![]() ![]() ![]() The book is elegantly written, accessible to the general reader as well as the scholarly specialist. This is a clever move, and Turner’s technique means that the poet’s works can be woven organically into an account of his life. Turner’s biography takes us from birth to death, but focuses on the spaces through which Chaucer moved, in reality and in poetic imagination. "In this fine biography, Marion Turner gives us new images of the poet. ![]() Chaucer: A European Life introduces the 21st century to Chaucer and Chaucer to the 21st century"-Sebastian Sobecki, Literary Review At the same time, reading Turner’s book makes us aware of how much our own lives are shaped by the rooms we inhabit and the places we visit. Chaucer: A European Life serves as a compass that allows readers to traverse Chaucer’s London and Europe. "Turner charts an uncannily tangible route through Chaucer’s life, binding his ideas and poems to precise locations, often enlivening it with consummate detail. What A European Life does particularly well is to situate Chaucer in the largeness and complexity of his world."-Tim Smith-Laing, The Telegraph (five star review) Turner's writing is never less than perspicacious, and often slyly humorous. This is one of those studies that academics like to call 'magisterial', but non-specialists will find much to enjoy here too. " A European Life feels to me like a radical new take on a man we thought we knew, but whose sophisticated business, military and political career took him criss-crossing the continent."-Andrew Marr, Start the Week, BBC Radio 4 Fresh glimpses of the great man are everywhere: perhaps most strikingly an account of the instagrammable teenaged Chaucer posing as aristocratic eye candy in a skimpy outfit called a 'paltok', which failed to cover his backside. deeply researched and highly readable life.""-Richard J. ""It’s very wide-ranging scholarship, but it’s written in a witty, engaging style and it’s very, very accessible. "A quite exceptional biography that with imaginative insight and stylish wit, sets one of the most significant figures in English literary history firmly in a European context."- Wolfson History Prize judges The book was so richly enjoyable that, once I had finished, I started to read all over again. She evokes the times, the politics, the personalities of his contemporaries and, above all, she gets inside this most ironical and brilliant of poets. " read his work so intelligently, that even those who thought they knew it all already will find themselves looking at Chaucer with completely fresh eyes. Ideas Podcast: The life of Geoffrey Chaucer Q&A with Marion Turner At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer’s writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales.īy exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant’s son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales. The narrative recounts Chaucer’s experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter’s nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer’s travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer’s adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life-yet his poems are anything but conventional. ![]()
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