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Chapter 1: Who is Geoffrey Chaucer and why is he significant?
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Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are preparing our pens and parchment and peregrinating back to the 14th century to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the famous Canterbury Tales. And to inform and entertain us on our journey, we're joined by two very special travelling companions.
In History Corner. She's the J.R.R. Tolkien professor of English literature and languages at the University of Oxford and an expert on Chaucer and late medieval literature. Maybe you've read her award-winning biography, Chaucer, A European Life, or her new book, The Wife of Bath, A Biography. It's Professor Marian Turner. Welcome, Marian. Delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Kiitos, että olin takaisin.
Mike, we went medieval with you last time out. All King Arthur-y. I had a lovely old time. You knew a lot. It was grist to my mill. I felt like I hadn't wasted my childhood. You were in your element. But this is a different kettle of fish. Oh, is it? Yeah, this is utter bleak ignorance.
A new level of ignorance. It's beyond the unknown unknowns. Okay, well we're going to have a lovely time talking about one of the great poets of English literature. So, what do you know?
So let's start with the first segment of the podcast. It's the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And if we're using Mike as the benchmark, maybe not much, but you've possibly heard Chaucer described as the father of English literature.
Ehkä olit lähtenyt hänen Canterbury Talesista koulussa, ja muodostin sinut suomalaisen englantiaan, kun katsoit huonoja asioita. Ehkä olit nähnyt BBC 2003-adaptationista, joka liittyi Canterbury Talesista 21st-vuotiaan. Ja jos olet nauti, kuten minä, muistat Paul Bettanyn tämän, kun hän oli Geoffrey Chaucer, briljantin elokuvan A Knight's Tale, jota kaikkien medievalistien rakastavat. Mutta mitä liittyy kirjallisuuteen? Mitä Chaucer pääsi mukaan, kun hän ei kirjoittanut poimiaan? Ja missä Snazzy Leggingsi sopii meidän tarinamme?
Let's find out. Are you excited about the leggings? I'm excited about the leggings. Okay, Mike. Yes. From your high level of knowledge, you've already promised us, what sort of family do you think Geoffrey Chaucer was born into? What kind of class do you think he arrived into? He's literate and not just literate. I don't know, the son of some sort of merchant or trader or ship's captain or someone who's got some qualifications. Possibly a member of a guild or something.
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Chapter 2: What major events influenced Chaucer's life and works?
It came to England about 1348. And it completely dwarfs the pandemic that we've been through. If you imagine a pandemic that wiped out maybe a third, maybe a half of the population really quickly. Of Europe. We're not just talking Britain here. Ja Pohjois-Pohjois-Pohjois-Pohjois-Pohjois-Pohjois-Pohjois-
So there's a lot of social mobility after the plague. It's actually the late 14th century is an amazing time for social mobility. People can move jobs. If their employer isn't paying a decent wage, they can go to another employer or they can move to the city. The government passed lots of laws to try and stop employees from asking for higher wages, but it didn't work. None of these statutes of labor did not work.
It's very clear which side they were on. So we've got massive inflation and wage inflation. If you were alive, you were then doing well. So Mike, if you were a teenage Geoffrey Chaucer, you're living in cosmopolitan London. What sort of profession are you aiming to go into next? Me personally, I don't think I'd have made the most of this. Chaucer, I think, has got a bit better work ethic than me. I'm assuming he would have gone into the family trades.
Ok, so you think wine? You think he's going following dad? I think wine, you know, if he's having a lovely life and wine, it's got a bit of glamour, hasn't it? And if he's into his reading and his writing, he can do that on the weekends. It's a very sensible answer. I assume. He sort of goes... He doesn't, no, he does something quite different. He kind of starts to leap classes in a way. Yeah, up or down.
He becomes a page boy in a great household. So and this is a very desirable thing to get. Usually, you know, higher class boys would get this kind of job. So his father probably got him this job because his father had been a royal tax collector. So he had connections in the royal court. So Chaucer's first job was.
When he's just a teenager, about 14 or 15, he pops up in the accounts of Elizabeth de Boer, Countess of Ulster, who is the daughter-in-law of the king. So the daughter-in-law of Edward III, she was married to Prince Lionel. So a pageboy is, I mean, he would have done a bit of kind of errand running and things like that.
