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Article: GEOFFREY CHAUCER; Examining the varied life of the poet who wrote "The Canterbury Tales.".(BOOKS)
- Article from:
- The Washington Times (Washington, DC)
- Article date:
- January 9, 2005
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Byline: Merle Rubin, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's great work, "The Canterbury Tales," set forth on their journey in April, that time of year when nature stirs into life. Looking backward across more than six centuries, biographer Peter Ackroyd sees Chaucer as a poet of springtime rather than autumn: someone who "believed himself to come from a freshly minted civilisation."
It is probably no mere coincidence that this poet of fresh beginnings, the progenitor of Shakespeare, Milton and much of the rest of English literature, is the first subject Mr. Ackroyd has chosen to treat in his new series of short biographies ...