Pod Insights You're Dead to Me Geoffrey Chaucer (Radio Edit) About this episode Greg Jenner is joined in medieval England by Professor Marion Turner and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales.
Since the 15th century, Chaucer has been referred to as the father of English literature. He was one of the first authors to champion the use of Middle English for poetry instead of Latin, and after the invention of the printing press, his works became the foundation of the English literary canon – long before Shakespeare ever put quill to parchment. But Chaucer’s life was as extraordinary as his legacy, living as he did through the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, and the Peasants’ Revolt.
In this episode, Greg and his guests explore Chaucer’s dramatic biography: growing up the son of a wine merchant in fourteenth-century London, his work for the royal court and long career as a medieval civil servant, his relationship with John of Gaunt through his mistress Katherine Swynford, and his travels throughout Europe. They also examine the poets that influenced him – including Petrarch, Bocaccio and Dante – and take a deep dive into the famous Canterbury Tales.
This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Rosalyn Sklar
Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:09 Greg Jenner? Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are preparing our pens and parchment and peregrinating back to the 14th century to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the famous Canterbury Tales. And to inform and entertain us on our journey, we're joined by two very special travelling companions. In history corner, she's the J R R Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Languages at the University of Oxford and an expert on Chaucer and late medieval literature. Maybe you've read her award-winning biography, Chaucer: A European Life, or her new book, The Wife of Bath: A Biography. It's Professor Marion Turner. Welcome, Marion.
1:49 Speaker 05 Delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
1:51 Greg Jenner? Very happy to have you here. And in comedy corner, he's a comedian, actor and podcaster. You'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down, and as Rose Matafeo's assistant on the wonderful Junior Taskmaster. Plus, you may have heard his dulcet tones on my favourite podcast, Three Bean Salad, or seen his new live tour show, The Bench. But you'll definitely know him from our previous episodes of You're Dead to Me, most recently Charles Dickens at Christmas and Arthurian Literature. It's Mike Wozniak. Welcome back, Mike.
2:16 Speaker 06 Thank you. Hello. Thanks for having me back.
2:18 Greg Jenner? Mike, we went medieval with you last time out.
2:21 Speaker 06 Yeah.
2:22 Greg Jenner? All King Arthur-y.
2:23 Speaker 06 I had a lovely old time.
2:24 Greg Jenner? You knew a lot.
2:25 Speaker 06 It was grist to my mill. It was, yeah, I felt like I hadn't wasted my childhood.
2:30 Greg Jenner? You were in your element.
2:31 Speaker 06 But this, this is a different kettle of fish.
2:33 Greg Jenner? Oh, is it?
2:34 Speaker 06 Yeah, this is utter bleak ignorance. A new level of ignorance. It's beyond the unknown unknowns.
2:43 Greg Jenner? Okay, well, we're gonna have a lovely time talking about one of the great poets of English literature. So, what do you know?
2:54 Greg Jenner? So, let's start with the first segment of the podcast. It's the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And if we're using Mike as the benchmark, maybe not much, but you've possibly heard Chaucer described as the father of English literature. Perhaps you've read his Canterbury Tales at school and you've modelled your way through the Middle English while looking for the rude bits. Maybe you saw the BBC's 2003 adaptation, which transferred the famous Canterbury Tales to a 21st century setting. And if you're a naughty's kid like me, you will remember Paul Bettany's turn as Geoffrey Chaucer in the brilliant movie A Knight's Tale that all medieval historians love. But what about the life behind the literature? What did Chaucer get up to when he wasn't scribbling his poems? And where do snazzy leggings fit into our story?
3:39 Greg Jenner? Let's find out.
3:40 Speaker 06 Ooh.
3:41 Greg Jenner? Are you excited about the leggings?
3:42 Speaker 06 I am excited about the leggings.
3:45 Greg Jenner? Okay, Mike.
3:46 Speaker 06 Yes.
3:47 Greg Jenner? From your high level of knowledge, you've already promised us.
3:50 Speaker 06 Hmm.
3:50 Greg Jenner? What sort of family do you think Geoffrey Chaucer was born into? What kind of class do you think he arrived into?
3:56 Speaker 06 Ooh, he's literate and not just literate. I don't know, the son of some sort of merchant or trader or ship's captain or someone who's got some qualifications. Possibly a member of a guild.
