Chaucer’s Contribution to English

Language and Literature

Introduction:
Father of verse! who m immortal song
First taught the Muse to speak the English tongue.
It is somewhat idle to talk of “fathers” in the history of literature, for it is questionable if
a particular person can be wholly credited with in the founding of a new literary genre.

Literature is generally subject to the ‘law of evolutionary development. And though a

man may do more than others by way of contributing to this development we should be
chary of inferring upon him the medal of fatherhood. When it is said that Chaucer is the
father of English poetry, and even the father of English literature we broadly mean that
his contribution to the evolution of English poetry or literature is much more significant
than that of his contemporaries and predecessors, and to be similarly rated is his
introduction of so many novel features into it.

That Chaucer was a pioneer in many respects should be readily granted. “With
him is born our real poetry,” says Matthew Arnojd. He has been acclaimed as the first
realist, the first humorist, the first narrative artist the first great character-painter, and
the first great metrical artist in English literature. Further, he has been credited not only
with the “fatherhood” of English poetry but has also been hailed as the father of English
drama before the drama was bom, and the father of English novel before the novel was
born. And, what is more, his importance is not due to precedence alone, but due to
excellence. He is not only the first English poet, but a great poet in his own right. Justly
has he been called “the fountain-source of the vast stream of English literature.”
Contribution to Language:
Well does Lowell say that “Chaucer found his English a dialect and left it a
language.” Borrowing Saintsbury’s words about the transformation which Dryden
effected in English poetry, we may justly say that Chaucer found the English language
brick and left it marble. When Chaucer started his literary career, the English speech,
and still less, the English of writing was confusingly fluid and unsettled. The English
language was divided into a number of dialects which were employed in different parts
of the country. The four of them vastly more prominent than the others were:
(i) The Southern
(ii) The Midland
(iii) The Northern or Northumbrian
(iv) The Kentish
 Out of these four, the Midland or the East Midland dialect, which was spoken in
London and its surrounding area, was the simplest in grammar and syntax. Moreover, it
was the one patronised by the aristocratic and literary circles of the country. Gower used
this dialect for his poem Confessio Amantis and Wyclif for his translation of the Bible.
But this dialect was not the vehicle of all literary work. Other dialects had their votaries
too. Langland in his Piers Plowman, to quote an instance, used a mixture of the
Southern and Midland dialects. Chaucer employed in his work the East midland dialect,
and by casting the enormous weight of his genius balance decided once for all which
dialect was going to be the standard literary language of the whole of the country for all
times to come. None after him thought of using any dialect other than the East Midland
for any literary work of consequence. It is certain that if Chaucer had adopted some
other dialect the emergence of the standard language of literature would have been
considerably delayed. All the great writers of England succeeding Chaucer are, in the
words of John Speirs, “masters of the language of which Chaucer is, before them, the
great master.”
Not only was Chaucer’s selection of one dialect out of the four a happy one, but so
was his selection of one of the three languages which were reigning supreme in England
at that time-Latin, French, and English. In fact. Latin and French were more fashionable
than the poor “vernacular” English. Latin was considered “the universal language” and
was patronised at the expense of English by the Church as well as the learned. Before
Wyclif translated it into the “vulgar tongue”, the Bible was read in its Latin version
called the Vulgate. French was the language of the court and was used for keeping the
accounts of the royal household till as late as 1365. Perplexed by the variety of languages
offering themselves for use, Chaucer’s friend and contemporary Gower could not decide
which one of them to adopt. He wrote his Mirour del’Omme in French, Vox
Clamantis in Latin, andConfessio Amantis in English, perhaps because he was not quite
sure which of the three languages was going to survive. But Chaucer had few doubts
abputthe issue. He chose English which was a despised language, and asjthe legendary
king did to the beggar maid, raised her from the dust, draped her in royal robes, and
conducted her coronation. That queen is ruling even now.
Contribution to Versification:
Chaucer’s contribution to English versification is no less striking than to the
English language. Again, it is an instance of a happy choice. He sounded the death-knell
of the old Saxon alliterative measure and firmly established the modern one. Even in the
fourteenth century the old alliterative measure had been employed by such a
considerable poet as Langland for his Piers khe Plowman, and the writer of Sir
Gawayne and the Grene Knight. Let us give the important features of the old measure
which Chaucer so categorically disowned:
(i) There is no regularity in the number of syllables in each line. One line may have as few
as six syllables and another as many as fourteen.
(ii) The use of alliteration as the chief ornamental device and as the lone structural
principle. All the alliterative syllables are stressed.
(iii) The absence 01 end-rimes; and
(iv) Frequent repetition to express vehemence and intensity of emotion.
Chaucer had no patience with the “rum, ram, ruf’ of the alliterative measure. So does he
maintain in the Parson’s Tale:
