Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400) and Thomas More (1477-1535)

Abstract

These two Londoners have often been compared as belonging to the middle class with connections in government, especially through diplomatic service abroad ; also for their mental and spiritual kinship, their genial optimism and indulgence. The author’s parallel centres on their poetry, their shared indebtedness to the Bible, which they both read in the Latin Vulgate, and to Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy. More’s English poems abound in verbal echoes of Chaucer, which give his rhymes an archaic flavour. The extended Spanish quotation constitutes a careful diptych attentive to character as well as to literary matter and manner.