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Enter your email address: Chaucer's Contribution to English Language and
Literature 100 DAYS ENGLISH
Introduction:
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Father of verse! who m immortal song
First taught the Muse to speak the English tongue. Write-Up Services
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It is somewhat idle to talk of "fathers" in the history of literature, for it is questionable if a
particular person can be wholly credited with in the founding of a new literary genre. Take Online Classes
English Vocabulary
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IELTS Training Literature is generally subject to the 'law of evolutionary development. And though a man may
do more than others by way of contributing to this development we should be chary of Home
Spoken English inferring upon him the medal of fatherhood. When it is said that Chaucer is the father of LEARNING ENGLISH
English poetry, and even the father of English literature we broadly mean that his contribution
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Audio-Video English to the evolution of English poetry or literature is much more significant than that of his
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contemporaries and predecessors, and to be similarly rated is his introduction of so many
BA English Notes
novel features into it. REGISTRATION

MA English Notes That Chaucer was a pioneer in many respects should be readily granted. "With him is
born our real poetry," says Matthew Arnojd. He has been acclaimed as the first realist, the first Like My Fan Page
humorist, the first narrative artist the first great character-painter, and the first great metrical
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artist in English literature. Further, he has been credited not only with the "fatherhood" of
English poetry but has also been hailed as the father of English drama before the drama was
English Teaching-ELT bom, and the father of English novel before the novel was born. And, what is more, his
importance is not due to precedence alone, but due to excellence. He is not only the first
Topics and Subjects
 English poet, but a great poet in his own right. Justly has he been called "the fountain-source
100 Days English (138) of the vast stream of English literature." English…
Advanced English Grammar 8.3K likes
Contribution to Language:
(45)
Well does Lowell say that "Chaucer found his English a dialect and left it a language."
BA English-NOTES (97) Borrowing Saintsbury's words about the transformation which Dryden effected in English
poetry, we may justly say that Chaucer found the English language brick and left it marble. Like Page
Corporate Skills (10)
When Chaucer started his literary career, the English speech, and still less, the English of
CSS and PMS (1) writing was confusingly fluid and unsettled. The English language was divided into a number
of dialects which were employed in different parts of the country. The four of them vastly more NeoFeed
Daily English Vocabulary
prominent than the others were:
(386)
(i) The Southern Posts
English Grammar Errors (12)
(ii) The Midland
English in News (1) Comments
(iii) The Northern or Northumbrian
English Language Teaching
(iv) The Kentish Neo-Archives
(ELT) (32)
Out of these four, the Midland or the East Midland dialect, which was spoken in
English Level (2) December (904)
London and its surrounding area, was the simplest in grammar and syntax. Moreover, it was
English Pronunciation (3) the one patronised by the aristocratic and literary circles of the country. Gower used this
GreenLinks
dialect for his poem Confessio Amantis and Wyclif for his translation of the Bible. But this
English Speaking Skills (4) dialect was not the vehicle of all literary work. Other dialects had their votaries too. Langland
English Vocabulary and in his Piers Plowman, to quote an instance, used a mixture of the Southern and Midland
Idioms (39)
dialects. Chaucer employed in his work the East midland dialect, and by casting the enormous
weight of his genius balance decided once for all which dialect was going to be the standard
English Writing Skills (23) literary language of the whole of the country for all times to come. None after him thought of
using any dialect other than the East Midland for any literary work of consequence. It is
Exam English (5)
certain that if Chaucer had adopted some other dialect the emergence of the standard language
Express Yoursel (2) of literature would have been considerably delayed. All the great writers of England succeeding
Chaucer are, in the words of John Speirs, "masters of the language of which Chaucer is, before
General Knowledge (8) them, the great master."
History of English Literature Not only was Chaucer's selection of one dialect out of the four a happy one, but so was
(36) his selection of one of the three languages which were reigning supreme in England at that
IELTS and TOEFL (59)
time-Latin, French, and English. In fact. Latin and French were more fashionable than the
poor "vernacular" English. Latin was considered "the universal language" and was patronised
Life and Social Skills (38) at the expense of English by the Church as well as the learned. Before Wyclif translated it into
the "vulgar tongue", the Bible was read in its Latin version called the Vulgate. French was the
Linguistics (36)
language of the court and was used for keeping the accounts of the royal household till as late
Literary and Critical Essays as 1365. Perplexed by the variety of languages offering themselves for use, Chaucer's friend
(97) and contemporary Gower could not decide which one of them to adopt. He wrote his Mirour
del'Omme in French, Vox Clamantis in Latin, and Confessio Amantis in English, perhaps
MA English-Literature (1296) because he was not quite sure which of the three languages was going to survive. But Chaucer
Main (63) had few doubts abputthe issue. He chose English which was a despised language, and asjthe
legendary king did to the beggar maid, raised her from the dust, draped her in royal robes, and
Neo-Kids' English (1) conducted her coronation. That queen is ruling even now.
Passion for English (31) Contribution to Versification:

