Chaucer: A European Life

(Hardback)

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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 centre of political life-yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, the

Reviews

"Winner of the Otto Grndler Book Prize, The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University"
"Winner of the Beatrice White Prize, The English Association, University of Leicester"
"Winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, The British Academy"
"Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, The Wolfson Foundation"
"Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown, Historical Writers Association"
"Finalist for the PROSE Award in Biography and Autobiography, Association of American Publishers"
"One of The Times' Best Literary Non-Fiction Books of 2019"
"One of the Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year 2019"
"One of the Sunday Times' Best Literary Books of 2019"
"A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the Year"
"One of New Statesman's Books of the Year 2020"
"[Turner has] 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. She evokes the times, the politics, the personalities of his contemporaries and, above all, she gets inside this most ironical and brilliant of poets. . . . The book was so richly enjoyable that, once I had finished, I started to read all over again. It is an absolute triumph."---A. N. Wilson, Times Literary Supplement
"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 *
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"Its very wide-ranging scholarship, but its written in a witty, engaging style and its very, very accessible. . . . [A] deeply researched and highly readable life."

"---Richard J. Evans, Five Books
"[Chaucers] life in its European context. 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. Oddsbodkins!"---James Marriott, The Times
"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
"A hugely illuminating book. This is one of those studies that academics like to call 'magisterial', but non-specialists will find much to enjoy here too. Turner's writing is never less than perspicacious, and often slyly humorous. . . . 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 charts an uncannily tangible route through Chaucers life, binding his ideas and poems to precise locations, often enlivening it with consummate detail. . . . Chaucer: A European Life serves as a compass that allows readers to traverse Chaucers London and Europe. At the same time, reading Turners 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 introduces the 21st century to Chaucer and Chaucer to the 21st century"---Sebastian Sobecki, Literary Review
"In this fine biography, Marion Turner gives us new images of the poet. Turners biography takes us from birth to death, but focuses on the spaces through which Chaucer moved, in reality and in poetic imagination. This is a clever move, and Turners technique means that the poets works can be woven organically into an account of his life. The book is elegantly written, accessible to the general reader as well as the scholarly specialist. In suggesting further questions and presenting an array of new images, Turners book gives us back an image of Chaucer more melancholy and mercurial than the cosy figure we thought we knew."---Mark Williams, The Times
"[A] wholly beguiling, original, vividly written appreciation of the hugely innovative author and his rich cultural and political European background. A parable for our time"---Robert Fox, Evening Standard
"Magnificently scholarly."---Sam Leith, The Spectator
"Marion Turners exciting new biography explores in breathtaking detail the spaces and places that shaped the imaginative world of this great Anglo-European poet . . . . this momentous biography gives readers a new perspective on the personal authorial journey that culminated in The Canterbury Tales. Turner has produced a stylishly written and carefully crafted book, at times humorous and always lucid, lively, and engaging."---Clare Egan, BBC History Magazine
"[Turner pays] carefully nuanced attention to the significance of the places visited, to the mixture of cultures they accommodated, and to the range of experiences they offered to a traveller from London. . . . [Turners] processes of expansion, and of interweaving the life with the works, make for enjoyable and consistently informative reading. . . . Although the books European emphasis and concluding gestures to the here and now insist on its timeliness, its real focus is on understanding Chaucers world through the variety of that worlds records and its remains, and through the imaginative reflection of it in Chaucers works."---Julia Boffey, Times Literary Supplement
"Marion Turner has had the inspired idea of organising her biography by the places [Chaucer] occupied . . . . So many places, so many points of view. Chaucer's modernity consists in his adoption of many perspectives. This biography provides a wonderful illumination of his art." * Country Life Magazine *
"It feels as though new light is genuinely being shed on Chaucers life, combining documentary material with sure-footed interpretations of his works, what we know of the people and places he encountered, and social and economic history . . . . The result is a three-dimensional picture of Chaucer from the outside in."---Laura Ashe, History Today
"Marion Turner has done a magnificent job. . . . I do not expect to see this biography superseded."---Paul Dean, New Criterion
"A meticulously researched, well-styled academic study showing Chaucer as the consummate networker." * Kirkus *
"This meaty new biography is likely to be the best book on the subject for decades to come."---Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review
"In Marion Turners capacious biography the first since Derek Pearsalls in 1992 and the first ever by a woman Chaucer is Bakhtinian and plural, a man of many voices. Much like his Canterbury pilgrims, he is always en route but never arriving. . . . Fittingly, she ends by rejecting the image of Chaucer as the father of English poetry and finds his legacy instead in the suppressed and marginalised voices that he licensed to speak."---Barbara Newman, London Review of Books
"A rich, thought-provoking and readable work of scholarship. . . . [Turner] has forged a new kind of biography. . . . Her work promises to be definitive for some time to come."---Mary Wellesley, Times Higher Education
"[A] great swirl of a biography, one more capacious and more ranging than any of its predecessors. . . . [Chaucer: A European Life] proclaims a hope to bring this canonical medieval poet to life before a broad, modern audience."---Joe Stadolnik, Los Angeles Review of Books
"What wonders Turner can work with a word! . . . . I find it difficult to stop quoting Turner, since she puts the life she is following into such intricate yet accessible prose. You need to stick with this long biography to fully absorb the point toward which she is headed. In other words, it becomes a journey just like the many trips Chaucer took for himself and others."---Carl Rollyson, University Bookman
"Chaucer has not lacked for biographies, but Marion Turners is of a rare ambition and competence . . . [A] very substantial book . . . sustained by a confident erudition and a powerful and controlled narrative flow."---John V. Fleming, First Things
"[I]n Marion Turner's brilliant 'Chaucer: A European Life,' you will learn not only about the life of the man behind 'The Canterbury Tales,' you will learn about the bustling, fast-changing world in which he lived and traveled . . . if you are interested in history, poetry or the man who invented iambic pentameter, it's fascinating."---Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Turner's study is itself like a medieval book. It loves exhaustive detail; it loves a careful architectural design; and it is not afraid of exhausting its readers. It's a biography full of rich detail . . . securely grounded in the material and cultural world, instead of the conventional focus on the singular voice of a solitary poetic genius."---Stephanie Trigg, Sydney Morning Herald
"Marion Turner's splendid new biography of the poet . . . is wonderfully evocative. [A] magisterial intellectual biography."---Bruce Whiteman, Hudson Review
"[Turner's] expansive book is written with an unusual mix of erudition, clarity, and wit: it will be required reading for specialists, an invaluable resource for students, and a rich introduction to Chaucers world for the general reader. . . .[Turner's] generous and humane vision is deeply appealing, and offered with a warmth that is hard to resista welcome invitation to all of us to broaden our horizons."---Philip Knox, Review of English Studies
"Chaucers first female biographer provides a fresh, modern perspective, memorably showing us the great poet as a young man dressed by his employer in a skimpy garment designed to emphasise the

Author Bio

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include The Wife of Bath: A Biography (Princeton).