You're Dead to Me - Geoffrey Chaucer: the medieval father of English literature

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval England by Professor Marion Turner and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales. Since the fifteenth century, Chaucer has been referred to as the father of English literature. He was one of the first authors to champion the use of Middle English for poetry instead of Latin, and after the invention of the printing press, his works became the foundation of the English literary canon – long before Shakespeare ever put quill to parchment. But Chaucer’s life was as extraordinary as his legacy, living as he did through the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, and the Peasants’ Revolt. In this episode, Greg and his guests explore Chaucer’s dramatic biography: growing up the son of a wine merchant in fourteenth-century London, his work for the royal court and long career as a medieval civil servant, his relationship with John of Gaunt through his mistress Katherine Swynford, and his travels throughout Europe. They also examine the poets that influenced him – including Petrarch, Bocaccio and Dante – and take a deep dive into the famous Canterbury Tales. If you’re a fan of medieval literature, historical courtroom dramas, and the tumult of fourteenth-century England, you’ll love our episode on Geoffrey Chaucer. If you want more literary history with Mike Wozniak, listen to our episodes on Charles Dickens at Christmas and the Legends of King Arthur. And for more fourteenth-century lives, check out our episode on medieval Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Rosalyn Sklar Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life.

And all the bizarre ways people are using. the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster, and today we are preparing our pens and parchment and peregrinating back to the 14th century to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the famous Canterbury Tales. And to inform and entertain us on our journey, we're joined by two very special travelling companions. In History Corner, she's the J.I. are our Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Languages at the University of Oxford

and an expert on Chaucer and late medieval literature. Maybe you've read her award-winning biography, Chaucer, a European life, or her new book, The Wife of Bath, a biography. It's Professor Marion Turner. Welcome, Marion. Delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me. We're very happy to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, he's a comedian, actor and podcaster, you'll have seen him in Taskmaster, Man Down,

and as Rose Mattafeo's assistant on the wonderful junior taskmaster. Plus, you may have heard his dulcet tones on my favourite podcast, Three Bean Salad, or seen his new live tour show, The Bench. But you'll definitely know him from our previous episodes of Your Dead to Me, most recently, Charles Dickens at Christmas and Arthurian literature.

It's Mike Wozniak. Welcome back, Mike. Thank you. Hello. Thanks for having me back. Mike, we went medieval with you last time out. We went all King Arthurie. I had a lovely old time. You knew a lot. It was grist to my mill. Yeah, I felt like I hadn't wasted my...

childhood. You were in your element. But this, this is a different kettle of food. Oh, is it? Yeah, this is utter bleak ignorance. A new level of ignorance. It's beyond the unknown unknowns. Okay, well, we're going to have a lovely time talking about one of the great poets of English literature. So, what do you know? So let's start with the first segment of the podcast. It's the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subjects. And if we're using Mike as the Ben benchmark. Maybe not much, but you've possibly heard Chaucer described as the father of English literature. Perhaps you've read his Canterbury Tales at school and you modelled your way through the Middle English while looking for the rude bits. That's what I did. Maybe you saw the BBC's

2003 adaptation which transferred the famous Canterbury Tales to a 21st century setting. And if you're a naughty's kid like me, you will remember Paul Bettany's turn as Geoffrey Chaucer in the brilliant movie, a knight's tale that all medieval historians love. But what about the life behind the literature. What did Chaucer get up to when he wasn't scribbling his poems? And where do snazzy leggings fit into our story? Let's find out. You're excited about the leggings? I'm excited about the leggings. Okay, Mike. Yes. From your high level of knowledge, you've already promised us, what sort of family do you think Jeffrey Chaucer was born into? What kind of class do you think he arrived into? Oh, well, he's literate and not just literate. I don't know, the son of some sort of

merchant or trailer or ship's captain or someone who's got some qualifications, possibly a member of a guild, that kind of thing, but not nobility, I'm saying. That neck of the woods. Are you hustling us? Are you pretending to not know anything and then suddenly rolling out knowledge? Marion, I think Mike got it first time, son of a merchant. Yeah, brilliant.

Is it a merchant? Yeah, so a wine merchant. So his father was a vintner, that's what we call them. That's what we call them in Devon as well. Well, we do when we're trying to be a little bit clans. see and a bit pretentious. I have a local vintner. Oh, wow.

Called Ian, and he's absolutely, he's magnificent. Well, Ian, which is a version of the name John, which is Chaucer's dad. Good heavens. So John Chaucer, Vintner and Chaucer's mother was called Agnes. Chaucer was born early 1340s. We don't know the exact year, but about 1342 in London, in Vintry Ward. So the ward which had lots of vintners in. So it was one of the areas of London that,

is right next to the Thames, which is appropriate because that's where the wine comes in. Sure. So Chaucer's born very near the river, and this is a huge time for mercantile trading. So he's born in a place where he can see the ships coming in, loaded with products from all over the world, bringing spices from as far away as Indonesia, and then going out again laden with English wool, which was England's only real export product. So he's living at the heart of mercantile life. So we think of him as a middle class kind of boy.

Chaucer was living in this very multilingual, cosmopolitan kind of area. You know, people often think of the Middle Ages as people are kind of grubbing about. And of course, you know, some people were. But life in London was really international. You know, he was rubbing shoulders with people who spoke lots of different languages, were bringing in lots of luxury products. Where's the wine coming from, primarily? France.

Okay. So the French are still good at wine, even in the 14th century. Yeah, they've always been good at wine. My mum will be pleased to hear that. Gasked wine. But then one very very very good. One very big thing happened. Do you know the very big thing that happened to little Jeff when he was five years old?

Think mid-14th century big things. A plague upon the vintners? Yeah. Well, not just a vintners, I'm afraid. Yes, the great plague of all the plagues, the black death. Okay. Hit hard? It hit pretty hard.

Yeah. Family-wise and family and friends. Yeah, and to everyone. So the black death came to England at 1348. And it completely dwarfs the pandemic that we've been through. you imagine a pandemic that wiped out maybe a third, maybe a half of the population really quickly. Of Europe. You know, we're not just talking to Britain here.

It's, you know. And the Near East. It's hugely dramatic. And it also affected young people as much as the old. It wasn't only hitting the more vulnerable. All sectors of society are hit. So extraordinary trauma, you know, quite quite hard for us to imagine. And yes, Chaucer lost several relatives, but not his parents, not his immediate.

family. And what then happened to Chaucer's family is typical of what happened to the country as a whole. Because if you survived, although probably psychologically you might be in a bad way, but materially things were quite good for you. It was quite good to be a plague survivor. Because if you think about the country as a whole, you've got the same amount of land to farm, for example, but half the number of people to farm it. So what's going to happen? Wages go up. Is vintering? Is that sort of plague proof? Are people still getting on it? I mean, everything's affected, right? Because all over Europe, you've got a much lower workforce.

