Wednesday, November 15, 2023

My hero / Geoffrey Chaucer by Lavinia Greenlaw

 

Geoffrey Chaucer


My hero: Charles Geoffrey Chaucer by Lavinia Greenlaw

In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer takes risks, breaks laws, invents words and enters the dark


Friday 21 November 2014

Iwas introduced to Chaucer when I was too young to know that the questions of how to live and how to live with each other are ones we never stop exploring. I studied “The Franklin’s Tale” first, the story of a couple who try to live as equals. This now seems extraordinary for the 14th century, but all I remembered was some hokum about the “grisly rokkes blake” off the coast of Brittany that had to be magicked away to avoid a shipwreck.


Geoffrey Chaucer

The work that made me realise Chaucer was not all horses and castles was Troilus and Criseyde, the greatest account you will ever read of people arguing themselves and each other into and out of love. Chaucer stole the story, made up a source and invented a form. He showed that English, on which the paint was still wet, could be as elegant and evocative as Latin or French. He was open to influence, intellectually mobile and properly curious. He wrote a treatise on the astrolabe for his 10-year-old son.

A soldier and civil servant, he survived years of political turbulence, and was put in charge of everything from wool to forests to building works. The busier he was, the more he wrote. His poetry earned him the royal gift of a gallon of wine a day, which he eventually arranged to be converted into cash. He read widely and across languages, and his translations were praised in French even as England and France went to war. Chaucer was greatly influenced by Italian poetry, arriving in Florence when Dante was only 50 years dead, and Petrarch and Boccaccio (from whom he lifted Troilus and Criseyde) still living.

In Troilus and Criseyde, he activates courtly love and complicates his characters. He casts a searching light on Troilus and listens to Criseyde. He takes risks, breaks laws, invents words and enters the dark. While going to some lengths to point out that he’s not providing any answers, he intervenes from the start,Chaucer remindings us why such works are written and what we read them for.

THE GUARDIAN






2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
076 My hero / John Cooke by Geoffrey Robertson (24 April)

079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside

095 My hero / Les Murray by Daljit Nagra (2 september)
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan

100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)

115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)




2013




(PAGE 5)

194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)

199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)


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(PAGE 3)


245 My hero / Geoffrey Chaucer by Lavinie Greenlan (21 November)

2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016


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