Chaucer's Tale

August 18, 2014
In 1386, when Geoffrey Chaucer lost his bureaucratic job in wool customs—and the attached housing—the little-known poet left his native London and began his remarkable work, The Canterbury Tales, in exile. Strohm, an emeritus professor of medieval literature at Oxford and Columbia Universities, focuses on this one significant year in Chaucer’s life and covers his Aldgate neighborhood and London political intrigue in minute detail. Strohm relates Chaucer’s themes in specific works to life in London, and uses both a current translation and the Middle English version for each selection, which makes it easy for modern readers to follow. An unforgiving portrait of Chaucer’s royal brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, appears to be based largely on one contemporary source; in fact, Gaunt’s patronage of Chaucer allowed him to live comfortably when his income ebbed, since the writer was either comparatively honest or inept at corruption. Strohm’s well chosen public documents and contextual excerpts from Chaucer’s work offer a glimpse into Chaucer’s personal life and literary ambition as well as insight into the horrible year that launched his greatest work. Strohm really shines at literary criticism, which he saves until the end, but this work is probably best for those who already harbor a deep interest in medieval literature or history.

October 15, 2014
Strohm (Humanities, Emeritus/Columbia Univ.; Conscience: A Very Short Introduction, 2011, etc.) brings his authority as a medievalist to this lively biography, focused on Geoffrey Chaucer's radical change of fortunes in 1386. At age 43, Chaucer lost his patronage job as controller of customs at the Wool Wharf, was evicted from his London apartment, and was living apart from his wife and mostly estranged from his children. In short, writes Strohm, "he suddenly found himself without a patron, without a faction, without a dwelling, without a job, and-perhaps most seriously-without a city." In these straits, however, he dedicated himself to the vocation of writing. Strohm notes that Chaucer had completed more than half of his literary works before 1386 but not The Canterbury Tales. Although he devoted time to his craft while he served in various court positions for more than 20 years, he did not yet consider himself a poet but instead "wrote as a matter of personal choice and not for acclaim or reward," addressing his works to an audience comprised of close friends. That circle of friends, however, fell away with his ouster from London. Strohm argues that the format of The Canterbury Tales directly responded to this lack of audience with a bold artistic strategy: "[T]he vivid portrait gallery of Canterbury Pilgrims" became both tellers of tales and listeners, "a body of ambitiously mixed participants suitable for a collection of tales unprecedented in their variety and scope." With little historical evidence of Chaucer's personal life, Strohm judiciously mines official documents and Chaucer's literary works to draw inferences about his private activities and associations and to reveal his attitudes about love, loyalty, politics and fame. He argues that Chaucer "undoubtedly possessed a competitive edge" over English poets and, intriguingly, his near contemporary Boccaccio. With vibrant portraits of Chaucer's contemporaries-including the imperious John of Gaunt and the shifty London mayor Nicholas Brembre-Strohm's focus on one year in Chaucer's life offers an expansive view of medieval England.

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Starred review from October 1, 2014
Faith may have put medieval pilgrims on the road to Canterbury, but Strohm is sure that it was disaster that launched Geoffrey Chaucer on the task of writing his great poem about such a pilgrimage. In this remarkable literary inquiry, Strohm illuminates the way a staggering series of reversalspersonal, economic, politicalknocked Chaucer out of his career as a successful bureaucrat who occasionally wrote poetry for an intimate circle and into a radically different trajectory as a single-minded poet determined to reach an enduring audience. A carefully researched narrative shows Chaucer suffering emotional distress as his marriage decays, financial embarrassment as he loses his patronage position in the wool trade, and public humiliation as his loyalty to Richard II exposes him to parliamentary wrath. The setbacks of 1386 even deprive Chaucer of his Aldgate apartment. But as a man who could maken vertu of necessitee, Chaucer turns his straitened circumstances into an opportunity to act on a desire he had tentatively voiced in his Troilus and Criseydethat of pursuing fame as a poet. Chaucer thus withdraws from London to Kent and forever changes English literature by beginning The Canterbury Tales. The unearthing of a real-life tale as fascinating as any of Chaucer's own making.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

June 1, 2014

As tumultuous times descended on 14th-century London, cog-in-the-wheel bureaucrat Geoffrey Chaucer found himself without job or home, separated from his wife, and alone in Kent with no one to hear the occasional poetry he penned. Then he decided to write for the ages. From the former J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University, who has also taught medieval literature at Columbia.

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