Customer Reviews

Chaucer: 1340-1400: The Life and Times of the First English Poet

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While the author writes well and entertainingly, I had made the fatal assumption when I ordered this book that something subtitled <<The life and times of the first English poet>> would, in fact, discuss his life.

However, the book mentions Chaucer's wife only once in the main text, plus a mention in the chronology -- and doesn't even acknowledge that Chaucer had three known children, let alone discuss them -- though he does have a one-liner about the birth of Thomas Chaucer in the chronology. The cbronology, BTW, says Thomas was the first-born. An old book (1970s) I have says the first-born was Elizabeth. If that's been discredited, a short paragraph would have been most useful.

A book which omits the most important people in a subject's life is, to my mind, most definitely not a <<life.>> The omission is, for me, most frustrating, because there is or was a controversy about the paternity of Thomas Chaucer and perhaps Elizabeth on which I assumed this book would provide the latest insights.

I gave up about halfway through. IMO, the real subject of this book is a lengthy backgrounder on Chaucer's poetry. When my interest in what influenced Chaucer revives (as it frequently does), perhaps I'll give it another try.

Whoever remembers dreading having to memorize the opening lines of Chaucer's great tale will now take pleasure in these tales. Scholarly yet eye-opening to those to took Eng Lit 101 and have never since returned to Chaucer's great storytelling, this book will make you want read the full stories rather than the crib summaries. Lucidly written, informative and, above all, transporting the reader to the age of medieval storystelling. Richard West brings the social and cultural background to the XXth century reader in the most accessible of academic ways.

I decided to read this book because I had so little to tell about Chaucer, the man, to my senior English students other than what I could gather from the Canterbury Tales. I gave them the usual historical facts, that he was related to John of Gaunt, captured in the war and that Chaucer dislikes hypocrisy, has quite a few remarks to say about the church, seems to have a misogynistic bent, and so on. Therefore, as my summer reading assignment, I decided to learn more about Chaucer and chose this book as a first step. After reading a few chapters, I was somewhat amused and concerned that as interesting as West's book is, there is so little about the name on the cover. There are pages and pages about French poets such as Machaut and Deschamps of whom I was unaware. There is more about Edward III, the Black Prince, and the Bubonic Plague than I remember from my two semesters of British history. The problem is there is so little about Chaucer which perhaps is no fault of the biographer's. There just seems to be no historical data about England's first great satirist, poet, and chronicler of the Middle Ages. One section, however, most disturbingly reports of Chaucer's raping a Lady Cecily which might have given way to the questionable theme in "The Wife of Bath's Tale." West ends the chapter by stating that the knight gave the woman what all women want, a little disturbing even if one looks at this through Freud's or Darwin's mindset as the biographer tell us. The reason the book still receives a favorable review is the author's clear depiction of the Middle Ages, the tension between France and England, and his insight for Chaucer's work. Therefore, I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to know about England and Europe during this period and the background to Chaucer's works, but I wouldn't state that West's biography reveals anymore about Chaucer than what one finds in the numerous literature books, anthologies, or sources of that nature.

Chaucer: 1340-1400, The Life And Times Of The First English Poet is an engaging new portrait of the life and times of Geoffrey Chaucer whose career included courtly offices situated him at the center of cultural activity in medieval London, and whose poetry became a primary force in the evolution of modern English. Richard West is a distinguished journalist who has meticulously researched Chaucer's life and blends biography with history and literary criticism into a coherent presentation of a literary genius who survived the Black Death as a child, fought in France during the Hundred Years War, was a diplomat to Italy, served in the English court during the Peasants' Revolt and murder of Richard II -- and whose central work, The Canterbury Tales, illuminated the nature of human life in the Middle Ages in such a way as to capture the respect and attention of readers for more than six hundred years. Highly recommended, essential reading for students of Chaucer and his writings.

I went onto the Amazon.co.uk site tonight frustrated at the trite and maundering drivel this book contains, and was not surprised at all to find my frustrations echoed in the only other review there to date.

