ABSTRACT
There is first-class evidence that Chaucer went to school — his poetry. It is full of school-learning, like the passage from the Latin author Claudian, used as a school-text, in The Parliament of Fowls, 99-105, and dozens of others, including school jokes, like the ref erence to ‘dulcamoun’ put in Criseyde’s mouth, with Pandarus’s tart reply (Troilus and Criseyde, III, 930-5). Chaucer’s references in The Prioress’s Tale to the ‘song-school’, that is, the primary school for choirboys attached to a cathedral, suggest personal knowledge. Chaucer’s own knowledge of Latin is likely to have been acquired at a grammar school.