So everything is harder to do. But it means that people are then able to be paid more. So the wine still comes in and the choice of family are not only fine economically in that level, but they also inherited a lot because, again, the people who survived, they're inheriting. So both his parents inherited property and land and money from their relatives who had died in the play. So there's a lot of social. mobility after the plague. It's actually the late 14th century is an amazing time for social mobility. People can move jobs if their employer isn't paying a decent wage. They can go to another employer

or they can move to the city. The government passed lots of laws to try and stop employees from asking for higher wages, but it didn't work. None of those, you know, these statutes of laborers did not work. It's very clear which sign they were on. Yes. Yeah. So we've got massive inflation and wage inflation. If you were alive, you were then doing well. It's education. then, what's the normal for a kid like that? Yeah, yes. He's not going to one of the rarefied, there's no governess, I assume, or anything like that.

Well, he would have gone to school. Yeah. So people of this kind of middle class level went to grammar school, and that's what Chaucer did. So we don't have his school records, but there were several schools in London, including one at St. Paul's. They had lots of books.

He would probably have learnt to read and write at home when he was very small, and then went to grammar school. Education, so the schools were only for boys, though well-off girls would also have been literate. But girls usually would have been literate in English and French, whereas boys are trilingual, educated boys, English, French and Latin. So unlike today, you know, this was a multilingual educated society in this country. And most of the education at school was in Latin. But people, again, they often tend to think of older style education as very much the students being very passive,

being, you know, receiving a lot of information. But that wasn't the case in medieval education. In schools, boys did a lot of performance, a lot of learning rhetoric. You know, you might be given a fable and ask to invent different morals and then defend or get up and give different sides of the debate. So it was a kind of theatre. That's not what I had at all. It was completely didactic, just sort of rammed down our throats, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it was strict often. You know, there's one great case of a schoolmaster. getting injured because he was climbing up a tree trying to get lots of sticks to beat the school troduring, for example. So it was strict, but... It feels like a fable in and of itself. I was going to say, but the moral of that story is don't beat children, I think.

Yeah, absolutely. But, yeah, so he would have got a really solid education there, though he was also certainly a self-educator. He was an auto-adict because he read so much more than, you know, most people were reading at that time. He's a swat, but he's also getting a good education. Yeah. A really interesting childhood. Yeah, very interesting. Brilliant.

So, Mike, if you were a teenage Geoffrey Chaucer, you've had this lovely education. You're living in Cosbopolitan London. What sort of profession are you aiming to go into next? Me personally, I don't think I'd have made the most of this. Chaucer, I think it's got a bit better work ethic than me. Sure. I think Chaucer, I'm assuming he would have gone into the family trade. Okay, so you think wine?

You think he's going following dad? I think wine, you know, if he's having a lovely life and wine, it's got a bit of glamour, hasn't it? And if he's into his reading and his writing, he can do that on the weekends. It's a very sensible answer. I assume. He sort of goes. He doesn't. No, he doesn't be quite different.

He kind of starts to leap classes in a way. Yeah. Up or down? Up. He becomes a page boy in a great household. Does he? And this is a very desirable thing to get. So usually, you know, higher class boys would get this kind of job.

So his father probably got him this job because his father had been a royal tax collector. so we had connections in the royal court. So Chaucer's first job, when he's just a teenager, about 14 or 15, he pops up in the accounts of Elizabeth DeBur, Countess of Ulster, who is the daughter-in-law of the king. So the daughter-in-law of Edward III, she was married to Prince Lionel. So a page boy is, I mean, he would have done a bit of kind of errand running and things like that. But you're also simply a member of this lavish aristocratic household

where you're also going to be, you know, doing some riding and... So you're not viewed as... You're not a servant. You're not servant class. Yes, exactly. So although you're doing some, as I say, relatively menial errand running, but you're mainly just kind of sitting about,

learning some poetry. You're there partly to make the heads of the household look good because they can have a retinue. Right. Like a sort of modern sort of equerry or something, just sort of slightly dressed, about not necessarily doing, a lot, poking the posts.

He's mixing with more aristocratic people, although he always stays really kind of middle class. But he's mixing with these higher class people. So he's still Geoffrey from the block, but he is making moves. Exactly. Is Geoffrey the correct pronunciation for his name? Well, he's often referred to in the records as Galfreda, so as the Latin version.

So, I mean, and what we often see with names is that people are referred to in slightly different ways because people were so used to code switching between languages. I think Geoffrey is fine. Geoffrey is fine. Okay. So he's working for Elizabeth DeBur. No relation to Chris DeBur, unfortunately. Who knows?

Lady in Red. Maybe she was. Maybe she was. He does meet his wife doing this gig, we think. Probably, yes, Philippa. So Philippa de Roet, there's a reference in the records to her being connected with the same group. So we're not certain, but he probably meets his wife at this point. And she was a little bit, a little bit higher class than him.

Oh, she's got a d'a in the middle of her name, doesn't she? Yeah. He's not Geoffrey de Chaucer, is he? No. No. It's from this period that we have our first documentary evidence for Chaucer's life. Yes, absolutely. What do you think it is, Mike?

Presumly from the annals of the De Boer family in some way. So I'm wondering what they would document. Has he got involved in a wedding? Or has there been a sort of a disaster and a hunt? Oh, right. Have they gone to Ulster and they've killed the wrong stag and stirred up some local drama? I mean, I do think this is very impressive researcher-type thinking, thinking about the accounts. Because it is from the accounts, and people often expect that the first record is going to be, might refer to something to do with his poetry, for example.

Yeah. But in fact, it's a really frivolous reference. It's a reference to his fashion choices, to his clothes. This is where the snazzy leggings that Greg mentioned earlier are in. So the record is simply that Elizabeth DeBurt bought him these clothes. Okay. And when I was researching my biography of Chaucer, I started to look up these clothes and try and find out more about what the Paltock was. Because what we're told is that she buys him a Paltock with these two-coloured hose, like these leggings and some shoes.

Now it turns out... Pied hose. Yes, exactly. Now it turns out that Paltok's were brand new at this time. Okay. And we start... So these in the 50s, the 1350s. Yeah.

