Chaucer and His England

The 14th century in England was nothing like the medieval caricature we imagine. It was a world of staggering violence, political intrigue, religious doubt, and linguistic revolution. G.G. Coulton's 1908 study reconstructs that world with the precision of a scholar and the urgency of a storyteller who understands that Chaucer did not write in a vacuum. The book traces the explosive circumstances that shaped England's greatest medieval poet: the Black Death's demographic catastrophe, the Peasants' Revolt's challenge to social order, the Hundred Years' War's nationalistic fervor, and the slow but relentless rise of English as a language worthy of literature. Coulton shows why Chaucer's decision to write in the vernacular rather than Latin or French was not merely aesthetic but radical, emerging from a society in painful transformation. This remains essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the world that produced The Canterbury Tales, revealing the historical flesh beneath Chaucer's immortal bones.