The Life and Times of Chaucer

The facts about Geoffrey Chaucer's life are plentiful enough. It is the connections between the facts that seem to elude us: those subtle nuances of feeling and emotion that a biographer relies on to paint a true, complete portrait. Lacking these, we are almost compelled to make the story up as we go along, weaving together facts, opinions, and our own personal biases to flesh out an otherwise bloodless life. For this reason, John Gardner may well be the perfect candidate to construct a life of Chaucer! An award-winning novelist and a translator of Middle English poetry, Gardner dumps into a pile all the "facts'' we know about the beloved English poet and mixes them with a judicious sampling of literary criticism and a heaping dose of lively conjecture. What emerges is a rollicking good tale that might stand on its own, filled with persuasive answers to vexing questions; imaginative reconstructions of the Black Death and other compelling events of the times; and whatever snippets of Chaucer's own poetry may help shed light on his extraordinary age.