Mutta sinä olet myös yksityiskohtaisen aristokraattisen kaupungin jäsen. Mutta sinä olet ainoastaan yksityiskohtaisen kaupungin jäsen. Mutta sinä olet ainoastaan yksityiskohtaisen aristokraattisen kaupungin jäsen.
Ehkä, kyllä, Philippa de Roé. Rekordissa on tarkoitus, että hän oli yhteydessä samaan ryhmään, joten emme ole varmoja, mutta hän todennäköisesti tapahtui hänelle. Ja hän oli hieman parempi kuin hän. Hänillä on yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi yksi
Mitä luulet, Mike?
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Chapter 3: How did Chaucer's upbringing shape his literary career?
I mean, so we see him just afterwards carrying letters, and I think that was what he was better at, you know, across his life. Soldier, what do you excel at? I'm really quite good at delivering letters. Exactly. I mean, across his life, we do see him occasionally in these fighting situations, but much more commonly we see him doing things like diplomacy, secret business of the king, carrying letters, peace treaties. That's more his thing.
Mutta sitten me itse asiassa emme näe hänet rekordissa useita vuosia. Joten 1360 ja 1366 me emme ole varmoja, mitä hän tekee. Hän teki jotain, mitä tehtiin toisissa rojallisissa kaupungeissa, kuten hän oli ollut Elisabethin ja Lionelin kanssa. Hän lähti Elisabethin ja Lionelin kappaleeseen. Hän on nyt tullut itselleen.
So he's married to Philippa de Rohe. They were married till the late 80s when she dies. They had at least three children. And when he's in royal service, he's getting an annuity from the king, also from other people at various times. He's also paid in wine. So he gets a pitcher of wine a day, which later on becomes a ton of wine a year, which is something like 252 gallons. He probably didn't drink all that. He was probably giving it out to people. But, you know, wine is an ongoing thread. Pitcher a day.
Kyllä. Kuinka paljon oli pitu? Voi olla noin kalan. Vahvaa. Kyllä. Se on paljon veneä. Se on paljon. Kuten sanoit, se on varmasti hänen kaupungistaan, eikö? Kyllä. Hän on kansainvälinen diplomati. Jeffrey Chaucer on diplomati. Hän on ulkomailla. Hän on Italiassa. Hän on Franseassa. Hän on ollut Suomessa. Hän on saanut kieltä. Hän tietää kieltä.
Hän tietää kieltä. Jokainen koulutettu ihminen on tällä hetkellä trilinguaalinen. Hän tietää myös italiasta, jota hän olisi varmasti ottanut kaikkiin pankkeihin ja piirreihin Vintry Wardissa, koska hänellä oli merkintäläinen taustaa. Aristokraatit ovat paljon vähemmän todennäköisiä italiasta. Hän oli italiasta, joten hän oli varmasti ottanut italiasta. Hän on ainoa, joka tietää italiasta. Silloin hän ottaa italiasta ja lukee Dantea, Boccaccioa, Petrarcha.
And his reading of those poets enables him utterly to change English literature. So he had a staggering number of jobs. We've already heard several already, but I've got a mini quiz for you. Which of these was not a position that Geoffrey Chaucer held during his service? So, inspector of walls and ditches.
Deputy Forester, Clark of the King's Works, overseeing the renovations of the Tower of London, the Member of Parliament for Suffolk, the controller of the wool custom trade, negotiator of the marriage of King Richard II of England to the daughter of the Lord of Milan. Which of those six things was not on Chaucer's CV? He seems like an amenable fellow so far. He feels like he's quite capable. I can see him being pressured into doing the ditches gig.
Maybe early doors, but I can see him putting his foot down at the old forestry thing. It doesn't seem like a forest is going to be his milieu. Okay, so you're saying Deputy Forester is one we've made up? Yeah. I'm afraid MP for Suffolk was wrong, because he was actually MP for Kent. Was he really? Yeah, so he did all six of those jobs in terms of being an MP, but he was representing Kent, not Suffolk.
