Geoffrey Chaucer
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Chesterton describes his book as 'The Praise of Chaucer.'
As far as he is concerned it is as easy for an ordinary Englishman to enjoy Chaucer as to enjoy Dickens. It claims no special knowledge but simply wishes to bring his love of Chaucer to the masses. But in this quest the writer has revealed Chaucer as a man, the way his poetry stems from the medieval age in which he lived and how glaringly relevant all the walking social symbols of the Chaucerian scene are to the dissolving views of our own social doubts and speculations today.
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What we know about Chaucer's personal life is still relatively vague. However Chesterton manages to piece together snippets of information from the most unlikely places, such as ancient court papers which record Chaucer as a witness to a crime, from these records Chesterton can provide an approximate date of birth for the mysterious writer.
The writer reveals that Chaucer was a poet who came at the end of the medieval age and order; which certainly contained fanaticism, ferocity, wild asceticism and the rest. There are some who really suggest that it contained only fanaticism, ferocity and the rest. Chesterton reveals that Chaucer was the final fruit and inheritor of that order but also confronts the reader with the fact that he was much more sane and cheerful and normal than most of the later writers. He was less delirious than Shakespeare, less harsh than Milton, less fanatical than Bunyan, less embittered than Swift. In this book Chesterton advances a general thesis; that, in spite of everything, there was a balanced philosophy in medieval times; and some very unbalanced philosophies in later times.
Chesterton's book is a humorous, informative account of one of England's most famous writers. It is his attempt to bring Chaucer to a wider audience and explain Chaucer in a different way to most critics. In his words, this book was bound to make some attempt to explain Chaucer; and this is the only way I can explain him.
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