4:08 Greg Jenner? This is great.
4:08 Speaker 06 But not nobility, I'm saying. That neck of the woods.
4:11 Greg Jenner? Are you hustling us? Are you pretending to not know anything and then suddenly rolling out knowledge? Marion, I think Mike got it first time, son of a merchant.
4:18 Speaker 05 Yeah, brilliant.
4:19 Speaker 06 A merchant, is it? Okay.
4:20 Speaker 05 Yeah, so a wine merchant.
4:22 Speaker 06 Ooh.
4:22 Speaker 05 So his father was a vintner, that's what we call them, so.
4:26 Speaker 06 That's what we call them in Devon as well. Well, we do, we do when we're trying to be a little bit classy and a bit pretentious. I have a local vintner near us called Ian, and he's absolutely, he's magnificent.
4:39 Speaker 05 Well, Ian, which is a version of the name John, which is Chaucer's dad.
4:43 Speaker 06 Good heavens.
4:44 Speaker 05 So John Chaucer, Vintner, and Chaucer's mother was called Agnes. Chaucer was born early 1340s, we don't know the exact year, but about 1342
4:53 Speaker 06 Right.
4:53 Speaker 05 in London, in Vintry Ward, so the ward which had lots of Vintners in. So it was one of the areas of London that is right next to the Thames.
5:02 Speaker 06 Okay.
5:03 Speaker 05 So he's born in a place where he can see the ships coming in, loaded with products from all over the world, bringing spices from as far away as Indonesia, and then going out again laden with English wool, which was England's only real export product. Chaucer was living in this very multilingual, cosmopolitan kind of area. You know, people often think of the Middle Ages as people are kind of grubbing about. And of course, you know, some people were, but life in London was really international. You know, he was rubbing shoulders with people who spoke lots of different languages, were bringing in lots of luxury products.
5:36 Greg Jenner? But then one very big thing happened. Do you know the very big thing that happened to little Jeff when he was five years old? I think mid 14th century, big things.
5:45 Speaker 06 A plague upon the Vintners?
5:47 Greg Jenner? Yeah, well, not just, not just the Vintners, I'm afraid. Yes, the, the great plague of all plagues, the Black Death.
5:52 Speaker 06 Okay, hit hard?
5:54 Greg Jenner? It hit pretty hard.
5:55 Speaker 05 Yeah.
5:55 Speaker 06 Family wise and family and friends?
5:57 Speaker 05 Yeah, and to everyone. So the Black Death came to England about 1348. And, you know, it completely dwarfs the pandemic that we've been through. If you imagine a pandemic that wiped out maybe a third, maybe a half of the population really quickly.
6:13 Greg Jenner? Of Europe, you know, we're not just talking Britain here, it's, you know.
6:16 Speaker 05 And the Near East.
6:17 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
6:17 Speaker 05 It's hugely dramatic. And yes, Chaucer lost several relatives, but not his parents, not his immediate family. And what then happened to Chaucer's family is typical of what happened to the country as a whole. Because if you survived, although probably psychologically you might have been in a bad way, but materially, things were quite good for you. So both his parents inherited property and land and money from their relatives who had died in the plague.
6:44 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
6:44 Speaker 05 So there's a lot of social mobility after the plague. It's actually, the late 14th century is an amazing time for social mobility. People can move jobs if their employer isn't paying a decent wage. They can go to another employer or they can move to the city. The government passed lots of laws to try and stop employees from asking for higher wages, but it didn't work. None of these, you know, these statutes of labour did not work.
7:07 Speaker 06 It was very clear which side they were on.
7:08 Speaker 05 Yes, yeah. So we've got massive inflation and wage inflation. If you were alive, you were then doing well.
7:15 Greg Jenner? So Mike, if you were a teenage Geoffrey Chaucer,
7:18 Speaker 06 Yeah.
7:18 Greg Jenner? you're living in cosmopolitan London, what sort of profession are you aiming to go into next?
7:22 Speaker 06 Me personally,
7:23 Greg Jenner? Yeah, what would you?
7:24 Speaker 06 I don't think I'd have made the most of this. I think Chaucer, I think, has got a bit better work ethic than me.
7:30 Greg Jenner? Sure.
7:31 Speaker 06 I think Chaucer, I mean, I'm assuming he would have gone into the family trade.