Phonetics and Phonology Chaucer's contribution to English versification is no less striking than to the English
language. Again, it is an instance of a happy choice. He sounded the death-knell of the old
(13)
Saxon alliterative measure and firmly established the modern one. Even in the fourteenth
Practical Criticism (94) century the old alliterative measure had been employed by such a considerable poet as
Langland for his Piers khe Plowman, and the writer of Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight.
Spoken English (70)
Let us give the important features of the old measure which Chaucer so categorically
Theory of Literature (36) disowned:

Video English (23) (i) There is no regularity in the number of syllables in each line. One line may have as few
as six syllables and another as many as fourteen.
(ii) The use of alliteration as the chief ornamental device and as the lone structural
principle. All the alliterative syllables are stressed.
(iii) The absence 01 end-rimes; and
(iv) Frequent repetition to express vehemence and intensity of emotion.
Chaucer had no patience with the "rum, ram, ruf' of the alliterative measure. So does he
maintain in the Parson's Tale:
But trusteth wel, I am a southern man,
I cannot geste-rum, ram, ruf,-by lettere,
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettere.
For that old-fashioned measure he substituted the regular line with end-rime, which he
borrowed from France. The new measure has the following characteristics:
(i) All lines have the same number of syllables,
(ii) End-rime,
(iii) Absence of alliteration and frequent repetition.
After Chaucer, no important poet ever thought of reverting to the old measure. Thus,
Chaucer may be designated "the father of modern English versification." Chaucer employs
three principal metres in his works. In The Canterbury Tales he mostly uses lines of ten
syllables each (with generally five accents); and the lines run into couplets; that is, each couple
of lines has its end-syllables rhyming with each other. For example:
His eyes twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
In Troilus and Cryseyde he -uses the seven-line stanza of decasyllabic lines with five accents
each having the rhyme-scheme a b abb c c. This measure was borrowed by him from the
French and is called the rhyme-royal or Chaucerian stanza. The third principal metre
employed by him is the octosyllabic couplet with four accents and end-rime. In The Book of
the Duchesse this measure is used. The measures thus adopted by Chaucer were seized upon
by his successors. The decasyllabic couplet known as the heroic couplet, was to be chiselled
and invigorated to perfection three centuries later by Dryden and Pope. Apart from those three
principal measures Chaucer also employed for the first time a number of other stanzaic forms
in his shorter poems.
Not only this, Chaucer seems to be the first Englishman who realised and brought out
the latent music of his language. "To read Chaucer's verse," observes a critic, "is like listening
to a clear stream, in a meadow full of sunshine, rippling over its bed of pebbles." The following
is the tribute of a worthy successor of his:
The morning star of song, who made
His music heard below,
Don Chaucer, the first -warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts thatfiU",
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still
He made English a pliant and vigorous medium of poetic utterance. His astonishingly easy
mastery of the language is indeed remarkable. With one step the writings of Chaucer carry us
into a new era in which the language appears endowed with ease, dignity, and copiousness of
expression and clothed in the hues of the imagination.
The Content of Poetry:
Chaucer was a pioneer not only in the linguistic and prosodic fields, but was one in the
strictly poetic field also. Not only the form of poetry, but its content, too, is highly indebted to
him. Not only did he give English poetry a new dress, but a new body and a new soul. His
major contribution towards the content of poetry is in his advocacy of and strict adherence to
realism. His Canterbury Tales embodies a new effort in the history of literature, as it strictly
deals with real men, manners, and life. In the beginning of his literary career Chaucer followed
his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and wrote allegorical and dream poetry
which in its content was as remote from life as a dream is from reality. But at the age of about
fifty he realised that literature should deal first-hand with life and not look at it through the