In the 1360s, we start to see references to the Poltok and the leggings that were associated with them. The mini Poltok? The scandalous items. So, and chroniclers in the early 1360s start to write about the fact that young men are going about wearing these clothes and that they are very tight and short and are exposing their genitals and buttocks inappropriately. And indeed some chroniclers said that they thought that the plague had returns to England because God's was punishing people for wearing these outrageous clothes. So it's a great, you know, it's all young people's fault.

There they are, wearing their appalling outfits, you know. Not like it used to be. It's like the modern person thinking that COVID is because too many people are getting sleeve tats or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And it's great because, you know, people think of Chaucer often as this, the father figure of English literature. Yeah. But, you know, here he is as a teenager.

Everyone is a teenager at some point. But he has to wear these. Yes. Yes. This is like when I was maybe the same age, my mother bought me some cycling shorts. Black cycling shorts, with a sort of lurid green flashes down the side. Yes. And she made me wear them to a birthday party.

I had a birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday to somebody didn't particularly know some older boys there. I mean, it was absolutely murderous. It was just, I mean, are you. Is this a trauma? Oh, my God. Are you having PTSD? I'm having PTSD. It'll be in my final slideshow.

So I feel like I feel like I understand Chaucer a bit better. So teenage Geoffrey Chaucer, he's not dressing sort of privileged, fancy, big sort of fur robes. He's dressing like he's in Van Halen. He's wearing skin-tight leggings, short, cropped-top. I like to think of him as this fashionable Chaucer. But also, it is so interesting to think that unlike teenagers today, he's not choosing his own clothes to express his own identity.

He's being told what to wear. He's being paid in clothes and food and a place to sleep at this. at this time. He also ticked off another major event from the 14th century. Having survived the Black Death, he then rides straight into another one. Do you know what this one would be, Mike?

Big 14th century extravaganza. Mega event. Yeah. A hundred years war? Absolutely. Well, well done. Yeah, very good. Was he a soldier?

Well, I mean, a soldier is perhaps a generous word. I get the feeling he's just a guy on a horse. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so essentially the whole household went to war. So by this point, he seems to be working for Lionel, Elizabeth's husband. And so the princes are all going to war.

They take their retinues with them. So he goes over to this. Because it can get boring up on that hill when you're watching, if there's a gap in the battle, you need someone for a bit of banter. Yeah. And he did, but he was fighting. He did go off to fight. Did he?

Yeah. And so the 100 years war, which, you know, actually was longer than 100 years. Yeah, it's 116 years. Yeah. So it's supposed to start 1337, finish 1453. Chaucers over there 1359, 1360. He was a fighter. This is Edward III of England claiming France for himself,

saying I should be king of France and the French king saying, no. Famously, the pen is mightier than the sword. So how do you think our budding poet does in battle? I'm imagining he would do abysmal. I sort of want him to be abysmal because he's still talked about as a writer.

It's like, come on, you can't, don't be a double threat or a triple threat. something for the rest of us. Okay. You know, so I'm hoping that he was desperately cowardly, sort of pretending to guide his horse the wrong way. He does get captured. Does he?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he was captured. He was in a sort of zone of jeopardy, at least. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So he was captured outside reams, and then he was ransomed. And so when you were a prisoner of war in those days, it didn't tend to be that bad.

Like, he probably wasn't thrown into a prison cell. You were kept in pretty. decent conditions, especially if you weren't a peasant. And then he was ransomed for £16. I'm going to take a little guess here. I'm going to suggest that that's more than £16 is today. Yes. Just a little bit.

Yes. It is. The inflation crisis that we all feel it. And we can compare it with other people. So there were some people who were ransomed for £50 at the same time. But then there was also a Carter with seven of his fellows who were ransomed as a job lot for £12. pounds.

So, you know, it's okay to be 16 pounds, but it's, you know, there were people who were worth a lot more. How much, what would your ransom be, Mike, you know, if we were in modern, modern I'm not planning to kidnap you, but I'm just curious of your economic value. Yeah, who's kidnapping me is key, really. Because I think I'd always prefer the idea of being exchanged. Oh, okay. You see, it's the sort of bridge of spice thing.

Sure. I mean, I think there's a lot more fun to be had. I'd rather be exchanged for some sort of deep cover, North Korean saboteur or something like that, somewhat of high value that should never be let back into the wild. So £16 gets Geoffrey Chaucer back. Who's paying that ransom? Is it the king? The king, yes.

Is it? So not even Lizzie de Burr? No. The king's paying all the ransoms. Does Geoffrey Chaucer bounce back from his ransom fiasco? Because obviously, he's, that must be quite traumatising. I think he was fine, to be honest. I don't think it was that rare. It was a different time.

I don't know, he's 17, he's gone to war, he's seen people die, he's captured. Mental health hasn't been in. invented at this point. You've seen half the population die in the plague. You know, this is nothing in comparison. I mean, so we see him just afterwards carrying letters. And I think that was what he was better at. You know, across his life.

Soldier, what do you excel at? I'm really quite good at delivering letters. Exactly. I mean, across his life, we do see him occasionally in these fighting situations, but much more commonly we see him doing things like diplomacy, secret business of the king. carrying letters, peace treaties. That's more his thing. But then we actually don't see him in the records for several years. So between 1360 and 1366, we're not sure what he's doing. Rather wonderfully,

he reappears in Navarre. Spain? Yeah. So at then it was an independent kingdom. So now it's part of northern Spain, but then it was an independent kingdom. And really interesting that he went there because at that time, Navar was a much more multicultural country than England. So this is the time that he went to a country where there were significant Jewish and Muslim populations as well as the Christian population. And he was there doing something that we don't really know what he was doing. But we have his safe conduct. We know that he was doing something diplomatic. There were all kinds of things happening at that point. Arragon actually invaded Naval while he was there. There were lots of English soldiers there at the time. So, I mean, there's many things he could have been doing.

But I guess in terms of just thinking about his life, he probably went there from Aquitaine, which the Black Prince, the oldest son of Edward III, was ruling at the time. He may have been in the service of the Black Prince. He may have been in royal service, in the King's Service. He was doing something to do with other royal households, as he had been for Elizabeth and Lionel.

That's the kind of world. As he left Elizabeth and Lionel's gaff then? Yes. He's ploughing his own furrow at this point. Okay. So he's married to Philippa, de Roet. They were married till the late 80s when she dies. They had at least three children. So we know of Thomas Chaucer, who later became Speaker in Parliament, had a very successful career.