7:34 Greg Jenner? Okay, so you think wine, you think he's going following dad?
7:37 Speaker 06 I think wine, you know, if he's having a lovely life and wine's, it's got a bit of glamour, hasn't it? And, you know, if he's into his reading and his writing, he can do that on the weekends.
7:45 Greg Jenner? It's a very sensible answer.
7:47 Speaker 06 I assume.
7:47 Greg Jenner? He, he sort of goes.
7:49 Speaker 05 He doesn't, no, he doesn't look quite different.
7:51 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
7:51 Speaker 05 He kind of starts to leap classes in a way.
7:54 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
7:54 Speaker 05 Because his.
7:55 Speaker 06 Up or down?
7:55 Speaker 05 Up. He becomes a page boy in a great household.
7:59 Speaker 06 Does he?
8:00 Speaker 05 So, and this is a very desirable thing to get. So usually, you know, higher class boys would get this kind of job. So his father probably got him this job because his father had been a royal tax collector. So he had connections in the royal court. So Chaucer's first job, when he's just a teenager, about 14 or 15, he pops up in the accounts of Elizabeth de Bourgh, Countess of Ulster, who is the daughter-in-law of the king. So the daughter-in-law of Edward III, she was married to Prince Lionel. So a page boy is, I mean, he would have done a bit of kind of errand running and things like that.
8:34 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:35 Speaker 05 But you're also simply a member of this lavish aristocratic household. But you're mainly just kind of sitting about, learning some poetry. You're there partly to make the heads of the household look good because they can have a retinue.
8:49 Speaker 06 Right.
8:50 Greg Jenner? So he's working for Elizabeth de Bourgh.
8:51 Speaker 06 Yeah.
8:52 Greg Jenner? He does meet his wife doing this gig, we think.
8:55 Speaker 05 Probably, yes, Philippa de Roer. There's a reference in the records to her being connected with the same group. So we're not certain, but he probably meets his wife at this point. And she was a little bit, a little bit higher class than him.
9:06 Greg Jenner? Oh.
9:07 Speaker 06 She's got a D in the middle of her name.
9:08 Speaker 05 Exactly, yes. Philippa de Roer.
9:10 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
9:11 Speaker 05 Exactly.
9:11 Greg Jenner? He's not Geoffrey de Chaucer, is he?
9:13 Speaker 06 No.
9:13 Speaker 05 No.
9:14 Greg Jenner? It's from this period that we have our first documentary evidence for. Chaucer's life.
9:17 Speaker 05 Yes, absolutely.
9:19 Greg Jenner? What do you think it is, Mike?
9:20 Speaker 06 Presumably from the annals of the, of the, of the De Burgh family in some way. So I'm wondering what they, what they would document. Has he got involved in a wedding or has there been a sort of a disaster in a hunt somewhere?
9:33 Greg Jenner? Oh, right.
9:33 Speaker 06 Have they gone to Ulster and they've killed the wrong stag and stirred up some local drama?
9:38 Speaker 05 I mean, I do think this is very impressive researcher type thinker, thinking about the accounts that, because it is from the accounts. And people often expect that the first record is going to be, might refer to something to do with his poetry, for example.
9:51 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
9:52 Speaker 05 But in fact, it's a really frivolous reference. It's a reference to his fashion choices, to his clothes. This is where the snazzy leggings that Greg mentioned earlier come in. So the record is simply that Elizabeth de Burgh bought him these clothes. She buys him a poltok with these two coloured hose, like these leggings and some shoes. And chroniclers in the thirty, in the early thirteen sixties start to write about the fact that young men are going about wearing these clothes. And that they are very tight and short and are exposing their genitals and buttocks inappropriately. And indeed, some chroniclers said that they thought that the plague had returned to England because God was punishing people
10:36 Speaker 05 for wearing these outrageous clothes.
10:39 Greg Jenner? He also ticked off another major event in the fourteenth century, having survived the Black Death.
10:43 Speaker 06 Yes.
10:43 Greg Jenner? He then rides straight into another one. Do you know what this one would be, Mike?
10:47 Speaker 06 Mega event.
10:48 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
10:48 Speaker 06 Hundred Years' War?
10:49 Greg Jenner? Absolutely. Well done. Yeah, very good.
10:51 Speaker 06 Was he a soldier?
