Camian Academy

I finished reading Who Murdered Chaucer? by Terry Jones (and a few others) last week. It is a little strange reading a very academic book written by a founding member of Monty Python. It’s like you expect a digression into “spam, spam, spam, spam” or something. While that never happens, there is still a fair bit of subtle humor sprinkled throughout. The fact is Terry Jones is a brilliant medieval scholar and this is one extremely well researched book.

The premise is we don’t know what happened to Geoffrey Chaucer. He simply disappears off the record. His tomb says he died October 25, 1400, but that wasn’t even erected until the 1550s. The very late 1390s and early 1400s were bad times in Britain, particularly for anyone who could be considered a Wyclifite/Lollard or, worse, a supporter of Richard II. The first half of the (360 page) book barely even touches on anything about Chaucer. It is about what was going on during the latter part of Chaucer’s life and discusses King Richard II and the usurpation of the throne by Henry IV as well as the control over Britain that the Catholic church had at that time even as the seedlings of the Reformation were being planted. I now know more about that time than I ever knew I wanted to (but, I must say, I’m glad I know it now, particularly since British history is very much a part of my history, and, moreso, my kids’ since my mother-in-law was born and raised in England).

After about half the book, Jones moves on to an analysis of Chaucer based on surviving evidence as well as evidence that is not. It’s amazing just how much something changed or missing completely can tell you. The authors examined a manuscript of The Canterbury Tales under a microscope and discovered some interesting pictoral changes. The examination of what Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, would have thought about Chaucer’s works is illuminating. Chaucer’s Retraction has been put into context and meaning and makes much more sense now.

In the end the authors point a finger at a possible murderer, as well as a likely time for a murder. The evidence presented is mostly solid and, in fact, I had come to their conclusion before they spelled it out. Of course they fully acknowledge that Chaucer very well could have died fat and happy, nothing sinister about it. He had disappeared before (and that is briefly touched in the book with an idea of where he was then, too). But, if he was murdered, it was carried out (or, more probably, had carried out) by one you’d both most and least expect.

I wholeheartedly recommend Who Murdered Chaucer?!