Elizabeth, who became a nun in some extremely fancy nunneries, ended up in Barking, which was a lovely nunnery where... Yeah, lots of... Premium nun. Premium. Very expensive to get into. You had to pay a lot of money to get in, and then you could dine off imported figs and read a lot of books. and in many ways it was much better than entering the sexual economy at that time. Grums. And then Lewis, who we know much less about, although we do know that Chaucer wrote him a book. Oh, that's nice. Very nice.

Treatise on the Astrolabe, because his son wasn't very good at Latin when he was 10. So Chaucer wrote him an English treatise to help him to understand his scientific object, the astrolabe, which helps you to tell the time. Okay. So Philippa Chaucer, as she becomes known from this point, is a lady of the Queen's Chamber. Yes, absolutely. So we now have them both in Royal Service. Quite nice, they've got, they sort of share a same, you know,

when you do a career the same as your partner, it's quite nice. It can be tricky, can't it? Well, I was going to say, it can be nice because you both know the... You've got to make sure they're boundaries, though, as well. Absolutely. True. Is that, does that come from a basic knowledge? Especially when child care comes into it and all that kind of stuff.

It gets fiddly. Fair enough, all right. Three and threes a lot, isn't it? What's interesting, or one of the things that's interesting, is that his wife is working, right? People often assume that women aren't working at this time, but women have all kinds of different jobs. His wife always has a salary. Even though a lot of the time her job is kind of hanging around, again, being kind of helpful, but also just being a lady in important women's chambers.

And when he's in royal service, he's getting an annuity from the king, also from other people at various times. He's also paid in wine. So he gets a picture of wine a day, which later on becomes a ton of wine a year, which is something like $200. of 52 gallons. He probably didn't drink all that. He was probably giving it out to people. Yeah. You know, wine is an ongoing thread.

Picture a day? Yeah. How much is a picture? It was probably about a gallon. Blimey? Yeah. It's a lot of wine. That's a lot to get that, isn't it?

Yeah. As you say, it's probably for his household, right? Yeah. He's probably sharing it out. Okay. And so he's an international diplomat. Yeah. Jeffrey Chaucer diplomat.

Man overseas. He's in Italy. He's in France. He's been to Spain, Navar. Yeah. He's picking up languages or he knows languages. He knows languages. So everyone's tri-lingual, every educated man is trilingual at this time.

But he also knew Italian, which he'd probably picked up from all the bankers and traders in Ventry Ward, because he had a mercantile background. So aristocrats much less likely to come across Italian. He had Italian, which is probably why he was picked to go on the Italian missions. Going on those Italian missions is where he then picks up and reads Dante, Bacaccio, Petrach. And his reading of those poets enables him utterly to change English literature. Amazing. As his career goes on.

We'll get to that in a bit because that is obviously incredibly important. But first I want to ask Mike some fun questions about Chaucer's very storied career. Yeah. So he had a staggering number of jobs. Yeah, I like. We've already heard several already. But I've got a mini quiz for you. Which of these was not a position that Geoffrey Chaucer held during his service.

So here we go. Inspector of Walls and Ditches. Deputy Forrester, Clark of the King's Works overseeing the renovations of the Tower of London, the Member of Parliament for Suffolk, the controller of the wool custom trade, a negotiator of the marriage of King Richard II of England to the daughter of the Lord of Milan. Which of those six things was not on Chaucer's CV?

Okay. I can see, he seems like an amenable fellow so far. Yeah. He feels like he's quite capable. And a lot of people are getting him to. I can see him being pressured into doing the ditches gig. Maybe early doors. But I can see him putting his foot down at the old forestry thing. It doesn't seem like forest is going to be his milieu.

Okay. Okay, so you're saying Deputy Forrester is one we've made up. Yeah. I'm afraid MP for Suffolk was wrong. Curses. Because he was actually MP for Kent. Was he really? So he did all six of those jobs in terms of being an MP,

but he was representing Kent, not Suffolk. So he was in charge of the wall custom, Deputy Forrester. He did inspect those walls and ditches. He renovated the Tower of London. He negotiated the marriage of the King of England. Though that marriage didn't happen. Okay, so maybe he wasn't very good at his job.

But he still will pay, right? Yeah, yeah, she's paid by the day. Okay. You've got to get a daily rating. If you're freelancing marriage negotiations, otherwise you get stiffed. Well, it helps us to know a lot about him because we can know how many days he was absent from England because of the daily page. The invoicing is the, yeah, okay.

That's great, isn't it? This is not the future we were promised. Like, how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is the internet. The show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The most important relationship in his life, other than Philippa, of course, and his children, would be to the son of Edward III. Have you ever heard of John of Gaunt, Mike? I don't think I have, no. He's one of those big names in medieval history that no one really knows who he is, but they know he's famous. Who is John of Gaunt? Why is he important to Chaucer?

So John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. Chaucer probably met him when he was working for Elizabeth. We know they were at the same place then. And John of Gaunt was so important really, mainly because, so when Edward III died, his eldest son had pre-deceased him. So his grandson, the 10-year-old Richard the 2nd, becomes king. Obviously, a 10-year-old, can't really become king. Can't do much.

So his uncle, John of Gaunt, was the one who was really in charge. So John of Gaunt was really running things. The regent? Yeah, not officially, but was largely running things. So from 1377 for several years. John of Gaunt had also married Blanche of Lancaster, who was the greatest heiress in the kingdom. So we now often talk about the Dutchie

Lancaster. So this is when the Lancaster lands start coming into the royal family. So John then becomes Duke of Lancaster, but he has all this wealth, as I say, not only because he's son of the king, but because he made a very good marriage. And the role of women is really important. So John later, after Blanche's death, and Blanche's death was the occasion of Chaucer's first poem that we know about. The book of the Duchess was about Blanche's death. John then made another important marriage to someone called Constance of Castile, the daughter of the king of Castile. But the person he loved was Catherine Swinford. Catherine Swinford was Chaucer's sister-in-law.

Philip's sister? Yes, Philip's sister, Catherine, who had been married to Swinford, who was a retainer of John of Gorn. After Swinford died, we think after he died, John of Gawndt and Catherine started a long, long relationship. So she was his mistress for 20 years. Right. They had four illegitimate children. And then right towards the end of Gaunt's life, late 1390s, he married his mistress.

Now, no one did that. Dukes did not do that. Marries his mistress, who's relatively unimportant. They've got four illegitimate children. He gets the children retrospectively legitimated. Nice. But Parliament put in a clause saying that they could never use that legitimation to give them a right to the throne. Okay.

