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The Life and Times of Chaucer

The facts about Geoffrey Chaucer's life are plentiful enough. It is the connections between the facts that seem to elude us — those subtle nuances of feeling & emotion that a biographer relies on to paint a true, complete portrait. Lacking these, we are almost compelled to make the story up as we go along, weaving together facts, opinions & our own personal biases to flesh out an otherwise bloodless life. For this reason, John Gardner may well be the perfect candidate to construct a life of Chaucer. An award-winning novelist & a translator of Middle English poetry, Gardner dumps into a pile all the facts we know about the beloved English poet & mixes them with a judicious sampling of literary criticism & a heaping dose of lively conjecture. What emerges is a rollicking good tale that might stand on its own, filled with persuasive answers to vexing questions; imaginative reconstructions of the Black Death & other compelling events of the times; & whatever snippets of Chaucer's own poetry may help shed light on his extraordinary age. Black-&-white illustrations.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 349
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780394493176
  • Genres
  • biography, history, medieval, poetry, historical, literature
  • Release date
  • 1977