Chapter 1 - What Was Chaucer Like?

Summary

Readers of Chaucer’s poetry hear in it a distinctive and individual voice. More than any other medieval English poet, Chaucer seems to invite the question ‘what was he like?’. The many official records about him have no occasion to shed light on this question. Though Thomas Hoccleve arranged that a lifelike portrait of his dear master should appear in copies of his Regiment, this does not carry us too far into knowing what the poet was really like. Chaucer, for example, despite apparently always saying the best, seemed to have reserved his true opinions, leaving both contemporaries and readers alike to wonder what he really thought – be it about fellow-writers like Hoccleve and Lydgate, or Criseyde, or about his fictional Merchant. Moreover, not only does he persistently credit others with the best that can be said of them, he also discredits himself. It is perhaps appropriate, then, that the ironic Chaucer should represent himself as a reserved and private sort of person – one conceivably well equipped to cope with the many vicissitudes of his time, as the poet evidently did.