spectacles of books or the hazy hues of dreams and cumbersome allegory. He realised, to adopt
Pope's famous couplet (with a little change) :
Know then thyself: presume not dreams to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
And the product of this realisation was The Canterbury Tales. This poem, as it were, holds a
mirror to the life of Chaucer's age and shows its manners and morals completely, "not in
fragments." Chaucer replaces effectively the shadowy delineations of the old romantic and
allegorical school with the vivid and pulsating pictures of contemporary life.
And Chaucer does not forget the universal beneath the particular, the dateless beneath
the dated. The portraits of the pilgrims in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales constitute not
only an epitome of the society of fourteenth-century England, but the epitome of human
nature in all climes and all ages. Grierson and Smith observe about Chaucer's pilgrims: "They
are all with us today, though some of them have changed their names. The knight now
commands a line regiment, the squire is in the guards, the shipman was a rum-runner while
prohibition lasted and is active now in the black market, the friar is a jolly sporting publican,
the pardoner vends quack medicines or holds seances, and the prioress is the headmistress of
a fashionable girls' school. Some of them have reappeared in a later literature. The poor parson
was reincarnated in the Vicar of Wakefield, the knight in Colonel Newcome and the Monk
nrArchdeacon Grantly."
His Geniality, Tolerance, Humour, and Freshness:
Chaucer's tone as a poet is wonderfully instinct with geniality, tolerance, humour, and
freshness which are absent from that of his contemporaries and predecessors who are too
dreamy or too serious to be interesting. In spite of his awareness of the corruption and unrest
in the society of his age Chaucer is never upset or upsetting. He experiences what the French
cally'oz'e de vivre, and communicates it to his is iders. No one can read Chaucer without
feeling that it is good to be alive in this world however imperfect may it be in numerous
respects. He is a chronic optimist. He is never harsh, rancorous, bitter, or indignant, and never
falls out with his fellow men for their failings. He leaves didacticism to Langland and "moral
Gower" and himself peacefully coexists with all human imperfections. It does not mean that he
is not sarcastic or satirical, but his satire and sarcasm are always seasoned with lively humour.
In fact his forte is irony rather than satire. Aldous Huxley observes: "Where Langland cries
aloud in anger threatening the world with hell fire, Chaucer looks on and smiles." The great
English humorists like Shakespeare and Fielding share with Chaucer the same broad human
sympathy which he first introduced into literature and which has bestowed upon his
Canterbury Tales that character of perennial,-vernal freshness which appears so abundantly
on its every page,
Contribution to the Novel:
The novel is one of the latest courses in the banquet of English literature. But in his
narrative skill, his gift of vivid characterization, his aptitude for plot-construction, and his
inventive skill Chaucer appears as a worthy precursor of the race of novelists who come
centuries afterwards. If Chaucer is the father of English poetry he is certainly, to use G. K.
Chesterton's phrase, "the grandTafher of&ie English novel." His Tales are replete with intense
human interest, and though he borrows his materials from numerous sundry sources, his
narrative skill is all his own. That could not have been borrowed. His narration is lively and
direct, if we make exception for the numerous digressions and philosophical and pseudo-
philosophical animadversions having little to do with the tales proper, introduced after the
contemporary fashion. It is difficult to find him flagging or growing dull and monotonous. It is
perhaps only Burns who in Tom O' Shanter excels Chaucer in the telling of "merry tales.'"
Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales has been rightly called "the prologue to
modern fiction." It has characters if not plot, and vivid characterization is one of the primary
jobs of a novelist. A novel, according to Meredith, should be "a summary of actual life." So is,
indeed, the Prologue. Several of the tales, too, are novels in miniature and hold the attention
of the reader from the beginning to the end, which, alas! very few novels of today do.
As regards Chaucer's Troilus and Cryseyde, it has been well called "a novel in verse."
And it has all the salient features of a novel. It has plot, character, unravelling action, conflict,
rising action, and denouement-every thing. Though the background of the action is the
legendary Trojan war, and though some elements have been borrowed from the Italian writer
Boccaccio, yet it is all very modern and close to life. It is not devoid even of psychological
interest which is a major characteristic of the modern novel. "Its heroine," as a critic observes,
"is the subtlest piece of psychological analysis in medieval fiction: and the shrewd and
practical Pandarus is a character whose presence of itself brings the story down from the
heights of romance to the plains of real life." S. D. Neill opines that "had Chaucer written in
prose, it is possible that his Troilus and Cryseyde and not Richardson's Pamela would have
been celebrated as the first English novel." A. W. Pollard facetiously~observes that Chaucer
was a compound of "thirty per cent of Goldsmith, fifty of Fielding, and twenty of Walter Scott."
This means, in other words, that as a story-teller Chaucer had some of the sweetness of
Goldsmith, the genial ironic attitude and realism of Fielding, and the high chivalrous tone of
Sir Walter Scott. But, after al 1 is said and done. Chaucer is Chaucer himself and himself alone.
Contribution to the Drama:
Chaucer wrote at a time when, like the novel, secular drama had not been born, and
yet his works have some dramatic elements which are altogether missing in the poetry before
him. His mode of characterisation in the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is, no doubt, static
or descriptive, but in the tales proper it is dynamic or dramatic. There the characters reveal
themselves, without the intervention of the. author, through what they say and what they do.
Even the tales they narrate, in most cases, are in keeping with their respective characters,
avocations, temperaments, etc. In this way Chaucer is clearly ahead of his "model" Boccaccjo,
who in his Decameron allots various tales to his ladies and gentlemen indiscriminately,
irrespective of their conformity or otherwise to their respective characters. The stories in The
Decameron could without violence be re-distributed-among the characters. But not in The
Canterbury Tales where they-serve as a dramatic device of characterisation: and in the
drama, pace Aristotle, character is all-important. In their disputations and discussions and
comments upon each other's tales and their general behaviour, too, the pilgrims are^made by
Chaucer to reveal themselves and to provide finishing touches to the character-portraits
already statically (or non-dramatically) set forth in the Prologue. Chaucer is abundantly
showing here the essential gift of a dramatist. A critic goes so far as to assert that Chaucer is "a
dramatist in all but the fact", and again : "If the drama had been known in Chaucer's time as a
branch of living literature, he might have attained as high an excellence in comedy as any
English or Continental writer."
Chaucer's Limitations:
Let us round off our discussion by briefly referring to some of Chaucer's limitations or
what as "the father of English poetry" he could not give to it. Matthew Arnold feels in
Chaucer's work the absence of "high seriousness" which is the characteristic of all great poetry.
Then, Chaucer has, unlike Dante, no burning message to give. Again as Hudson avers, he is not
the poet of the people. Moody and Loyett maintain that "Chaucer wrote for the court and
cultivated classes to whom the sufferings of the poor were a matter of the utmost indifference."
Still another critic finds missing from Chaucer's poetry those "mysterious significances" which
are characteristics of all great poetry. All this is, in a measure, true. But those who charge
Chaucer with the absence of pathos may well read the following passage from The-Knight's
Tale in which 'Arcite laments his separation, consequent upon his death, from his lady-love:

Alas the woe! alas the paines strong

That I for you have suffered, and so long!
Alas the death: alas, mine Emilie!
Al d i f !
 Alas, departing of our company!
Alas, mine hertes queen! alas my wife!
Mine hertes lady, ender of my life.
WJiat is this world? What asken men to
have?
Now with his love; now in his colde grave,
Alone, withouten any company!
Farewell my sweet! farewell mine Emilie!
And softe take me in your armes rwey,
Fore love of God and heakeneth what I
say.

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by Muhammad Naeem at 5:35 PM

Topics and Subjects Literary and Critical Essays

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