Unlike that reviewer, I barely reached page 70 before becoming sick of the book. Its title would lead one to believe that the book is about Chaucer, even if the subtitle suggests a broader focus (his life and times). However, to the best of my knowledge he didn't live in any century prior to the fourteenth, so the first 50 pages are entirely irrelevant for a start. The subjects around which West eddies are perhaps interesting enough in themselves, but West flits around from point to point with no clear sense of purpose or direction, and worse still makes them boring. Perhaps my experience of reading the first 50 pages was tainted by the persistent nagging in the back of my mind: "What's your point, you silly man?! I want to read about Chaucer!"

When he does talk about Chaucer, it descends into absolute trash lit. crit. In the first 70 pages, West doesn't do much more than make sweeping, vapid statements and back them up with a couple of lines from The Canterbury Tales. But not to worry: actual talk of Chaucer is scant.

If you would like to get to know a bit more about this phenomenal poet of the fourteenth century, then read the Wikipedia article. It'll take a lot less time and give you a better synoptic overview of him, his works and (by following a few hyperlinks) his life and times.

This book is a waste of paper and I can't believe it got past proofreaders, editors, etc. Says a lot for the quality of the publisher!

The Canterbury Tales have always been on the "should-have" list for me, but except when compelled by a rigorous English class, I've avoided them. Only the memory of the adulterous Alison and her mischief stuck with me.

This book has rekindled my interest in reading The Canterbury Tales, for three reasons:

1. It balances the middle English quotations with several different editions and citations, so that I could actually pick an edition I'd probably like and read. How can I not like a work that features, and skewers, adultery, cheating, high-minded hypocrisy, and avarice in all its forms--and tunes my ear to my own native tongue, to boot?

2. West's thin and few references to Chaucer's biographical details hold the story together just enough to provide context for his contention about Chaucer's eminence in inventing English, an accolade often awarded to Shakespeare. What West has offered is not a biography of Chaucer, but a biography of English language development in the context of then-recent historical events. West offers some provocative thoughts about why Chaucer elected to tell the tale as he did. I agree with some, disagree with others, but West has made me think about what I took for granted.

3. I've never felt comfortable with the argument raging today about "dead white males" and why we study them, although I can see reason on both sides. West's overall achievement in this book justifies why Chaucer merits study--regardless of his sex, race, and national origin.

This won't satisfy if you need a biography, but if you've been frustrated by the middle English of The Canterbury Tales, this is an excellent guidebook to many very good translations--and to the Tales themselves.

We know more about Chaucer than Shakespeare. Sure, Will gets all the press and accolades for his works in Modern English. "Modern", relative to Chaucer, anyway. Today's average reader can still dope out the Elizabethan English, even if he has to keep a dictionary handy or read a few footnotes. But reading Chaucer in the original idiom of "Middle" English requires extensive aids, such as a modern translation or enrollment in an upper-level college class.

Thus, other than the Prologue and maybe a Canterbury Tale or two (esp. the Miller's Tale), Chaucer is underappreciated as a writer whose works survived 600 years.

But Chaucer deserves a lot of literary credit as well. Chaucer, for example, set the stage for the modern novel. He was, to quote the author, "not just a pioneer but part of mainstream of European literature. . . [Chaucer] became a model or inspiration to subsequent poets, esp. Shakespeare. Troilus [and Cressida], even more than Canterbury Tales, allows us to think of Chaucer as a pioneer of the novel."

Readers of West's book will appreciate Chaucer as an innovator of the written word. In addition, the reader will learn a great deal about Chaucer's cultural and historical milieu. There are chapters dealing with the Black Plague and the Civil War of his time. Interestingly, the Plague seems less important, notwithstanding the opinion of another historian, Barbara Tuchmann.

Chaucer's life was intertwined with Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, whose lives were put on stage by the greatest playwright of all time who put these words in the mouth of Chaucer's patron, "Old John of Gaunt, time-honored Lancaster": "For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite The man that mocks at it and sets it light."

Perhaps he had Chaucer in mind.

The title is a little misleading. West does not focus on many of the more mundane aspects of Chaucer's life, nor does he spend much time in biographical matters (of which we know little). Rather, "Chaucer" is a wonderful introduction to the cultural and literary settings in which the great poet wrote.

West's "Chaucer" is an engaging introduction to the works of the man--great for beginners--but is not an academic work, or even a thorough, critical analysis on Chaucer's writings.