10:52 Speaker 05 So essentially, the whole household went to war. So by this point, he seems to be working for Lionel, Elizabeth's husband. And so the princes are all going to war. They take their retinues.
11:03 Speaker 06 Of course.
11:04 Speaker 05 With them. And so the Hundred Years' War, which, you know, actually was longer than a hundred years.
11:08 Greg Jenner? It's a hundred and sixteen years.
11:09 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. So it's supposed to start thirteen thirty seven, finish fourteen fifty three. Chaucer's over there thirteen fifty nine, thirteen sixty.
11:17 Greg Jenner? He does get captured.
11:19 Speaker 06 Does he?
11:19 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he was captured.
11:21 Speaker 06 He was in a sort of a zone of jeopardy, at least.
11:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So he was captured outside Rheims and then he was ransomed for sixteen pounds.
11:30 Greg Jenner? So sixteen pounds gets Geoffrey Chaucer back. Who's paying that ransom? Is it the king?
11:34 Speaker 05 The king, yes.
11:35 Greg Jenner? Okay.
11:35 Speaker 06 Is it?
11:35 Greg Jenner? Does Geoffrey Chaucer bounce back from his ransom fiasco?
11:38 Speaker 05 I mean, so we see him just afterwards carrying letters. And I think that was what he was better at, you know, across his life.
11:46 Greg Jenner? Soldier, what do you excel at? But I'm really quite good at delivering letters, actually.
11:50 Speaker 05 Exactly. I mean, across his life, we do see him occasionally in these fighting situations, but much more commonly, we see him doing things like diplomacy, secret business of the king, carrying letters, peace treaties. That's more his thing.
12:03 Greg Jenner? Okay.
12:03 Speaker 05 But then we actually don't see him in the records for several years. So between 1360 and 1366, we're not sure what he's doing. He was doing something to do with other royal households, you know, as he had been for Elizabeth and Lionel. That's the kind of role.
12:17 Speaker 06 Has he left Elizabeth and Lionel's gaff then? Is he ploughing his own furrow at this point?
12:24 Speaker 05 Yeah. So he's married to Philippa de Roay. They were married till the late 80s when she dies. They had at least three children. And when he's in royal service, he's getting an annuity from the king, also from other people at various times. He's also paid in wine. So he gets a pitcher of wine a day, which later on becomes a ton of wine a year, which is something like 252 gallons. He probably didn't drink all that. He was probably giving it out to people. But, you know, wine is an ongoing thread.
12:52 Speaker 06 A pitcher a day?
12:53 Speaker 05 Yeah.
12:53 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
12:54 Speaker 06 How much is a pitcher?
12:54 Speaker 05 It was probably about a gallon.
12:56 Speaker 06 Blimey.
12:57 Speaker 05 Yeah.
12:57 Greg Jenner? That's a lot of wine.
12:58 Speaker 06 That's a lot to get, isn't it?
13:00 Speaker 05 Yeah.
13:00 Greg Jenner? As you say, it's probably for his household, right?
13:02 Speaker 05 Yeah, probably sharing it out.
13:03 Greg Jenner? Yeah, okay. And so he's an international diplomat.
13:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
13:05 Greg Jenner? This Geoffrey Chaucer diplomat, man overseas. He's in Italy, he's in France, he's been to Spain, Navarre.
13:11 Speaker 05 Yeah.
13:11 Greg Jenner? He's picking up languages or he knows languages?
13:14 Speaker 05 He knows languages. So every educated man is trilingual at this time. But he also knew Italian, which he'd probably picked up from all the bankers and traders in Vintry Ward because he had a mercantile background. So aristocrats much less likely to come across Italian.
13:27 Speaker 06 Yeah.
13:28 Speaker 05 He had Italian, which is probably why he was picked to go on the Italian mission.
13:31 Greg Jenner? Oh, I see. He's the only bloke at court who knows any Italian.
13:34 Speaker 05 And that's then, going on those Italian missions is where he then picks up and reads Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch. And his reading of those poets enables him utterly to change English literature.
13:45 Greg Jenner? So he had a staggering number of jobs.
13:47 Speaker 06 Yeah.
13:48 Greg Jenner? We've already heard several already. But I've got a mini quiz for you.
13:51 Speaker 06 Okay.
