Geoffrey Chaucer Research Paper

The “Father of English Literature” Geoffrey Chaucer, born in London around 1343, was the first poet to be buried in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey and largely influenced literature since he was the first to introduce English in his work while other court poetry was still written in Latin or French. Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of John Chaucer, a London wine merchant, who grew up in an able and wealthy family. He began to write poetry in the 1360s, when England had a peace treaty with France which last until 1369 (Hirsh, 2008). He was a philosopher, astronomer and an author also being a bureaucrat, diplomat and a courtier. Chaucer is known for his works as he wrote The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women …show more content…
One of the most devastating pandemic in human history called the Black Death, which resulted in the deaths of around 75 to 200 million people in the countries of Europe and Asia happened in the Middle Age (BBC, 2001). There were many theories of the cause of the disease however analyses of DNA from people in Europe shows that the bacteria that is responsible for this terrifying disease which killed almost one third of the population of Europe in the Middle Ages was Yersinia pestis bacterium, resulting in several forms of plague (Haensch et al., 2010). It is assumed that the Black Death have originated in Central Asia and travelled through Europe by the Silk Road and carried by Oriental rat fleas inhabiting on black rats that were found on merchant ships transmitting the pathogen to Europe. During Black Death John Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer’s father, took his family to Southampton in 1348 to get away from the plague and did not return to London until it was safe (Hirsh, 2008). It is believed that Geoffrey Chaucer have attended the St. Paul’s Cathedral School since it was minutes away from Chaucer’s home,The plague certainly had large impact on Europe society and caused extreme damage which seemed to be impossible to recover. However, ironically many believe that the Black Death accelerated the spread of English by being an important contributory cause replacing the official language which was French at that time, to English. Due to more than half of the population being wiped out from the plague, it quickly led to serious labor shortages resulting the upper classes to increase the cost of labor. However, this was not enough to solve the problem. Even with higher wages, skilled manpower was so short thus came the emergence of the