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Geoffrey Chaucer

(c. 1342 - 1400)

The son of a middle-class wine merchant whose surname derived from the French word for “maker of footwear,” Geoffrey Chaucer enters the historical record in 1357 as a member of the household of the countess of Ulster. He later served in Edward III’s army in France, paid a fine for beating a Franciscan friar in the streets of London, and traveled to Spain in the first of many diplomatic missions in 1366. He is the author of The Canterbury Tales.

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Voices In Time

1390 | London

Gentleman and Scholar

Geoffrey Chaucer’s Oxford man.More

Drunkenness is the very sepulcher / Of man’s wit and his discretion.

—Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1390

Miscellany

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, “Four o’ the clock it was, to make a guess; / Eleven foot long, or little more or less, / My shadow was, as at that time and place, / Measuring feet by taking in this case / My height as six.”