Buried in the Basement: “Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer” by John Bowers

In his lifetime, a well-known writer produces poetry and other works. When he dies, what has been left unpublished is far more than what has been. His son becomes his literary executor. Not only does he make sure the unknown works are published, he also heightens his father’s literary standing in the process.

Geoffrey Chaucer

If you said this is J.R.R. Tolkien and his son Christopher, you would be right. If you said Geoffrey Chaucer and his son Thomas, you would also be right. We know far more about J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary achievements because of his son Christopher. And we have Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales because of his son Thomas.

This is almost an aside in Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer by John Bowers. But it is one of many nuggets of information included in the book that we didn’t know about the authors of The Lord of the Rings and The Canterbury Tales – that the literary life author of the 20^th century echoed the literary life of the author of the 14^th.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

"Chaucer: A European Life" by Marion Turner

In book publishing, reviews matter. Before I read Chaucer: A European Life by Marion Turner, I did something I always avoid doing before reading a book I intend to review. I read someone else’s review of the book.

I’d ordered the book (a hefty $39.95), and then I saw the headline on another reviewer’s story. It was not positive; in fact, what caught my attention was the outrage. Thinking of what I had spent that was soon to arrive, I read the first few paragraphs. And my heart sank. The primary criticism was that the book was filled with misspelled words. This is a book written by an Oxford professor and published by Princeton University Press, and it has misspelled words? 

And then the reviewer launched into what he saw as the work’s major shortcoming – no emphasis, or even mention, of the importance of one particular influence (the church) on Chaucer’s life.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Chaucer and The First Great English Poem

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour,

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne…

Geoffrey Chaucer

Thus begins the first great English poem. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1343-1400) wasn’t the first poem in what we call Middle English, nor did it cause English to become the official language of the British Isles. What it did do, says author Peter Ackroyd in his modern English prose translation, was mark the emergence of English as the language that was becoming what most people spoke. The royal court still conducted its business in French, but that, too, was changing.

It is a work that stopped as a work in progress. Chaucer completed the General Prologue and less than a third of the planned 120 tales, stories told by a group of pilgrims traveling to and from St. Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral. The pilgrims represent virtually all levels of society – merchants, knights, religious figures, tradesman, lawyers, doctors, and more. Chaucer didn’t confine himself to men – in fact, the Wife of Bath is one of the most memorable characters in the entire poem, and with a prologue that is the longest of any of the tales.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.