captured by the subject matter.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short book that shares what is known of Chaucer and what might be concluded about his life. Chaucer was neither rich nor poor yet lived on the fringes of the courts of the countries in which he lived and traveled (England and Italy) and interacted with the powers that be. The author was smart to keep the portion about Chaucer's best known work, "The Canterbury Tales" for the last portion of the book. I wish I had read this before rereading "The Canterbury Tales" several years ago as it provides background that makes the work more understandable. The questions that remain in my mind are (1) Did Chaucer plagiarize his favorite Italian work and (2) is anything truly original.

[Ginger Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to write a life of Chaucer since so much is not known for certain. We don't know the date of his birth, the cause of his death, or even exactly how many children he had. He's known to have been a government official for much of his life, sometimes serving as a diplomat. But we don't know for sure what he was doing on his missions.

Like the late medieval period when he lived and the Middle English in which he wrote, Chaucer always seems just out of reach. The (wonderful) Canterbury Tales serve as his true memorial. Though even they have to be "translated" into modern English for most of us to appreciate them.

[Barbara Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very interesting regarding the history of the times. Nice illustrations. But so little is known about the man himself, only the bare bones of his life, that it doesn't make a substantial read. While this isn't Peter Ackroyd's fault, I felt I couldn't rate the experience of reading it more than okay.

[Ösp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Góð sem langt sem hún nær. Því miður eru næsta litlar upplýsingar um Chaucer í boði en höfundur gerir sitt besta í að lesa á milli línanna og tengja það litla sem er vitað um líf hans atburðum þess tíma.

[Jerry Wall · Rating 2 out of 5]

brief life of court functionary and poet who died in 1400

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable thorough into to Chaucer's life and work. Would recommend to the interested.

[Hotspur · Rating 5 out of 5]

If only all history writers wrote like Ackroyd! Witty, conversational, ironic, with intuition and common sense. A sheer pleasure to read unlike most dry, footnoted and over-serious histories.

[Judi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the Canterbury Tales in high school, but never really knew much about Chaucer. Well-connected and interesting character himself.

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An okay biography, it never really grabbed me, though I believe that is the fault of the subject matter not the author, even from High School I’ve just never been interested in Chaucer.