13:51 Greg Jenner? Which of these was not a position that Geoffrey Chaucer held during his service? So, inspector of walls and ditches. Deputy Forrester, clerk of the King's Works overseeing the renovations of the Tower of London, the Member of Parliament for Suffolk, the controller of the wool custom trade, negotiator of the marriage of King Richard II of England to the daughter of the Lord of Milan. Which of those six things was not on Chaucer's CV?
14:17 Speaker 06 He seems like an amenable fellow so far.
14:19 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
14:19 Speaker 06 He feels like he's quite capable. I can see him being pressured into doing the ditchers gig.
14:26 Speaker 06 Maybe early doors.
14:27 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
14:27 Speaker 06 But I can see him putting his foot down at the old forestry thing. That doesn't, it doesn't seem like a forest is going to be his milieu.
14:32 Greg Jenner? Okay. Okay. So you're saying Deputy Forrester is one we've made up?
14:36 Speaker 06 Yeah.
14:36 Greg Jenner? I'm afraid MP for Suffolk was wrong.
14:38 Speaker 06 Curses.
14:39 Greg Jenner? Because he was actually MP for Kent.
14:41 Speaker 06 Was he really?
14:42 Greg Jenner? So he did all six of those jobs in terms of being an MP, but he was representing Kent, not Suffolk.
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16:08 Greg Jenner? Every Monday on Hidden History, Dr Harini Butt takes an unexplained event from history, just like that one, reads the evidence like a case file, and tells you what she thinks happened. No hedging. Start with the Mary Celeste episode for a look at one of history's most enduring maritime enigmas. Follow Hidden History with Dr Harini Butt wherever you get your podcasts.
16:32 Greg Jenner? Have you ever heard of John of Gaunt, Mike?
16:34 Speaker 06 I don't think I have, no.
16:35 Greg Jenner? Okay, he's one of those big names in medieval history that no one really knows who he is, but they know he's famous. Who is John of Gaunt and why is he important to Chaucer?
16:42 Speaker 05 John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. Chaucer probably met him when he was working for Elizabeth. We know they were at the same place then. John of Gaunt had also married Blanche of Lancaster. Blanche's death was the occasion of Chaucer's first poem that we know about.
16:57 Greg Jenner? Oh, really?
16:58 Speaker 05 The Book of the Duchess was about Blanche's death. John of Gaunt then made another important marriage to someone called Constance of Castile, the daughter of the king of Castile. But the person he loved was Catherine Swinford. Catherine Swinford was Chaucer's sister-in-law, and that probably encouraged John of Gaunt to help Chaucer. He helped him get lots of jobs. He was the one in charge when Chaucer got his apartment in London, his job at the customs office. He kept on favouring him.
17:25 Greg Jenner? You said the Book of the Duchess is Chaucer's first poem. This is fairly middle-aged Geoffrey Chaucer, you know, he's kind of quite far along in his career.
17:33 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, the Book of the Duchess is the first poem that has survived, so he may have written earlier poems. He may have written poems in French when he was younger, that's what, you know, most people were writing in French. But the earliest poem that has survived, yeah, he's around 30, early 1370s. And then he was just prolific, you know, he wrote so much. And today, people have often only heard of the Canterbury Tales, but he wrote so much else. So from the early 1370s to mid 1380s, he writes several dream poems, so the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, the Legend of Good Women. He translates Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into English.
18:11 Greg Jenner? Wow.
18:12 Speaker 05 He translates parts of the Romance of the Roses. He writes lots of short poems and lyrics. He writes some of- The Canterbury Tales as standalone texts that then later he put into the Canterbury Tales.
18:23 Greg Jenner? The Knight's Tale, for example.
18:23 Speaker 05 Yes, exactly. Most famously, The Knight's Tale. So he's writing in English, whereas it would, although some people were writing in English, it would have been more normal, especially for a court poet, someone writing kind of courtly forms, you know, love visions, dreams. It would have been more normal to write in French.
18:39 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
18:39 Speaker 05 He's also very influenced by the world around him. There's this idea that you need both, you know, you need to read the books. He's steeped in literary influences from all kinds of places, but he's also interested in contemporary society. And I think he does take a lot of, a lot of inspiration from the things that are going on around him. So we can link things like his great interest in different voices, in the common voice. We might link that to things like the development of the speaker in Parliament at the time. And then, you know, this is also the time when we see insurgent voices, which can be productive, but can also be really problematic. So the Great Revolt, usually known as the Peasants' Revolt, though it wasn't really mainly peasants, it was lots of different
19:22 Speaker 05 people. But that also happens during Chaucer's lifetime.
