The enlightened Chaucer

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour, 
Of which vertu engendred is the flour; 
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne 
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, 
And smale fowles maken melodye, 
That slepen al the night with open yë, 
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages): 
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages 
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes) 
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes; 
And specially, from every shires ende 
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, 
The holy blisful martir for to seke, 
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.
Bifel that, in that seson on a day, 
In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay 
Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage 
To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, 
At night was come in-to that hostelrye 
Wel nyne and twenty in a companye, 
Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle 
In felawshipe, and pilgrims were they alle, 
That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde; 
The chambres and the stables weren wyde, 
And wel we weren esed atte beste. 
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste, 
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon, 
That I was of hir felawshipe anon, 
And made forward erly for to ryse, 
To take our wey, ther as I yow devyse. 
But natheles, whyl I have tyme and space, 
Er that I ferther in this tale pace, 
Me thinketh it acordaunt to resoun, 
To telle yow al the condicioun 
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me, 
And whiche they weren, and of what degree; 
And eek in what array that they were inne: 
And at a knight than wol I first biginne.
— Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

And so, out of April’s sweet (not sooty) showers comes the great unfinished cycle of Chaucer’s celebration of God and man as he finds them in an age of war and death and pestilence and piety both sincere and false. He was the son of the king’s bottler, or butler, which was to say vintner, and we find him in service as a page in a noble house as a youth and later a diplomat married to a prince’s sister-in-law and, of course, he was most famously to history a court poet. The Canterbury Tales loosely follows a plan adopted by the Florentine Boccaccio in the Decameron, a work of scorching humor where characters in the story share stories themselves, creating a cycle of stories. The Decameron is first released when Chaucer is about ten, and a revised edition when he is about 30. Chaucer appropriates the plan and uses it in part to repurpose and revise earlier works as modern writers sometimes do today, as with Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love, and also to bring us new stories.