Professor Marion Turner

speaker

759 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 29 May

Professor Marion Turner’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.

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You're Dead to Me · Geoffrey Chaucer: the medieval father of English literature · 27 Feb 2026 podcast

So he died before that point, but we don't know the date.

So he dies in 1400.

By the end of October.

Yeah.

So Chaucer was writing in London English, right, in the East Midland dialect and around London.

So that gives him an advantage because his work is circulating around the capital.

This is when standard English starts to develop in chancery, so in bureaucratic documents.

And then it's also the language that Caxton does want mainly to publish in.

So he's got an advantage there.

People really liked his work.

I mean, it was really good, right?

It's not just the luck of circumstance.

It was also brilliant.

People loved it.

And so we see from early on in the 15th century, other poets promoting his work, calling him Father Chaucer.

So Hockleave, Lydgate, the early 15th century poets are talking about him and trying to write poetry that imitated Chaucer's poetry, though it wasn't as good.

So then when Caxton starts up his printing press,

there are many manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.

There's more than 80, which is a lot for that time.

And then Caxton, it's the first big book that he publishes is the Canterbury Tales.

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