19:25 Greg Jenner? This is a man who has survived the Black Death. Yeah. Fought in the Hundred Years' War, and then is littering next door when the Peasants' Revolt happens. He's basically Forrest Gump. He's seen the entire 14th century. It just keeps happening to him. And he also ends up in a courtroom battle in 1379. Marian, this is quite interesting. There was a time, a few years ago, where Geoffrey Chaucer was quite controversial because of this case.
19:49 Speaker 05 Yes.
19:49 Greg Jenner? And now we can remove the sort of sting of cancellation because he's innocent, right?
19:54 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting case. It's also really interesting in terms of letting us know what's still out there to find in the records. So this is a case in which Chaucer was essentially accused of something called raptus in Latin, which in different cases is sometimes abduction, is sometimes rape. A woman called Cecily Champagne released him from further actions relating to her raptus. But there was a lot of debate about what the word in the document meant, because in some documents it means abduction. But a couple of years ago, and this is how exciting the world of Chaucer's studies is. So two scholars, Spassin Specky and Ewan Roger, found some new documents. And what they found was that Cecily Champagne and Chaucer were on the same side of this law
20:38 Speaker 05 case, and they were both defendants together, and they employed the same lawyer.
20:44 Greg Jenner? Right.
20:44 Speaker 05 And then they found the writ, which was that someone called Thomas Stondan was making a lawsuit against the two of them. What had happened, according to Stondan, was that Cecily had been his servant and she had left before the end of her contract to go and be Chaucer's servant. So this was a labour dispute.
21:03 Greg Jenner? Sure.
21:04 Speaker 05 The reason then that Cecily would release him from any actions relating to a raptus would be that she was saying, no, I was not forcibly removed from my former employer.
21:16 Greg Jenner? So we can un-cancel Geoffrey Chaucer, that's good. Great. I think it's time for us to move on to his most famous poem. It's time for us to get to the Canterbury Tales. Marian, can you give us an actual synopsis of what is the Canterbury Tales?
21:28 Speaker 05 A group of people meet, they meet in the Tabard Inn, which was a real pub just south of the river in Southwark.
21:33 Greg Jenner? Great.
21:34 Speaker 05 They're all going off on pilgrimage to Canterbury.
21:35 Greg Jenner? Yes.
21:36 Speaker 05 And they decide that, you know, to make it less boring, so they don't just have to think about pilgrimage and God all the time, they're going to tell stories on the way there and on the way back, and they're going to compete for a free meal. And the host, the innkeeper, Harry Bailey, is going to kind of run this taletelling competition.
21:50 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
21:51 Speaker 05 So you get this kind of group of people together who are all going to tell stories. But it's really different from Boccaccio's. And the big difference is the nature of the taletellers. So Boccaccio's taletellers are all of the same class, which is high class. Chaucers are not. So the highest class person is the knight, who's not that high. And there is a ploughman at the bottom. The vast majority are in between. So, you know, we have, yeah, a summoner, a friar, a merchant, a man of law, a lawyer, a sailor, a cook, all of these.
22:22 Greg Jenner? The miller, yeah.
22:23 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, the miller, the reefer, all of these kinds of people. That's really, really important, the idea that a miller has just as much a right to tell a tale as a knight and might tell a better tale. So it allows Chaucer to tell lots of different. Different kinds of tales and lots of different genres, lots of different forms. So you really do get this, this kind of sense that there's something for everyone.
22:46 Greg Jenner? What would the comedian's tale be in the storytelling competition, Mike?
22:49 Speaker 06 Well, it would be of the worst gig. Those were, that's when you, that's when the-
22:53 Greg Jenner? The heckler might send a, yeah.
22:54 Speaker 06 In the green room or whatever, that's, that's when everyone shushes and just, and everyone leans in when there's a really, not a gig that went really, really badly.
23:02 Greg Jenner? So it's not the storming gigs, it's not the ones where you've absolutely killed.
23:04 Speaker 06 No one wants to hear that at all.
23:06 Greg Jenner? No?
23:07 Speaker 06 No, no, that, that comic is, is being booted out of the car immediately. It's, it's the real stinker.
