Geoffrey Chaucer: the Cantebury Tales & Hypocrisy in the Church of England During the,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,, ,,

Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet during the Medieval Era. While he does not appear to

have been a social reformer, he drew attention to the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church in his

works, The Canterbury Tales.

Scholars agree that little is known about Chaucer. We do not have much personal inform-

mation, such as “the memorabilia, letters, diaries, personal reminiscences, that cluster thickly

around such later figures as Byron, Shelley or Yeats” (Morrison 7). Most of what is known has

been gathered from official or public documents. According to West, “we don’t even know if

he was Anglo-Saxon or Norman French as Chaucer (from chaussier, a shoemaker) indicates”

(42). While not shoemakers, Chaucer’s “father and grandfather were both wine merchants,

apparently successful and rising men” (Morrison 7).

Geoffrey Chaucer was born sometime between 1340 -1345, in London, England. It is not known

what education level that Chaucer may have reached. Since he became a member of the

household of Elizabeth, countess of Ulster, it is assumed that he had an opportunity to receive

higher education. It is believed that Chaucer could read French, Latin and Italian.

Society in Chaucer’s time was divided into three “estates”. Singman and McLean tell us that

“The first estate was the clergy, who were responsible for people’s spiritual well-being. The

second estate was the aristocracy, who were supposed to defend the nation with their military

might. The third estate was the commons, whose role was to labor and produce the country’s

wealth”(9).

When Chaucer was a young boy, bubonic and pneumonic plague struck Europe. The plague was

referred to as the “Black Death”. “In 1348-49, the Black Death reduced the nation in sixteen

months from perhaps four million to two million five hundred thousand, and precipitated the

class struggle” (Singman &