Ebook: The Poet's Tale: Chaucer and the year that made The Canterbury Tales

As the year 1386 began, Geoffrey Chaucer was a middle-aged bureaucrat and sometime poet, living in London and enjoying the perks that came with his close connections to its booming wool trade. When it ended, he was jobless, homeless, out of favour with his friends and living in exile. Such a reversal might have spelled the end of his career; but instead, at the loneliest time of his life, Chaucer made the revolutionary decision to 'maken vertu of necessitee' and keep writing. The result - the Canterbury Tales - was a radically new form of poetry that would make his reputation, bring.;Copyright Page; Acknowledgments; Contents; List of Principal Figures; Introduction: Chaucer's Crisis; Chapter One: A Married Man; Chapter Two: Aldgate; Chapter Three: The Wool Men; Chapter Four: In Parliament; Chapter Five: The Other Chaucer; Chapter Six: The Problem of Fame; Chapter Seven: Kent and Canterbury; Epilogue: Laureate Chaucer; Notes and Further Reading; Index.