The foul-mouthed Miller and the prim Prioress

The pre-eminent poet of the English language, celebrated for his trailblazing literary wizardry, Chaucer's time 'is, and has always been, here and now', finds Matthew Dennison

- Matthew Dennison

THAT Geoffrey Chaucer's 'drasty rhyming is nat worth a toord' (his 'dirty rhyming isn't worth a turd'), the Host's pungent dismissal in Chaucer's best-known, but incomplete poem The Canterbury Tales, is a verdict that, with good reason, posterity has ignored. More than six centuries after his death in 1400, Chaucer remains the best-loved and most-read surviving voice of medieval England. His claim to be a 'grete philosopher', profound in his understanding of human nature, is as persuasive now as when first articulated by 15th-century printer William Caxton. He has consistently been celebrated for his trailblazing literary wizardry, assimilating and reinventing diverse storytelling traditions: the writer, Caxton marvelled, who outstripped all others and 'enbelysshed, ornated, and made faire our englisshe', supplementing the language with words borrowed from Latin and French. Within a dozen years of his death, Chaucer was hailed as the first discoverer of English and the pre-eminent poet of our native tongue: 'The first fyndere of our faire langage.'

According to the narrator of The Manciple's Tale, a word is spoken or written and forth it goth'. Now, a new exhibition at Oxford's Bodleian Library charts Chaucer's life and 600 years of readers' responses to his work. Exhibits range from the oldest surviving Chaucer manuscript, the Hengwrt Chaucer of about 1400, to recent Chaucer-inspired writing by Windrush-generation poets. Clearly, the great man's words continue to go forth, crackling with life, to resonate forcefully with new generations. Described by fellow poet John Dryden in 1700 as 'the Father of English Poetry' (and, on account of his bawdy humour, as a rough diamond'), Chaucer emerges from the current exhibition as a towering figure, inspiring writers from Edmund Spenser to Zadie Smith, alongside calligraphers, illustrators, amateur and professional artists, film-makers and even puppeteers.