But trusteth wel, I am a southern man,
I cannot geste-rum, ram, ruf,-by lettere,
Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettere.
For that old-fashioned measure he substituted the regular line with end-rime, which he
borrowed from France. The new measure has the following characteristics:
(i) All lines have the same number of syllables,
(ii) End-rime,
(iii) Absence of alliteration and frequent repetition.
After Chaucer, no important poet ever thought of reverting to the old measure.
Thus, Chaucer may be designated “the father of modern English versification.” Chaucer
employs three principal metres in his works. In The Canterbury Tales he mostly uses
lines of ten syllables each (with generally five accents); and the lines run into couplets;
that is, each couple of lines has its end-syllables rhyming with each other. For example:
His eyes twinkled in his heed aright
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.
In Troilus and Cryseyde he -uses the seven-line stanza of decasyllabic lines with five
accents each having the rhyme-scheme a b abb c c. This measure was borrowed by him
from the French and is called the rhyme-royal or Chaucerian stanza. The third principal
metre employed by him is the octosyllabic couplet with four accents and end-rime.
In The Book of the Duchesse this measure is used. The measures thus adopted by
Chaucer were seized upon by his successors. The decasyllabic couplet known as the
heroic couplet, was to be chiselled and invigorated to perfection three centuries later by
Dryden and Pope. Apart from those three principal measures Chaucer also employed for
the first time a number of other stanzaic forms in his shorter poems.
Not only this, Chaucer seems to be the first Englishman who realised and brought
out the latent music of his language. “To read Chaucer’s verse,” observes a critic, “is like
listening to a clear stream, in a meadow full of sunshine, rippling over its bed of
pebbles.” The following is the tribute of a worthy successor of his:
The morning star of song, who made
His music heard below,
Don Chaucer, the first -warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts thatfiU”,
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still
He made English a pliant and vigorous medium of poetic utterance. His astonishingly
easy mastery of the language is indeed remarkable. With one step the writings of
Chaucer carry us into a new era in which the language appears endowed with ease,
dignity, and copiousness of expression and clothed in the hues of the imagination.
The Content of Poetry:
 Chaucer was a pioneer not only in the linguistic and prosodic fields, but was one
in the strictly poetic field also. Not only the form of poetry, but its content, too, is highly
indebted to him. Not only did he give English poetry a new dress, but a new body and a
new soul. His major contribution towards the content of poetry is in his advocacy of and
strict adherence to realism. His Canterbury Tales embodies a new effort in the history
of literature, as it strictly deals with real men, manners, and life. In the beginning of his
literary career Chaucer followed his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and
wrote allegorical and dream poetry which in its content was as remote from life as a
dream is from reality. But at the age of about fifty he realised that literature should deal
first-hand with life and not look at it through the spectacles of books or the hazy hues of
dreams and cumbersome allegory. He realised, to adopt Pope’s famous couplet (with a
little change) :
Know then thyself: presume not dreams to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
And the product of this realisation was The Canterbury Tales.This poem, as it were,
holds a mirror to the life of Chaucer’s age and shows its manners and morals completely,
“not in fragments.” Chaucer replaces effectively the shadowy delineations of the old
romantic and allegorical school with the vivid and pulsating pictures of contemporary
life.
And Chaucer does not forget the universal beneath the particular, the dateless
beneath the dated. The portraits of the pilgrims in the Prologue to The Canterbury
Talesconstitute not only an epitome of the society of fourteenth-century England, but
the epitome of human nature in all climes and all ages. Grierson and Smith observe
about Chaucer’s pilgrims: “They are all with us today, though some of them have
changed their names. The knight now commands a line regiment, the squire is in the
guards, the shipman was a rum-runner while prohibition lasted and is active now in the
black market, the friar is a jolly sporting publican, the pardoner vends quack medicines
or holds seances, and the prioress is the headmistress of a fashionable girls’ school.
Some of them have reappeared in a later literature. The poor parson was reincarnated in
the Vicar of Wakefield, the knight in Colonel Newcome and the Monk nrArchdeacon
Grantly.”
His Geniality, Tolerance, Humour, and Freshness:
Chaucer’s tone as a poet is wonderfully instinct with geniality, tolerance, humour,
and freshness which are absent from that of his contemporaries and predecessors who
are too dreamy or too serious to be interesting. In spite of his awareness of the
corruption and unrest in the society of his age Chaucer is never upset or upsetting. He
experiences what the French cally’oz’e de vivre, and communicates it to his is iders. No
one can read Chaucer without feeling that it is good to be alive in this world however
imperfect may it be in numerous respects. He is a chronic optimist. He is never harsh,
rancorous, bitter, or indignant, and never falls out with his fellow men for their failings.
He leaves didacticism to Langland and “moral Gower” and himself peacefully coexists
with all human imperfections. It does not mean that he is not sarcastic or satirical, but
his satire and sarcasm are always seasoned with lively humour. In fact his forte is irony
