Discuss Chaucer as a Modern poet

 Chaucer as a Modern poet

Ans. In the history of most literature, excellence was found to develop in poetry sooner than in prose, and the first great name in English literature is that of the great poet  Geoffrey Chaucer.

Although, the first of England's great writers, Chaucer is no primitive poet, there is no analogy between his work and that of the Homeric poems, the supreme example of a well marked literary class. In his worse we find at least the English language assimilating its large additions from the Norman French vocabulary, and the English genius adopting successfully the subjects and the forms of art provided by Romance culture in the literature of French and Italy. In the Roman de la Rose, most poems began with a dream which led to an allegory. It took a long time for Chaucer to rid himself of the poetic artifices of his age. He accepted the medieval formula as though it were a necessity. He inserts, from time to time, an episode or a detail which truly expressed his traditional nature. Chaucer's first major work The Book of Duchess ' is a dream allegory.

He again returns to medieval allegory when he wished to celebrate the bethrothal ( engagement ) of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia . This was probably the subject of his Parliament of Fowls. The poem contains many medieval conventions like the reading of the book , the on - coming sleep , the resulting dream , the supernatural guide , the abstractions , the classical digressions etc. till there is a freshness and originality enhanced by apt proverbial expressions , lively dialogues , melodious verse , and powerful humour . Here are some classic memories with The House of Fame ‘. But it is full of intricate and sometimes rambling medieval knowledge. Here Chaucer seems to have wished to compete with the Roman de la Rose, raising an equally symbolical structure. The Legend of Good Women is again a dream poem. In its prologue, Chaucer returns to allegory. This prologue is more picturesque and more expressive of poetic feelings than the legends themselves. Troilus and Cresside is perhaps Chaucer's first great poem where the modern element dominates. There are, of course, long conversations, dull soliloquies, deficient action.

 Like his contemporaries, he had dreams and allegorical figures. He invented imaginary incidents. He borrowed from books the subjects and characters of his poems. In the Canterbury Tales, however, he looks straight at the spectacle of life and reproduces it unaided. It is this quality of realism that makes Chaucer so interesting to his modern readers.

 As we read the Prologue, we feel that the pilgrims pass before our eyes as living men and women. Yet they are shadowy figures caught in the web of the poetic fancy. They come down to us cutting across whole long centuries , as the most living reality of human nature , at a particular point of England's cultural history . The marvelous combination of colour, image and realism in The Canterbury Tales ' contribute to the modern appeal of Chaucer. The young Squire wears a gown embroidered with white and red flowers. Chaucer enjoys first place as human humourist in English Literature. His humor is the expression of his joy in life and of his wide sympathy and tolerance. A thread of honest and kindly laughter runs through all the stories. The description of the Prioress and the Oxford Clerk has good - natured humor. The stories of the Miller, the Reeve, the Shipman and the Wife of Bath provide instances of coarse and obscene humor.

His language is a proof of his being modern, versification and music. Lowell has rightly remarked that Chaucer found his native tongue a dialect and left it a language. He chose the East Mid - land dialect which became the sole literary language of the whole of England. He infused the courtliness, the graces and delicate shades of French poetry into his native vocabulary. In versification, apart from the weak eight - syllable line already in use, he introduced the ten syllable line. He also introduced into English poetry rime - royal (seven - line stanza), eight - line stanza and heroic couplet. He had an exclusive ear for music. In the words of Stopford Brooke, reading his poetry is like listening in a meadow full of sun - shine to a clear stream curling over the sweet stones. His modernity and his influence on subsequent writers prove that he has been rightly called the Father of English poetry. ‘Father ‘, of course, reveals a reflected glory. But Chaucer is not merely an archaic ancestor of a brilliant line but easily greater than any other writer during two subsequent centuries.