Mitä olisit loppuun, jotta kertoisit maasi tulevaisuuteesi? 1876, kun Amerikka tuli 100-vuotiaana, yhdysvallat lopettiin vastauksia sairaalassa, joka oli tarkoitettu avata vuosi myöhemmin. Mutta kun sairaala alkoi lopettua, mitä maailma näki, se ei kertonut selkeää tarinaa. Se nosti kysymyksiä.
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Chapter 4: What are the unique features of The Canterbury Tales?
Early 1370s to mid 1380s, he writes several dream poems, so the Book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, the Legend of Good Women. He translates Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into English. He translates parts of the Romance of the Rose. He writes lots of short poems and lyrics.
He writes some of the Canterbury Tales as stand-alone texts that then later he put into the Canterbury Tales. Like the Knight's Tale, for example. Yes, exactly. Most famously the Knight's Tale. So he's writing in English, whereas it would, although some people were writing in English, it would have been more normal, especially for a court poet, someone writing kind of courtly forms, you know, love visions, dreams. It would have been more normal to write in French. Yeah.
He's also very influenced by the world around him. There's this idea that you need both. You need to read the books. He's steeped in literary influences from all kinds of places. But he's also interested in contemporary society. And I think he does take a lot of inspiration from the things that are going on around him. So we can link things like his great interest in different voices, in the common voice world.
We might link that to things like the development of the speaker in parliament at the time. And then, you know, this is also the time when we see insurgent voices, which can be productive, but can also be really problematic. So the Great Revolt, usually known as the Peasants' Revolt, though it wasn't really mainly peasants, it was lots of different people. But that also happens during Chaucer's lifetime.
Tämä on ihminen, joka on elänyt keskustelun, käynyt 100 vuoden maailmalla, ja sitten on lähinnä paikallaan, kun Pesantin revoltaatio tapahtuu. Hän on yleensä Forrest Gump. Hän on nähnyt koko 14-vuotiaan. Se jatkuu hänelle. Hän on myös loppunut 1379-luvun keskusteluun. Marianne, tämä on aika mielenkiintoista. Jotain vuosia sitten Geoffrey Chaucer oli aika kontroversiaalinen, koska tämän tapauksen takia. Nyt voimme poistaa tällaisen pysymyksen, koska hän on innoissaan, eikö?
Kyllä, se on todella mielenkiintoinen asia. Se on myös todella mielenkiintoista, kun meiltä saa tietää, mitä on edelleen löydettävissä rekordissa. Tämä on asia, jossa Chaucer oli käytännössä syntynyt jotain nimeltä raptus, joka on erilaisissa tapauksissa, jos se on yllättäminen, jos se on rauha. Sessali Champagne jätti hänet lisäämään tehtäviinsä raptus-kysymyksiin.
But there was a lot of debate about what the word in the document meant, because in some documents it means abduction. But a couple of years ago, and this is how exciting the world of Chaucer studies is. So two scholars, Spassin Speckin, you and Roger, found some new documents. And what they found was that Cecily Champagne and Chaucer were on the same side of this law case. And they were both defendants together. And they employed the same lawyer.
Right. And then they found the writ, which was that someone called Thomas Stondon was making a lawsuit against the two of them. What had happened, according to Stondon, was that Cecily had been his servant and she had left before the end of her contract to go and be Chaucer's servant.
So this was a labour dispute. The reason then that Cecily would release him from any actions relating to a raptus would be that she was saying, no, I was not forcibly removed from my former employer. So we can uncancel Geoffrey Chaucer, that's good. I think it's time for us to move on to his most famous poem. It's time for us to get to the Canterbury Tales. Marian, can you give us an actual synopsis of what is the Canterbury Tales?
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Chapter 5: How did Chaucer change the English literary landscape?
He also changed what poetic forms were available in English. So he was the first person to use the ten syllable line and to use an early form of the iambic pentameter. So the five stress line that became the fundamental building block of English poetry.