23:13 Greg Jenner? Okay, so the, yes.
23:14 Speaker 06 It's the one where the audience, yeah, people were following you out to do, do violence upon you and it's, yeah.
23:20 Greg Jenner? Running to the car park.
23:21 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah.
23:21 Greg Jenner? Locking the doors.
23:24 Greg Jenner? Marian, why is The Canterbury Tales so important, both as a literary work and also in terms of our sense of the English language?
23:31 Speaker 05 I suppose in terms of language, Chaucer borrows and coins a lot of new, new words. Now, of course, sometimes that's simply been recorded because his work is so well known. But he certainly was expanding the English language a lot in The Canterbury Tales and in his other works as well. You know, my favorite example is that he was so new fangled that he invented the word new fangled.
23:50 Greg Jenner? Oh, lovely.
23:52 Speaker 05 He also changed what poetic forms were available in English. So he was the first person to use the ten syllable line and to use an early form of the iambic pentameter. So the five stress line that became the fundamental building block of English poetry.
24:07 Greg Jenner? So Chaucer's writing in English, and that is why he is the father of the English language in many ways. And obviously, you know, you said iambic pentameter, that's Shakespeare later on. But we need to move on with Chaucer's later life. Is he just constantly writing until the end of his life or is it a phase?
24:21 Speaker 05 No, he writes all of his life, yeah. So most of The Canterbury Tales are written in the 1390s, which is also when he writes his treatises on the astrolabe. He rewrites the prologue to The Legend of Good Women. He writes lots of short poems and he's working, you know, so we see him working throughout the 90s. Towards the end of his life, he's living in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, which was not necessarily a religious thing. I mean, there were lots of shops and brothels and things like that in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
24:46 Greg Jenner? Wow.
24:47 Speaker 05 Um, but he's living in, that's why he gets buried there because he lives there, not because Poets' Corner resisted there. Yeah, there was no Poets' Corner at the time.
24:54 Greg Jenner? It's just his local church.
24:56 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean, it would have been more normal for him to have been buried in St Margaret's, Westminster. He must have had a good relationship with the monks for them to bury him there. But it's because he lives there and it's later, his tomb gets moved and Poets' Corner gets started. But, yes, certainly in the last year of his life, we see him writing a poem to the new king.
25:14 Greg Jenner? Yep.
25:14 Speaker 05 Asking for his money.
25:16 Greg Jenner? Oh, great.
25:17 Speaker 05 Yeah.
25:18 Greg Jenner? So his final literary work is titled Cash Please. In fact, it's called, what's the name of the poem?
25:24 Speaker 05 Yeah, Complaint to His Purse.
25:25 Greg Jenner? A Complaint to His Purse.
25:27 Speaker 06 Good. I think all invoices should be titled Complaints to the Purse from now on.
25:31 Speaker 05 So he dies in 1400, by the end of October.
25:34 Greg Jenner? A nice round number, though. Well done, Geoffrey first. You know, he basically saw the whole 14th century and went, that's enough of that, thank you.
25:40 Speaker 06 Done it, yeah.
25:41 Greg Jenner? Done.
25:41 Speaker 06 Done that.
25:42 Greg Jenner? Mission accomplished.
25:42 Speaker 06 Saw all the highlights.
25:43 Greg Jenner? So that's the life of Geoffrey Chaucer.
25:45 Speaker 06 Wow.
25:45 Greg Jenner? Quite the life, quite the sort of literary history, really.
25:55 Greg Jenner? Time now for the Nuance Window. This is where Mike and I spend two minutes silently inspecting ditches while Marion turns a new page and tells us something we need to know about Geoffrey Chaucer. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Marion.
26:07 Speaker 05 I'm going to talk about Chaucer and character. So when people think of Chaucer, they often think about his characters, the wife of Bath, the miller, the knight, the host. And Chaucer did two really significant things with literary character. First of all, he developed the idea of the unreliable narrator. So in many of his poems, the person telling the story is biased and withholds part of the story, or lets their prejudices come through in the telling, so they're not objective. And the idea of unreliable narration was to become a really key part of the novel. We see it especially in modern novels such as Lolita, for example. Chaucer shows us that what we see is dependent on where we are standing. And I think this interest in perspective can be linked to the rise of artistic perspective at exactly this time.
