ABSTRACT
The fourteenth century was an age of healthy literary productivity dominated by four major poets – Chaucer, Langland, Gower and the anonymous ‘Gawayne-poet’. Geoffrey Chaucer had an important career in public service. He was fighting in France by 1359–1360, was taken prisoner and ransomed. No doubt his career benefited from his marriage, for his wife, Philippa, was lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa. Some poets overpower us with their presence or their passion, but Chaucer worms his way into the hearts of his readers, and one key to his insinuating charm is the delightful self-projection that is effected with amusing self-deprecation, even self-mockery. Chaucer’s versatility may be further exemplified by the Nun’s Priest’s Tale of Chauntecleer and Pertelote, cock and hen, whose farmyard dialogue brings the domestic situation into new focus within a delicious mock-heroic framework.