Nonetheless, all of our monarchs since Henry the 7th only have a right to the throne. throne through those children, the Beauforts. We need to change that. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, so Chaucer was connected with John of Gorn, you know, partly on his own merits. You know, he'd met him when he was in service. John of Gant gave him lots of jobs, but they stayed closely connected because of this

sexual relationship between Gant and Chaucer's sister-in-law. And that probably, you know, encouraged John of Gant to help Chaucer. He gave him lots, he helped him get lots of jobs. He was the one in charge when Chaucer got his apartment in London. his job at the customs office. He kept on favouring him. And things were very relaxed at this time in terms of kind of sexual mores. So Chaucer's children were largely brought up in castles with Gawnt's legitimate children,

his illegitimate children, Catherine's legitimate children that she had had with her husband. They were all associating together. And it meant that when Gawndt's son, Henry IV, later becomes king, he's favouring Chaucer's children as well as his illegitimate half siblings. They're almost half siblings. Yeah, they're all hanging out. They've grown up together. A sort of kind of commune existence.

Yeah, exactly. You said the Book of the Duchess is Chaucer's first poem. This is fairly middle-aged Geoffrey Chaucer. You know, he's kind of, he's quite far along in his career. Yeah, I mean, the Book of the Duchess is the first poem that has survived. So he may have written earlier poems. He may have written poems in French when he was younger. That's what, you know, most people were writing in French.

But the early. poem that has survived, yeah, he's around 30, early 1370s. And then he was just prolific. You know, he wrote so much. And today, people have often only heard of the Canterbury Tales, but he wrote so much else. So from the early 1370s to mid-1380s, he writes several dream poems, so the book of the Duchess, the House of Fame, the Parliament of Fowls, the Legend of Good Women. He translates Boetheus's Consolation of Philosophy from Latin into English. He translates parts of the Romance of the Rose. He writes lots of short poems and lyrics.

He writes some of the canterbury tales as standalone texts that then later he put into the canterbury tales. Like the knight's tale, for example. Yes, exactly, most famously, the knight's tale. So he's writing in English, whereas it would, although some people were writing in English, it would have been more normal, especially for a court poet, someone writing kind of courtly forms, you know, love visions, dreams.

It would have been more normal to write in French. Yeah. He's also very influenced by the words. by the world around him. There's this idea that you need both. You know, you need to read the books. He's steeped in literary influences from all kinds of places, but he's also interested in contemporary society.

And I think he does take a lot of inspiration from the things that are going on around him. So we can link things like his great interest in different voices, in the common voice. We might link that to things like the development of the speaker in Parliament at the time. Sure. That at the time... Which his son became, of course.

Yeah, exactly. So there's a movement at the time to allow one person to speak for others, to allow ordinary people to speak more in Parliament, in petitions, in that kind of world. And then, you know, this is also the time when we see insurgent voices, which can be productive but can also be really problematic. So the Great Revolt, usually known as the Peasants' Revolt, though it wasn't really mainly peasants. It was lots of different people. But that also happens during Chaucer's lifetime. And the rebels, indeed, came into London through Oldgate and he lived in an apartment over Oldgate, over that gate. Wow. Oh, wow. So this is a man who has survived the Black Death, fought in the Hundred Years' War, and then is literally next door when the Peasant's Revolt happens. He's basically Forrest Gump.

He's seeing the entire 14th century just keeps happening to him. Is that Watt Tyler? Yeah, Watt, Tyler. And obviously, you know, famously Richard I second rides out and says, you have no other captain in Nye, you know, that. And he also ends up in a courtroom battle in 1379. Mike, do you know why? 1379. This one's not a famous one, so you don't need to sort of...

So it's not going to be... I don't know. What would it be over? It's usually of a money, right? Yeah. I wonder if someone's made off with his old Poltox. Oh, someone's nicked his leggings. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish it were that. I mean, Marion, this is... We're going to have to rewrite our medieval episode of Law and Order. This is quite interesting. There was a time a few years ago where Geoffrey Chaucer was quite controversial because of this case. And now we can remove this sort of sting of toxic cancellation because he's innocent, right? Yeah. I mean, it's a really interesting

case. It's also really interesting in terms of letting us know what's still out there to find in the records. So this is a case in which Chaucer was essentially accused of something called raptus in Latin, which in different cases. is sometimes abduction is sometimes rape, sexual rape. So a woman called Cecily Champagne released him from further actions relating to her raptors. And for a long time, you know, there were a lot of historians and literary critics who were really, really keen to emphasize that this could not possibly have been rape. We're very invested in the idea that this poet who we loved could not have been a rapist. And then there were others who became very invested in the idea that,

he must have been a rapist, that we must believe women and accept that someone could be a great poet and a rapist. And, of course, someone could be a great poet and a rapist. But there was a lot of debate about what the word and the document meant, because in some documents, it means abduction. And abduction was not always forcible at this time. You know, sometimes that was a legal fiction where someone leaves of their own will, but then because their family want to get them back, they call it abduction. Lots of complicated things going on. But a couple of years ago, and this is how exciting the world of Chaucer studies is, so two scholars, Spatine, Specki, and you and Roger found some new documents.

And what they found was that Cessley Champagne and Chaucer were on the same side of this law case. And they were both defendants together. And they employed the same lawyer. Right. And then they found the writ, which was that someone called Thomas Stonden, was making a lawsuit against the two of them. What had happened, according to Staunton, was that Cecily had been his servant

and she had left before the end of her contract to go and be Chaucer's servant. So this was a labour dispute. Sure. And the reason then that Cecily would release him from any actions relating to a raptus would be that she was saying, no, I was not forcibly removed from my former employer.

because it would be much harder to make a case against Chaucer and Cecily if she was saying, you know, this didn't happen forcibly. I wasn't forced away from the service because then all they have to do is defend the contract. The contract probably wasn't written down. It was easier to say, well, I left and then was employed. But these documents did, as I say, it demonstrated they were on the same side and that this was something that was brought under the statute of labourers. So going back to talking earlier about the plague, the statutes of labourers had brought in a lot more

legislation to make it harder for people to leave their employees for higher wages. Of course. And Geoffrey was offering higher wages. Yes. There we go. We can uncancel Geoffrey Chaucer, so that's good. And there you go, proof that being a historian is a very exciting job. Yeah, absolutely. And so many records still haven't been looked at are still there in the National Archives. In the National Archives, that's where we found. There's a lot there. Fabulous. I think it's time for us to move on to his most famous poem.

It's time for us to get to the Canterbury Tales. Mike, without further ado, could you just recite the Canterby Tales for us, please? The list. Yeah, just give us all the books and also just if you could just start with the poetry, just give us... Fine. So the books, I mean, Knight's Tale we've talked about, obviously.

