Review by Booklist Review
Richard West's big Chaucer0 (2000) is period history and literary analysis as much as biography, implicitly because the established facts about the first great English poet are so scanty. The little book that inaugurates the Ackroyd Brief Lives series, however, feels very much like a biography. Ackroyd, whose 11 novels include, most recently, The Clerkenwell Tales 0 BKL S 1 04, set in Chaucer's London, uses his skills as a limner of fictional characters to produce, out of what is known about the activities of the diplomatic and customs-official roles Chaucer played under Richard II, and what his writings convey about his temperament, a vibrant portrait of a great writer who was "circumspect, and reticent, to the end." That is, he was a man who looked around, because he had to watch his back in government service, and didn't put himself forward, because the conspicuous got cut down. While he looked around, of course, Chaucer observed all kinds of people, high and low, and found all kinds of books from the advanced literary cultures of the day (French and Italian)--which people and books he transmuted into his great narrative poems, the fonts at once of English poetry and English fiction. Ackroyd has set the bar very high for subsequent books in his new series. --Ray Olson Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Series of brief bios are old hat by now, but perhaps only the prolific novelist/historian Ackroyd would singlehandedly undertake an entire series-on English cultural figures-himself. This slim volume is not so much an account of the life of Geoffrey Chaucer (1343?-1400) as a consideration of his role in shaping England's national identity. The poet is hailed as the "progenitor of a national style," and deft literary analysis explicates Chaucer's innovations while acknowledging the influence of other poets. (Readers will also be glad to know that an appendix provides modern translations of Chaucer's extensively quoted Middle English.) Ackroyd doesn't ignore the biographical side of the story; much is made of Chaucer's position in the royal court, which provided the financial means to live comfortably while writing his verse-and indirectly introduced him to the work of Boccaccio, one of his most significant influences. Early vivid passages discuss how Chaucer's descriptions of medieval London can still resonate with modern readers, linking the poet to the "eternal vision" that has been a central theme in nearly all of Ackroyd's work. Thus the work can serve as an effective introduction to its author as well as its subject-and this series may be more approachable for many readers than Ackroyd's weighty histories London and Albion. 21 b&w illus. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Award-winning British critic/novelist Ackroyd (Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination) presents a cogent yet entertaining biography of medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Ackroyd largely recapitulates the current, accepted view of Chaucer as the father of English poetry while also revealing Chaucer's more colorful personal history, including his royal service, a "career marriage," a murky rape charge, and the apocryphal nature of his deathbed renunciation. Readers also get a glimpse of the great poet's literary influences, including his exposure to French and Italian works. The result is an illuminating work free from both unnecessary academic arcana and the speculative excesses of John Gardner's The Life and Times of Chaucer. This concise yet riveting biography will appeal to general readers. Undergraduates are better served by Donald R. Howard's equally entertaining but more comprehensive Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World; for strict scholarly treatments, see Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson's Chaucer Life-Records and Derek Pearsall's The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Highly recommended for all public libraries.--Lee Ehlers, Greenville Cty. Lib. Syst., SC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The first in a new series, Ackroyd Brief Lives, offers a fascinating portrait of the man who has been called the father of English poetry. Ackroyd (The Origins of the English Imagination, 2003, etc.) vividly depicts 14th-century London and the busy life of Geoffrey Chaucer. The poet, Ackroyd makes clear, was not an ivory-tower figure but a man of the world: a courtier entrusted by successive kings with diplomatic missions abroad and a civil servant who supervised royal building projects and oversaw the collection of taxes on wool and leather in the Port of London. Though brief, the biography is filled with details bringing Chaucer's world and work to life. We see the younger man being educated in the royal court, rising in the diplomatic service, absorbing the culture of France and Italy, and acquiring a reputation as a courtly poet. Records are scanty, but Ackroyd cites evidence of his various financial dealings and legal entanglements, including an indictment for rape as well as lawsuit over debt. Given the many gaps in the records, speculations are inevitable, and when discussing specific events, Ackroyd relies on hedges like "might have," "could have," "it has been argued that," and "we can possibly imagine." The core of the book, however, concerns Chaucer's work as a poet, and here Ackroyd is on firmer ground. He quotes frequently from the poems--The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, The Legend of Good Women, and, of course, The Canterbury Tales--explaining allusions, discussing style, illustrating the influences of French and Italian poets, especially Boccaccio, and pointing out Chaucer's skill at manipulating the English language. You get a clear sense of English as an evolving language, and, for those puzzled by Chaucer's version of it, Ackroyd includes an appendix with modern translations of all the quoted material. A splendid introduction to a pivotal figure in the history of English literature. (21 b&w illustrations) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
