Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard

In this astute analysis, Flannery (Practising Shame), an English professor at the University of Bern in Switzerland, considers “Chaucer’s life and work in relation to his reputation for mirth and merriment, in order to explore how he became the poet he is for us today.” She contends that Chaucer’s first major poem, a lament for Prince John of Gaunt’s late first wife, is delivered in a wryly self-deprecating tone that reflected the poet’s “humble social position” as an administrator to nobility. While making diplomatic trips to Italy between 1372 and 1387 in service of kings Edward III and Richard II, Chaucer encountered the vernacular writings of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, likely inspiring Chaucer to write in the English vernacular while also providing him with comedic fodder (Chaucer’s The House of Fame reimagines the eagle that carries Dante to the heavens in the Divine Comedy as a talkative bore). Flannery’s keen interpretations of Chaucer’s poetry are bolstered by enlightening historical context, as when she explains that while modern audiences cheer on the sex-positive Wife of Bath for her outspokenness in pointing out “the inconsistencies of the Church’s teachings on marriage and virginity,” medieval audiences would have recognized her as a familiar misogynistic caricature and laughed at “her vanity, her covetousness and her manipulation of her husbands.” It’s a revealing take on the much-studied poet. Photos. (July)