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Geoffrey Chaucer, born around 1340, is the father of english letterature that thanks
to him, become elegant and refined.
He gave to the language a wide flexibility, and he transfered in England the main themes
of italian and french letterature.
The first Chaucer narrative poem is The book of the duchess, written at the end of 1369
for the death of Lancaster Duchess. Here he imagines to meet a black dressed man in a dream,
that said about his love-story with a beautiful lady and about his mourning due to her death.
His masterpiece is The Canterbury Tales that narrates about a group of pilgrims
going to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. The journey is long so they decide to wile
away their time by telling stories. There are thirty-one pilgrims including poet himself,
and each is meant to tell two stories,: one on the way there and one on the way back,
but Chaucer's death left the work incomplete.
Amoung his others important works: The House of Fame, The parliament of fowls and
Troilus & Criseyde.
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