26:52 Speaker 05 Chaucer would have seen Giotto's art, for instance, when he travelled in Italy. So he's really interested in using literary character to explore subjectivity and ambiguity.
27:02 Speaker 05 Secondly, he made his characters much more 3D than previous characters in literature, especially his female characters. The Wife of Bath is based on characters from Latin and French texts who were stereotypes, cynical old prostitutes. Chaucer's version is far more nuanced. She's much funnier and more appealing. She has a memory and a sense of the future. She talks about domestic violence and she talks explicitly about the lack of female voices in literature. In Troilus and Crusade II, Chaucer changes the character of the heroine. In Boccaccio's Il Philostrato, Chaucer's source, Crusade is a fickle, promiscuous betrayer. Chaucer, though, shows us the powerlessness and vulnerability of Crusade's
27:43 Speaker 05 situation, reveals the patterns of her thought and her constrained options, makes her a much more rounded and sympathetic character. He's interested in depicting characters' complexity and interiority, especially women's. Other authors sometimes disapproved of this. In the 15th century, Henriston wrote a sequel to Troilus and Crusade, in which Crusade is punished by becoming a prostitute with a venereal disease. Later artists such as Pierre Paolo Pasolini turned The Wife of Bath into a monstrous stereotype. Chaucer's concern with depicting complex female characters is one of his great achievements and makes him stand out, both from his contemporaries and from many of his successors.
28:22 Greg Jenner? Amazing, thank you so much.
28:23 Speaker 06 Lovely.
28:24 Greg Jenner? There we go. Geoffrey Chaucer.
28:26 Speaker 06 Amazing.
28:27 Greg Jenner? We often say Shakespeare writes great female characters, but Chaucer was doing it 200 years earlier.
28:31 Speaker 06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the unreliable narrator thing. That's, that's, yeah.
28:35 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
28:36 Speaker 06 I'm gonna have a deep dive. I love all that.
28:37 Greg Jenner? Well, we talked about that in our Agatha Christie episode, you know, another great literary sort of giant and her sort of, you know, notion of the narrator who's actually leading you down, you know, the alley. But he's already doing it in the 1380s.
28:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting. And that whole sense of perspective of shifting, you know, how do you see things, really fundamental to Chaucer's poetry.
28:56 Greg Jenner? Ah, he's pretty good, Geoffrey Chaucer, isn't he?
28:58 Speaker 06 He sounds good. I'm gonna have to have a bit of a read, doesn't it?
29:01 Greg Jenner? Yeah.
29:02 Speaker 06 I think, yeah, thank you.
29:03 Greg Jenner? Thank you so much, Marion, as well.
29:04 Speaker 06 Thank you.
29:05 Greg Jenner? Really enlightening and very interesting.
29:06 Speaker 05 Oh, it's been great.
29:07 Greg Jenner? And, listener, if you want more literary history, you can check out Mike's earlier episodes on Arthurian literature, which is an absolute hoot. Or Charles Dickens at Christmas, of course, our Agatha Christie episode too. We've also got the episode, the live episode, done at Hay Festival about printing in medieval England, where we mentioned Chaucer. And for more 14th century lives, we have our travel episode about Ibn Battuta. It's a very interesting guy. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In history corner, we had the marvellous Professor Marion Turner from the University of Oxford. Thank you, Marion.
29:45 Speaker 05 Oh, I've loved it. Thank you for having me.
29:46 Greg Jenner? And in comedy corner, we had the magnificent Middle English poet himself, Mike Wozniak. Thank you, Mike.
29:51 Speaker 06 Thanks for having me back. I've had a joyous time. Brilliant.
29:54 Greg Jenner? Yeah, we learned a lot, didn't we? And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we read another chapter from the big Your Dead to Me book of history. But for now, I'm off to go and drag people out of the pub and force them to walk to Canterbury while I regale them with the podcaster's tale. It's very long and very rude. Bye.
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30:54 Greg Jenner? In 1872, the Mari Celeste was found adrift in the Atlantic. Every person on board was gone, and none of them were ever seen again. Every Monday on Hidden History, Dr Harini Butt takes an unexplained event from history, just like that one, reads the evidence like a case file, and tells you what she thinks happened. No hedging. Start with the Mari Celeste episode for a look at one of history's most enduring maritime enigmas. Follow Hidden History with Dr Harini Butt wherever you get your podcasts.
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