Love Visions
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Spanning Chaucer's working life these four poems build on the medieval convention of 'love visions' - poems inspired by dreams woven into rich allegories about the rituals and emotions of courtly love. In The Book of the Duchess the most traditional of the four the dreamer meets a widower who has loved and lost the perfect lady and The House of Fame describes a dream journey in which the poet meets with classical divinities. Witty lively and playful The Parliament of Birds details an encounter with the birds of the world in the Garden of Nature as they seek to meet their mates while The Legend of Good Women sees Chaucer being censured by the God of Love and seeking to make amends for writing poems that depict unfaithful women. Together the four create a marvellously witty lively and humane self-portrait of the poet.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Often referred to as the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer was a fourteenth-century philosopher, alchemist, astrologer, bureaucrat, diplomat, and author of many significant poems. Chaucer’s writing was influential in English literary tradition, as it introduced new rhyming schemes and helped develop the vernacular tradition—the use of everyday English—rather than the literary French and Latin, which were common in written works of the time. Chaucer’s best-known—and most imitated—works include The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, The Book of the Duchess, and The House of Fame.
More by Geoffrey Chaucer
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