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 · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah.
He knows languages.
So every educated man is trilingual at this time.
But he also knew Italian, which he'd probably picked up from all the bankers and traders in Vintry Ward because he had a mercantile background.
So aristocrats, much less likely to come across Italian.
He had Italian, which is probably why he was picked to go on the Italian mission.
And that's then going on those Italian missions is where he then picks up and reads Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch.
And his reading of those poets enables him utterly to change English literature.
John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III.
Chaucer probably met him when he was working for Elizabeth.
We know they were at the same place then.
John of Gaunt had also married Blanche of Lancaster.
Blanche's death was the occasion of Chaucer's first poem that we know about.
The Book of the Duchess was about Blanche's death.
John then made another important marriage to someone called Constance of Castile, the daughter of the King of Castile.
But the person he loved was Catherine Swinford.
Catherine Swinford was Chaucer's sister-in-law and that probably encouraged John of Gaunt to help Chaucer.
He helped him get lots of jobs.
He was the one in charge when Chaucer got his apartment in London, his job at the customs office.
He kept on favouring him.
Showing 101–120 of 759 · page 6 of 38
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