So Chaucer's writing in English, and that is why he is the father of the English language in many ways. And obviously, you said iambic pentameter, that's Shakespeare later on. But we need to move on with Chaucer's later life. Is he just constantly writing until the end of his life, or is it a phase? No, he writes all of his life, yes. So most of the Canterbury Tales...
on kirjoitettu 1390-luvulla, jolloin hän kirjoittaa Treeties on the Astrolabe. Hän kirjoittaa uudestaan Prologue to Legend of Good Women. Hän kirjoittaa monia lyhyitä pohjoja. Hän työskentelee. Me näemme hänet työskentelemällä 90-luvun aikana. Lopulta elämänsä hän elää Westminster Abbeyin. Se ei ollut välttämättä religiallinen asia. Siinä oli paljon kaupoja ja rauhoja Westminster Abbeyin. Hän elää siellä. Siksi hän nousee siellä, koska hän elää siellä.
Not because Poets' Corner existed there. Yeah, there was no Poets' Corner at the time. It's just his local church. Yeah, I mean, it would have been more normal for him to have been buried in St. Margaret's Westminster. He must have had a good relationship with the monks for them to bury him there. But it's because he lives there and it's later his tomb gets moved and Poets' Corner gets started. But yeah, certainly in the last year of his life, we see him writing a poem to the new king asking for his money. Oh, great. Yeah.
So his final literary work is titled Cash Please. In fact it's called, what's the name of the poem? Yeah, Complaint to His Purse. A Complaint to His Purse. That's good. I think all invoices should be titled Complaint to the Purse from now on. So he dies in 1400 by the end of October.
A nice round number, though. Well done, Geoffrey. He basically saw the whole 14th century and went, that's enough of that, thank you. Mission accomplished. So that's the life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Quite the life, quite the sort of literary history, really. The nuance window! No!
It's time now for the nuance window. This is where Mike and I spend two minutes silently inspecting ditches, while Marian turns a new page and tells us something we need to know about Geoffrey Chaucer. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Marian. I'm going to talk about Chaucer and character. So when people think of Chaucer, they often think about his characters, the wife of Bath, the miller, the knight, the host. And Chaucer did two really significant things with literary character. First of all, he developed the idea of the unreliable narrator.
Joten monissa hänen pohjoissaan käsittely on vihattu ja käsittää osan kertaa, tai jätetään hänen vaikutuksiaan käsittelyyn, joten ne eivät ole tarkoitettuja. Ja se idea, että käsittely on epäonnistunut, oli todella tärkeä osa kertaa. Se näemme erityisesti modernissa kertoissa, kuten Lolitaan.
Chaucer näyttää, että se, mitä näemme, riippuu siitä, missä olemme. Tämän mielenkiintoisen näkökulman voi liittyä taiteelliseen näkökulmaan juuri tällä hetkellä. Chaucer olisi nähnyt Giottoa taiteen, kun hän käveli Italiassa. Hän on todella kiinnostunut käyttämään kirjallisuutta, jotta hän ymmärtäisi suhteellisuutta ja yksityisyyttä.
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Chapter 6: What legacy did Geoffrey Chaucer leave behind?
Kiitos, Marian.
Oh, I've loved it. Thank you for having me. And in Comedy Corner we had the magnificent Middle English poet himself, Mike Wozniak. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me back. I've had a joyous time. Brilliant. Yeah, we learned a lot, didn't we? And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we read another chapter from the big You're Dead to Me book of history. But for now, I'm off to go and drag people out of the pub and force them to walk to Canterbury while I regale them with the podcaster's tale. It's very long and very rude. Bye! Bye!
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Mitä nämä kolme juhlateltaa tekee mun pihassa? Eikös teillä ollut se norsunluuhääpäivä tulossa? Mikä? Mistä sä puhut? Vai pääsikö teidän esikoinen ripiltä? Armeijasta? Oliko jollain synttärit tänä kesänä? Ei meillä kyllä nyt ole mitään juhlijänäköpiiristä. Soo, soo, kuule. Kyllä syitä aina juhlaan löytyy, koska Itse asiassa. Itse asiassa. Viilteemasta löytyy edulliset välineet hommaan kuin hommaan. Oli kysymys sitten omasta tai kaverin projektista. Itse asiassa. Viilteemasta.
Tulipakkasta, päivän kakkaroita tai piknikkejä. Löydät nyt yli tuhat pysyvästi edullista tuotetta K-ruokakaupoista.
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