Abstract
Very little is known with certainty about Geoffrey Chaucer’s life, yet he has long been enshrined as the "Father of English Poetry." Over six centuries, biographers have sought to craft a version of Chaucer that meets the needs of their own time, culture, and readers. In doing so, they have often blurred the boundaries between evidence and invention. In Life of the Author: Geoffrey Chaucer, Simone Celine Marshall takes a distinctive approach that examines not just Chaucer himself, but the ways in which his life story has been repeatedly fabricated and reshaped to reflect broader social, cultural, and literary currents. By analyzing over two dozen biographies, Marshall demonstrates that each one is less a faithful record of Chaucer’s life than a mirror of its own era’s priorities and prejudices.
Marshall situates Chaucer within a 625-year tradition of biography-making, showing how the image of the poet has been reframed over time—from Renaissance humanist, to national literary figure, to contested cultural symbol. Structured both chronologically and thematically, the book traces episodes that have particularly exercised biographers, including Chaucer’s travels, his alleged authorship of The Testament of Love, his English identity, his entanglement with accusations of rape, and even his role in colonial contexts such as New Zealand. Throughout the text, Marshall highlights how each retelling of Chaucer’s life is also a response to shifting societal concerns—about authorship, nationhood, morality, and cultural authority.