The poet W.H. Auden said that to understand your own country, you ought to have lived in at least two others. As a historian, I've taken a different tack: to show readers what life was like for people ...

For a week of English poetry about the month of April, it’s impossible not to begin with “Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote”: When that April with his showers sweet. The poetic voice of ...

We know a great deal more about Geoffrey Chaucer than we do about any other early writer in English, because he was a civil servant who played an active and responsible part in public affairs for most ...

Chaucer himself was a translator, people forget, his most important work along those lines being “The Romance of the Rose” and Boethius’ “The Consolation of Philosophy.” Some of the tales that appear ...

The life of Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1340-1400), often labeled “the father of English poetry,” ought to be an open book: He is mentioned almost 500 times in contemporary records, far more than ...

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. A group of pilgrims set out on an imagined journey in the fourteenth century, and were set a task of ...

Biographers of Chaucer are faced with obstacles, not least a dearth of juicy information concerning his life. Chaucer may have left a big public footprint compared with other medieval authors – his ...

In a Canadian high school years ago, I giggled through the Wife of Bath's shameless monologue: "For certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve, ye shul have queynte right ynough at eve." Such provocative ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...