Why is Geoffrey Chaucer still studied in English Literature?
Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the widely famous poet from the 14th century who is also known to our present generation as the “Father of English Literature”. He is also the first one who starts writing poems in English, before that writers usually writes in French.
So while studying or reading Chaucer, the biggest question that comes into mind is that “ Is Chaucer really worth all this hype?”
To answer this question, the first thing that we need to do is to understand Chaucer’s writing style, his way of portraying his characters and the time period in which he was writing.
So, the major reasons of studying Chaucer even in our present age are:
Writes in English: One of the biggest reason for him being so hyped is because he was the first one to write a literary work in English. As he was a writer from the 14th century and texts were usually written in french during those days, so it becomes a big event for the English reading-writing community, which needs to be studied. Moreover, during that period the French language is considered as the upper class language and the English language is considered as the language of the middle class. So, writing in English brought a lot of new readership which also encourages other writers to write in English.
Characters represents real life People: The biggest reason why Chaucer is considered as the “Father of English Literature” is because of his way of characterizing his characters. Chaucer in his works always represent characters which are inspired by the real life people and it helps the readers and critics to understand the life of people from that century. Its helps the readers to understand the social status of the people, the way they live and also about the language they speak.
Representation of Women in his Works: Before understanding the women’s representation, the first thing that we need to now is, here we are talking about the 14th century time period and at that time, women did not have a powerful voice and did not have any strong characterization in literary world. But, Chaucer’s women characters are as if they were write today, his female characters can be considered as a representation of a modern female character. His famous female character Wife of Bath from his work Canterbury Tales can be seen as post-feminist character which is widely among the literary scholars.
So, Chaucer can be considered as a far sighted writer which made his works so interesting and knowledgeable even for the present generation, which gives him such an unique and important position even in the 21st century literary world.