You've got your pilgrims. Yeah? Bar-maids. Bar-made 2. A horse whisperer, I think. And then... Oh, I think there is... There's the Summoners. Is there a summoners?

So there's something like that. There's one that my sister told me about years ago that I can barely remember. It's a bit... Horse whisper, I love. Baudy. That might be a real one. You've done pretty well there, I think.

I mean, Marion, can you give us an actual synopsis of what is the Canterbury tells? A group of people meet... They meet in the Tabard Inn, which was a real pub, just south of the river in Southwark. Great. They're all going off from pilgrimage to Canterbury. And they decide that, you know, to make it less boring,

so they don't just have to think about pilgrimage and God all the time. They're going to tell stories on the way there and on the way back. and they're going to compete for a free meal. And the host, the innkeeper, Harry Bailey, is going to kind of run this tale telling competition. So you get this kind of group of people together

who are all going to tell stories. But it's really different from Bacchios. And the big difference is the nature of the tale tellers. So Baccio's tale tellers are all of the same class, which is high class. Chaucers are not. So the highest class person is the knight, who's not that high.

And there is a plowman at the bottom. The vast majority are, are in between. So, you know, we have a summoner, a friar, a merchant, a man of law, a lawyer, a a sailor, a cook, all of these different... The miller, yeah. Yeah, the miller, the reed, all of these kinds of people. So that's really, really important. The idea that a miller has just as much a right to tell a tale as a knight, I might tell a better tale. So it allows Chaucer to tell lots of different kinds of tales and lots of different genres, lots of different forms.

So you really do get this kind of sense that there's something for everyone. Who wins the competition? It's unfinished. Oh, come on, Jeffrey. Chaucer hated finishing things. You really hated it. And I think it's because if you finish something, you kind of have to give it a meaning. You have to say, this is what it means, this is the winner, this is, and he hated that.

So most of his poems are unfinished or stagely overfinished in such a ridiculous way that it doesn't give you a resolution. So they don't get to Canterbury. Never mind get back home. Brilliant. Yeah. I mean, that's, I feel like someone should finish the Canterbury Tales. We should have a sort of, you know, a modern ending somehow. Some scribes did that.

So in manuscripts, you get people who change the order so they have them get to Canterbury. They write things that happen in Canterbury. They turn them back around. They add bits in. Yeah. Would they, yeah, would they credit themselves? No. Or would they try and pretend that this is the original Chaucer work?

Well, in a way it's neither because they're not, they're not making it overt, but also it was such a normal thing to do to add different things in manuscripts. But someone has still managed to work out. what the original... Oh yeah, it's obvious. Okay, fine. Which ones are not by choice. And the interesting thing, of course, as you said, the hierarchy, the knight goes first.

Yeah. And then who butts in next? The Miller. Right. And so the knight is the person of highest secular, non-religious estate. And so he tells the first story after a kind of a fixed lottery. And then the host says, okay, well, the monk, the person of highest religious class should tell the next story. And then the Miller says, no, no, no, no, no.

And the miller is very drunk. And he says, I'm going to tell you a great story. I'm going to go next. You presumably have done a lot of travelling to gigs in cards with other comedians. Does this feel very familiar? Oh, completely. I mean, I do a podcast with Henry Packer. I can't get a word in.

You know what I mean? He's a mighty story turner. It's brilliant literature. And it's also varied, as he say. It's funny. Some of the stories are kind of beautiful. Some of them are quite sort of moving. Yeah.

But there is that rudeness, that raucousness. There are fart jokes. There are naughty, you know, there's something for everyone. But I think what's very important now is that we hear some middle English. Chaucer is writing in English, but it's not the English that we are using today. And I think the best person to do this would be, of course, a classically trained actor, such as yourself, Mike. I don't know why you're laughing. I mean, I think of you as a consummate professional.

Oh, sure. Mike, would you like to turn over the page in front of you and read us some middle English, please? Oh, wow. Okay, I'm just going to go into it. Fine. wish me luck. There saw he first, the derke imagining. Oh, felony and all the compassing,

the cruel ear reeds and he glide, the pickers and eke the pale dread, the smear with knife under the clock, the ship nebring with the black smoke. Oh, I enjoyed that very much. That was really good. What was the accent you went for there? It was sort of, it went a bit sort of offensive Danish, I think,

in the end. Yeah, there was a slight Scandinoa feeling to it, but I thought it was quite good. It was really good. Professor Marion, would you like to give us the official pronunciation? Their sorry first, the dirk imagining a felony and al-accompassing, the cruel ear, lead as any glead, the picker purse and eke the parladreda, the smila with the kniff under the cloaker, the shepner-brenning with the blacker smoker. Now, we heard pick-a-purse, pickpocket, we heard Knief, knife.

There are words in there that we can all kind of go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are some words, you go, what? Yeah, and some of them, when you see it, so instead of saying pale, parlor, because the vowels have shifted, the great vowel shift has changed those kinds of things. Or instead of I, you say E. So a mix of kind of saying it and reading it can often make it much more comprehensible. But I think, so this is a really interesting passage. So it's from the knight's tale when you're, it's talking about kind of dark elements of life.

but that line of the smiler with the knife under the cloak, that idea of hidden treachery coming. But also part of this is a depiction of war, so it's Temple of Mars, but it's the war that Chaucer would have known. So the idea of the scorched earth, the shepherds' huts being burnt. So the kind of war, which he took part in,

which was often not pitched battle, but was attacking the countryside. That's really horrible. The kind of like with the third of second fire to everything. Yeah, absolutely. Like imagining a felony is great, isn't it? It's beautiful. But Mike did brilliantly.

I'm really impressed. You did really well, Mike. That was excellent. What would the comedian's tale be in the storytelling competition, Mike? The comedians. Well, it would be of the worst gig. That's when you... The heckler might send out.

In the green room or whatever. That's when everyone shushes and just everyone leans in when there's a really not gig that went really, really badly. So it's not the storming gigs. It's not the ones where you've absolutely killed. No one wants to hear that at all. No, no. That comic is being booted out of the car immediately. It's the real stinker.

Okay, so the... It's the one where the audience, yeah, people were following you out to do violence upon you. Running to the car park, locking the doors. Marion, why is the Canterbury Tales so important, both as a literary work and also in terms of our sense of the English language? I suppose in terms of language, Chaucer borrows and coins a lot of new words. Now, of course, sometimes that's simply been recorded because his work is so well known.