rather than satire. Aldous Huxley observes: “Where Langland cries aloud in anger
threatening the world with hell fire, Chaucer looks on and smiles.” The great English
humorists like Shakespeare and Fielding share with Chaucer the same broad human
sympathy which he first introduced into literature and which has bestowed upon
his Canterbury Tales that character of perennial,-vernal freshness which appears so
abundantly on its every page,
Contribution to the Novel:
The novel is one of the latest courses in the banquet of English literature. But in
his narrative skill, his gift of vivid characterization, his aptitude for plot-construction,
and his inventive skill Chaucer appears as a worthy precursor of the race of novelists
who come centuries afterwards. If Chaucer is the father of English poetry he is certainly,
to use G. K. Chesterton’s phrase, “the grandTafher of&ie English novel.” His Tales are
replete with intense human interest, and though he borrows his materials from
numerous sundry sources, his narrative skill is all his own. That could not have been
borrowed. His narration is lively and direct, if we make exception for the numerous
digressions and philosophical and pseudo-philosophical animadversions having little to
do with the tales proper, introduced after the contemporary fashion. It is difficult to find
him flagging or growing dull and monotonous. It is perhaps only Burns who in Tom O’
Shanterexcels Chaucer in the telling of “merry tales.'”
Chaucer’s Prologue to The Canterbury Tales has been rightly called “the
prologue to modern fiction.” It has characters if not plot, and vivid characterization is
one of the primary jobs of a novelist. A novel, according to Meredith, should be “a
summary of actual life.” So is, indeed, thePrologue. Several of the tales, too, are novels
in miniature and hold the attention of the reader from the beginning to the end, which,
alas! very few novels of today do.
As regards Chaucer’s Troilus and Cryseyde, it has been well called “a novel in
verse.” And it has all the salient features of a novel. It has plot, character, unravelling
action, conflict, rising action, and denouement-every thing. Though the background of
the action is the legendary Trojan war, and though some elements have been borrowed
from the Italian writer Boccaccio, yet it is all very modern and close to life. It is not
devoid even of psychological interest which is a major characteristic of the modern
novel. “Its heroine,” as a critic observes, “is the subtlest piece of psychological analysis in
medieval fiction: and the shrewd and practical Pandarus is a character whose presence
of itself brings the story down from the heights of romance to the plains of real life.” S.
D. Neill opines that “had Chaucer written in prose, it is possible that
his Troilus and Cryseyde and not Richardson’s Pamela would have been celebrated as
the first English novel.” A. W. Pollard facetiously~observes that Chaucer was a
compound of “thirty per cent of Goldsmith, fifty of Fielding, and twenty of Walter Scott.”
This means, in other words, that as a story-teller Chaucer had some of the sweetness of
Goldsmith, the genial ironic attitude and realism of Fielding, and the high chivalrous
tone of Sir Walter Scott. But, after al 1 is said and done. Chaucer is Chaucer himself and
himself alone.
Contribution to the Drama:
Chaucer wrote at a time when, like the novel, secular drama had not been born,
and yet his works have some dramatic elements which are altogether missing in the
poetry before him. His mode of characterisation in the Prologue to The Canterbury
Tales is, no doubt, static or descriptive, but in the tales proper it is dynamic or dramatic.
There the characters reveal themselves, without the intervention of the. author, through
what they say and what they do. Even the tales they narrate, in most cases, are in
keeping with their respective characters, avocations, temperaments, etc. In this way
Chaucer is clearly ahead of his “model” Boccaccjo, who in his Decameron allots various
tales to his ladies and gentlemen indiscriminately, irrespective of their conformity or
otherwise to their respective characters. The stories in The Decameroncould without
violence be re-distributed-among the characters. But not in The Canterbury
Tales where they-serve as a dramatic device of characterisation: and in thedrama,
pace Aristotle, character is all-important. In their disputations and discussions and
comments upon each other’s tales and their general behaviour, too, the pilgrims
are^made by Chaucer to reveal themselves and to provide finishing touches to the
character-portraits already statically (or non-dramatically) set forth in the
Prologue. Chaucer is abundantly showing here the essential gift of a dramatist. A critic
goes so far as to assert that Chaucer is “a dramatist in all but the fact”, and again : “If the
drama had been known in Chaucer’s time as a branch of living literature, he might have
attained as high an excellence in comedy as any English or Continental writer.”
Chaucer’s Limitations:
Let us round off our discussion by briefly referring to some of Chaucer’s
limitations or what as “the father of English poetry” he could not give to it. Matthew
Arnold feels in Chaucer’s work the absence of “high seriousness” which is the
characteristic of all great poetry. Then, Chaucer has, unlike Dante, no burning message
to give. Again as Hudson avers, he is not the poet of the people. Moody and Loyett
maintain that “Chaucer wrote for the court and cultivated classes to whom the sufferings
of the poor were a matter of the utmost indifference.” Still another critic finds missing
from Chaucer’s poetry those “mysterious significances” which are characteristics of all
great poetry. All this is, in a measure, true. But those who charge Chaucer with the
absence of pathos may well read the following passage from The-Knight’s Tale in which
‘Arcite laments his separation, consequent upon his death, from his lady-love: