ABSTRACT
By "the beginnings of Chaucer's English style" I mean how Chaucer began to write in English and how he learned to do so to such marvelous effect that even in his first important work, The Book of the Duchess, he is in full control of what we easily recognize as the true Chaucerian style. That is the first work we can date with any degree of confidence-around 1370-and by then Chaucer had an easy command of the English poetic line. The beginnings of this - Chaucer's first attempts at verse - must have come long before this, how long we can only guess.