But he certainly was expanding the English language a lot in the Canterbury Tales and in his other works as well. You know, my favourite example is that he was so newfangled that he invented the word newfangled. Oh, lovely. He also changed what poetic forms were available in English. So he was the first person to use the 10-syllable line and to use an early form of the iambic pentameter. So the five-stress line that became the fundamental building block. of English poetry. So that's hugely important.

In terms of content, the Canterbury Tales really affirms the idea that we shouldn't just listen to one hegemonic, important voice. We should listen to the voices of people of all different classes, of both sexes,

of all different kinds of people. And he's really the master of juxtaposition of those different kinds of voices and of different kinds of stories. So we have, you know, a serious saint's lives and philosophy, but also these, extremely rude stories in which, you know, people have sex in a tree or stick their

bombs out of the window or divide up a fart into 12. I mean... That's the one my sister told me about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. So there's this kind of fabulous juxtaposition of all kinds of different things can be part of literature. Yeah, absolutely. And also, you just, on the way in today, you said that we still use Chaucerian meter when we, in our ordinary speech. Yeah, I mean, the way that we talk is iambic often. So I want to go and have a cup of tea. Now, so partly, iambic pentameter works because it's a natural way that we talk and partly we've become used to that as a poetic mode. So that is how our stress patterns work in speech. I mean, as I say, it's not only chorusing, that of course

is developed much more by later poets, but that kind of heartbeat rhythm is really fundamental to how we talk. So Chaucer's writing in English and that is why he is the father of the English language in many ways. And obviously, you know, you said I amic pentameter. That's Shakespeare later on. But we need to move on with Chaucer's later life. Is he just constantly writing until the end of his life? Or is it phase? No, he writes all of his life. Yeah. So most of the Canterbury Tales are written in the 1390s, which is also when he writes his treatise on the astrolabe. He rewrites a prologue, Legend of Good Women. He writes lots of short poems. And he's working. You know, so we see him working throughout the 90s. In 1399, Henry the 4th, the son of John of Gorn, usurps the

throne from Richard the second, his cousin. But Chaucer has great connections with both sides. So he's been connected with Gawndt and Gord's household all his life, as we've already talked about. But he's also been employed by Richard. So he weathers that storm and we see him getting his allowances renewed and increased by Henry. Towards the end of his life, he's living in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, which was not necessarily a religious thing. I mean, there were lots of shops and brothels and things like that in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.

Wow. But he's living it. That's why he gets buried there. because he lives there, not because Poets Corner existed there. Yeah, there was no Poets Corner at the time. It's just his local church. Yeah, I mean, it would have been more normal for him to have been buried in St. Margaret's Westminster. He must have had a good relationship with the monks for them to bury him there.

But it's because he lives there and it's later his tomb gets moved and Poets Corner gets started. But, yeah, certainly in the last year of his life, we see him writing a poem to the new king asking for his money. Oh, great. Yeah. So his final literary work. It's titled, Cash, please. In fact, it's called, what's the name of the poem? Yeah, complaint to his purse.

A complaint to his purse. Good. I mean, Mike, as a dad, you must get plenty of that from your kids. Oh, relentless. You're here. Please, Dad. It's wonderful. I think all invoices should be titled Complaints to the purse.

Yes, as freelancers, I think we're all familiar with that. Come on, I've done the gig, pay up. So he died on Christmas Day, 1400. We don't know, no. Oh, come on. Let's have it. We don't know the day that he died. The date of his death is traditionally given in October, 1400s.

Oh, really? Yeah. But that's just because that's when he doesn't get his allowance. We don't know. That's when the records tell us he's not there anymore. So we died before that point, but we don't know the date. Yeah. Because he died because he couldn't afford groceries.

I was going to say. He could be cancelled because he was dead. You're dead to me and then he's like literally dead. So he dies in 1400. All right. Okay. Before by the end of October. A nice round number though.

Well done, Jeffrey first. Yeah. He basically saw the whole 14th century and went, that's enough of that. Thank you. Yeah. Done it. Done. Mission accomplished.

Saw all the highlights. The obvious thing to say, Marion, is that he died 76 years before the printing press came to England. So, Kaxton famously, brings over a sort of Flemish printing press and prints the English things for the first time. So how come Chaucer's work is so embedded, it's so successful? You know, how can he so popular if this was not circulating in print? Yeah. So Chaucer was writing. in London English, right, in the East Midland dialect and around London.

So that gives him an advantage because his work is circulating around the capital. This is when standard English starts to develop in, in Chancery, so in bureaucratic documents. And then it's also the language that Kaxton does want mainly to publish it. So he's got an advantage there. People really liked his work. I mean, it was really good, right? It's not just the luck of circumstance. It was also brilliant.

People loved it. And so we see from early on in the 15th century other poets promoting his work, calling him Father Chaucer, so Hockleave, Lydgate, the early 15th century poets are talking about him and trying to write poetry that imitated Chaucer's poetry, though it wasn't as good. So then when Caxdon starts up his printing press, there are many manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. There's more than 80, which is a lot for that time. 80? Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. And then Caxston is the first big book that he publishes is the Canterbury Tales.

And then a few years later, he prints a second edition because he's got a better manuscript. he prints another edition. Everyone went on loving it. So when we look at the history of English literature, you can see references to or the influence of Chaucer in every single one of Shakespeare's plays. When you get to modernism, you know, the opening of the wasteland, April's the Cruelist Month,

is an inversion of the opening line of the Canterbury Tales when the Tapril with Hissure is sweet. Just a couple of years ago, Zadie Smith writes her wife of Willsdom based on the wife of Bars, prolog and tale. We see him just all through English literature right up to the present. Amazing. So that's the life of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Wow. Quite the life, quite the sort of literary history, really. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is where Mike and I spend two minutes silently inspecting ditches, while Marion turns a new page and tells us something we need to know about Geoffrey Chaucer. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away, Professor Marion.

I'm going to talk about Chaucer and character. So when people think of Chaucer, they often think about his characters, the wife of Bath, the Miller, the knight, the host. And Chaucer did two really significant things with literary character. First of all, he developed the idea of the unreliable narrator. So in many of his poems, the person telling the story is biased and withholds part of the story, or lets their prejudices come through in the telling, so they're not objective. And the idea of unreliable narration was to become a really key part of the novel.

We see it especially in modern novels such as Lolita, for example. Chaucer shows us that what we see is dependent on where we are, And I think this interest in perspective can be linked to the rise of artistic perspective at exactly this time. Chaucer would have seen Giotto's art, for instance, when he travelled in Italy. So he's really interested in using literary character to explore subjectivity and ambiguity. Secondly, he made his characters much more 3D than previous characters in literature, especially his female characters. The wife of Bath is based on characters from Latin and French texts who were stereotypes,

cynical old prostitutes. Chaucer's version is far more nuanced. She's much funnier and more appealing. She has a memory and a sense of the future. She talks about domestic violence and rape, and she talks explicitly about the lack of female voices in literature. In Troilus and Crusade 2, Chaucer changes the character of the heroine. In Boccaccio's ill-pholostrato, Chaucer's source, Crusade is a fickle, promiscuous betrayer. Chaucer, though, shows us the powerlessness and vulnerability of Crusade's situation, reveals the patterns of her thought and her constrained options, makes her a much more rounded and sympathetic character. He's interested in depicting characters' complexity and interiority, especially women's. Other authors sometimes disapproved of this. In the 15th century,

Henriksen wrote a sequel to Troilus and Crusade, in which Crusade is punished by becoming a prostitute with a venereal disease. Later artists such as Pierre Paolo Pasolini turned the wife of Bath into a monstrous stereotype. Chaucer's concern with depicting complex female characters is one of his great achievements and makes him stand out both from his contemporaries and from many of his successes. Amazing. Thank you so much. Lovely. There we go.

Jeffrey Chaucer. Amazing. We often say Shakespeare writes great female characters, but Chaucer was doing it 200 years earlier. Yeah, yeah. I love the unreliable narrator thing. That's, yeah. I'm going to have deep dive. I love all that.

Well, we talked about that in our Gotha Christi episode, you know, another great literary sort of giant and her sort of, you know, the notion. of the narrator who's actually leading you down, you know, in the line alley. But he's already doing it in the 1380s. Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting. And that whole sense of perspective of shifting, you know, how do you see things, really fundamental to Chaucer's poetry. He's pretty good, Geoffrey Chaucer, isn't he?

He sounds good. I'm going to have to have a bit of a read, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. And I think you can read it in the authentic Middle English. Oh, no problem. Yeah, you've got the accent. No problem.

We've got that down. Yeah. At the master class, yeah. So what do you know now? Okay, well it's time now for the award you know now. This is our quickfire quiz for Mike to see how much he has learned. Mike, you are famously good at quizzes. You are...

Well, I think I've done okay in a couple of your quizzes. Yes. Generally, you're pub quiz. Not so much. Well, this is not a pub quiz. Pub quiz, I'm a dead weight. Pub quiz, I'm the guy who's going to get some more crisps. Okay.

All right, I got ten questions for you. Okay. Question one. What business was Jeffrey Chaucer's father in? He was a win-merchant. Question two. What is the first documentary evidence that we have for Chaucer's life? Oh, oh, crumbs, crumbs, crumbs.

Big clothes. It was the Paltock, the crazy leggings, the revealing leggings. They were, the scandalous. Elizabeth DeBerre. Very good. Question of three, what happened to Chaucer during the Hundred Years' War? He was sent to war. He was captured and ransomed for £16.

£16. Bargain. Question four. What was the name of Geoffrey Chaucer's wife? Philippa. It was Philippa de Roet. Pipney. Yeah.

Question five. What was Chaucer's connection to the powerful John of Gaunt? So Philip's sister was John of Gaunt's squeeze, which he had four illegitimate, later legitimate children. And he was his sort of benefactor, his go-to guy. He was the wizard's sleeve, pocket, up which Jeffrey disappeared. That's a weird analogy, but okay. Yeah.

It's the best we've got. Question six. Name two jobs Chaucer had while in royal service. He was an inspector of walls and ditches. He was deputy forest. He was very good. And of course he did the Tower of London. Diplomat negotiator, controller of the wall trade. Question seven, what is the framing narrative of the Canterbury Tales? It's taken from the idea of ten tales, told by ten tale tellers over us at Tenales. It's a bunch of guys, they're going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.

They don't want it to be boring, so they'll tell their tails and they'll have a competition. to see who will win. Night goes first, followed by Miller. But we don't know who wins. We don't know who wins. They don't make it. Question eight, name two of the storytellers in the Canterbury Tales. You've got the Miller's tale.

The knights we've already mentioned, Pilgrim. Absolutely. Lots and lots of lovely ones. None, prioress, cook, wife of bath, physician's tale. Question nine, what new evidence tells us about Chaucer and Cessaly Champagne? Oh, it was a labour dispute. They were co-defendants. And this for a perfect 10, Mike, what was Chaucer's final poem about? Do you remember the name?

Oh, it was about money. Yeah. A complaint to the purse. It was. Very good. Well done. Well done, well done. Perfect 10 out of 10.

Lovely. Well done, Mike. You are good at this. This is why we book here. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much, Marion, as well. Yeah, thank you.

Really enlightening. Very interesting. Oh, it's been great. Listener, if you want more literary history, you can check out Mike's earlier episodes on our Theoretian literature, which is an absolute hoot. Or Charles Dickens at Christmas. of course our Agatha Christie episode too, we mentioned.

We've also got the live episode done at Hay Festival about printing in medieval England, where we mentioned Chaucer. And for more 14th century lives, we have our travel episode about Ibn Batuta. It's a very interesting guy. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear new episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. But I just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

In History Corner, we have the marvellous Professor Marion Turner, from the University of Oxford. Thank you, Marion. Oh, I've loved it. Thank you for having me. It was lovely having you here, and thank you for reading the Middle English so beautifully. And in Comedy Corner, we had the magnificent Middle English poet himself. Mike Wozniak. Thank you, Mike. Thanks having me back. I've had a joyous time. Brilliant. Yeah, we learned a lot, didn't we?

And to you lovely listener, join me next time as we read another chapter from the big You're Dead to Me Book of History. But for now, I'm off to go and drag people out of the pub and force them to walk to Canterbury while I regale them with the podcaster's tale. It's very long and very rude. Bye! Your Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was researched by Rosalind Scalore. It was written by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, Dr. Eminoghous and me. The audio producer was Steve Hankey and our production coordinator was Jill Hugget.

It was produced by Dr. Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and senior producer Dr. Eminigues. Our executive editor was Philip Sellers. Greg will be bringing a live version of the Your Dead to Me podcast to theatres around the UK this spring. You can join him in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Manchester. And for more information and ticket details, go to your dead to me live.com. I'm Sharie Val, and I've been investigating fraud for decades. Now I'm shining light on the secret techniques criminals use to steal your money. With insight from guest experts and the real people involved in these scams, so you can see the fraudsters coming before it's too late.

That's the new series of scam secrets. Listen now. on BBC Sounds. This is not the future we were promised. How about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is the interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing

to your work and your politics, your everyday life. And all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.