Chaucer

A European Life

By: Marion Turner

Narrated by: Marion Turner

Length: 20 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

A groundbreaking biography that recreates the cosmopolitan world in which a wine merchant's son became one of the most celebrated of all English poets.

More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the center of political life - yet his poems are anything but conventional. 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. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. 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. 

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. 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. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer's writings, taking the listener to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. 

By 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.

©2019 Princeton University Press (P)2019 Recorded Books

Fantastic in its depth and breadth!

Impressive work that illuminates Geoffrey Chaucer’s experiences and how his writing and ideas were shaped.

Not a typical biography

While this book is an amazing history covering the time period of Chaucer’s life, I would categorize it more as a history centered around Chaucer as opposed to a biography. Though I feel that I learned a ton about the period; there are a lot of names and dates that get thrown out at you and I think having familiarity with world events in the 1300’s would be helpful. I also understand why she organized by places, but I was very unused to a non-linear timeline and kept trying to remember who was alive, dead, etc. as years are talked about with relevance, not time order.

Understanding Chaucer and His Writings

“Chaucer: A European Life” was an in-depth and detailed excursion into the life and times of Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the English language’s most famous authors. Marion Turner examines, in close detail, the writings down to the multiple meaning of words being used, the political environment, and general conditions of the times. The book is a valuable reference to understand Chaucer and the words he has left for us to read, understand, and enjoy. Experienced as an AUDIO book.

Amazing scholarship - less so narration

Why do authors insist on reading their own books? This would have been so much better, and easier to comprehend in the hands (or voice) of any of a number of seasoned audiobook readers. I persevered but what a slog.

A dense slog, perhaps better read than listened to

I’m in the minority of listeners who found this audiobook quite a slog to get through. (I’m not one to complain about history detailed audiobooks—while others said Dan Jones’s The War of the Roses difficult to follow in audiobook form, I found it captivating and pretty easy to follow.) Part of the problem is listening to, rather than reading, the text. I found a portion of Chapter 13 “Empire” in print online and reading along with the text made it much easier to follow.

Here’s a sample paragraph:

“Pope Urban VI had been elected in April, but his cardinals were already regretting his election, and a large group had withdrawn from Rome to Anagni. While Chaucer was still in Lombardy, they pronounced the election void (on August 2nd); and the day after Chaucer returned to England, they elected a rival pope, Clement VII. Chaucer was also in Lombardy when Galeazzo Visconti died at Pavia on August 4th. He had ruled jointly with his brother Bernabò, and his death initially allowed Bernabò even freer reign, until Galeazzo’s son, Giangaleazzo, executed a coup against his uncle in 1385, a turn of Fortune’s wheel memorialized in the ‘Monk’s Tale.’”

Think about how dense that short paragraph is when listening to it. We have one event occurring on 2 August, another happening “the day after Chaucer returned to England”—it’s not clear when that is—and then another happening on 4 August. Chaucer “was still in Lombardy” on 2 August and “also in Lombardy” on 4 August—the author has already said in the previous paragraph that “Chaucer probably arrived in Milan around the end of June or beginning of July and stayed in Lombardy until mid-August” so we already know that Chaucer was in Lombardy on both the 2nd and 4th of August. It would have been clearer for the listener if the author had written a portion of the paragraph as something like “While Chaucer was in Lombardy, the cardinals pronounced the election void on August 2nd; two days later, Galeazzo died at Pavia, putting an end to his joint rule with his brother Bernabò…On 20 September 1378, the day after Chaucer returned to England, the cardinals elected a rival pope, Clement VII.”

A few paragraphs later, the author writes “ In Pavia, he could have found Boccaccio’s Filostrato, Amorosa Visione, Decameron, De Genealogia Deorum Gentilium, De Claris Mulieribus, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, and De Montibus.” If you’re reading these titles, you can at least take each one in, one at a time, but, unless you’re familiar with Boccaccio’s works (I know only of Decameron), the stream of titles in Latin as audio is impenetrable.

Much of the book is like that.

I acknowledge the author’s erudite, scholarly approach to Chaucer and his life. The book had interesting things to say about Chaucer as a prisoner of war, the diplomat, the civil servant in the “counting house,” the father—and, perhaps a bit too gingerly, the accused rapist of Cecily Champaigne (Turner speculates freely elsewhere but not there). But it’s so dense, so unsuitable as an audiobook, that it is difficult to recommend.

And, as an exceedingly minor point, I thought some of the author’s pronunciations were just plain weird: for example, she says “counterfeit” as “counter-fate” (which sounds like a Chaucerian affectation, honestly) and “treatise” as “tree-tize” (the second syllable rhyming with “size”). Perhaps they are dialectal variations but I found them to be a bit distracting.