Overview

A groundbreaking biography that recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English poets More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life-yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer's adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination.Uncovering important new information about Chaucer's travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer's experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter's nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales.By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant's son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales.

Full Product Details

9780691160092

Table of Contents

Reviews

Marion Turner's ambitious biography is significantly different from others of Chaucer. Its focus on place enables Turner to explore Chaucer's national and international political and cultural background in more detail than ever before. --Helen Cooper, University of Cambridge

A meticulously researched, well-styled academic study showing Chaucer as the `consummate networker.' * Kirkus * A hugely enjoyable, accessible, cradle-to-grave biography, bringing us from the baby Chaucer among merchants in Thames Street to the civil servant dying among monks at Westminster. In between we encounter the life, vividly detailed, not just of a brilliant artist, but of the streets and sea-lanes that shaped him. An admirably full life of England's first great Anglo-European poet. -David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania Marion Turner, in this splendid biography, shows us that Chaucer was, to be sure, powerfully inflected by the extraordinary range of places, both English and continental, through which he travelled and in which he lived. She also demonstrates, in lucid and lively prose, that Chaucer was what he read and imagined. Turner enlarges the genre, without for a moment losing her eagle-eyed command of the fascinating empirical detail. -James Simpson, Harvard University Marion Turner's ambitious biography is significantly different from others of Chaucer. Its focus on place enables Turner to explore Chaucer's national and international political and cultural background in more detail than ever before. -Helen Cooper, University of Cambridge This meaty new biography is likely to be the best book on the subject for decades to come. ---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review A European Life feels to me like a radical new take on a man we thought we knew, but whose sophisticated business, military and political career took him criss-crossing the continent. ---Andrew Marr, Start the Week, BBC Radio 4 Marion Turner has done a magnificent job. . . . I do not expect to see this biography superseded. ---Paul Dean, New Criterion A hugely illuminating book. This is one of those studies that academics like to call 'magisterial', but non-specialists will find much to enjoy here too. Turner's writing is never less than perspicacious, and often slyly humorous. . . . What A European Life does particularly well is to situate Chaucer in the largeness and complexity of his world. ---Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph (five star review) Turner charts an uncannily tangible route through Chaucer's life, binding his ideas and poems to precise locations, often enlivening it with consummate detail. . . . Chaucer: A European Life serves as a compass that allows readers to traverse Chaucer's London and Europe. At the same time, reading Turner's book makes us aware of how much our own lives are shaped by the rooms we inhabit and the places we visit. . . . Chaucer: A European Life introduces the 21st century to Chaucer and Chaucer to the 21st century ---Sebastian Sobecki, Literary Review In this fine biography, Marion Turner gives us new images of the poet. Turner's biography takes us from birth to death, but focuses on the spaces through which Chaucer moved, in reality and in poetic imagination. This is a clever move, and Turner's technique means that the poet's works can be woven organically into an account of his life. The book is elegantly written, accessible to the general reader as well as the scholarly specialist. In suggesting further questions and presenting an array of new images, Turner's book gives us back an image of Chaucer more melancholy and mercurial than the cosy figure we thought we knew. ---Mark Williams, The Times

A hugely enjoyable, accessible, cradle-to-grave biography, bringing us from the baby Chaucer among merchants in Thames Street to the civil servant dying among monks at Westminster. In between we encounter the life, vividly detailed, not just of a brilliant artist, but of the streets and sea-lanes that shaped him. An admirably full life of England's first great Anglo-European poet. --David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania Who says we are only what and where we empirically lived? Not Marion Turner, who in this splendid biography has it that Chaucer was, to be sure, powerfully inflected by the extraordinary range of places, both English and continental, through which he traveled and in which he lived. In lucid and lively prose, she also shows, however, that Chaucer was what he read and imagined. Turner enlarges the genre, without for a moment losing her eagle-eyed command of the fascinating empirical detail. --James Simpson, Harvard University Marion Turner's ambitious biography is significantly different from others of Chaucer. Its focus on place enables Turner to explore Chaucer's national and international political and cultural background in more detail than ever before. --Helen Cooper, University of Cambridge

Marion Turner's ambitious biography is significantly different from others of Chaucer. Its focus on place enables Turner to explore Chaucer's national and international political and cultural background in more detail than ever before. -Helen Cooper, University of Cambridge

Author Information

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton).

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available