ABSTRACT
Sir Geoffrey Chaucer's first glimpse of the idea of great poetry was derived, as we have seen, from the work of Froissart, De Machaut, and the authors of Le Roman de la Rose. Chaucer returned from Italy with an enthusiasm for Italian poetry. And in that he showed good taste. The poetic "complainte"—an expression of grief and an appeal for pity—was felt by Chaucer to be a definite form, consisting of a proem or introduction, stating the circumstances in the form of allegory, followed by the motive of the poem, namely, the complaint. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, begun about 1376 and finished after revision about 1382, is the only long poem which the poet ever completed to his own satisfaction. Chaucer's verse is interesting in the legends because this is one of his earliest poems written in heroic couplets, and probably some of the legends were written before the prologue.
