I checked to see if Terry Jones'
Who Murdered Chaucer? and Steve Ellis'
Chaucer at Large are both available on Amazon. They are. So that means to me that they would not be hard to find. Neither book is new, but they are exceptional at increasing the perception of Chaucer's image. He was much more than just a storyteller when he lived.
I've mentioned
Who Murdered Chaucer? before. It's an important book; it has an important message. It is NOT a literary look at Chaucer. Far from it. Instead, it creates the milieu in which he lived. And you get a picture of Chaucer the man and how he fits into the forces at work around him. You also are led to ponder a strange lack of information.
The idea of Chaucer's "murder" started out as a fun piece, an entertainment at a literary gathering. The questions raised intrigued the participants. Several experts from different fields, along with Terry Jones (he of Monty Python fame), felt driven to go deeper and produce a book so their findings and speculations would "shed more light on this rather shady corner of history," as Terry Jones explains in the foreword entitled, "How this book came about."
The story contained in Steve Ellis'
Chaucer at Large is said, by a noted Chaucer scholar, to be "often quite extraordinary and it has not been told before." Ellis' book, in contrast to Jones', IS a literary look at Chaucer. The focus, however, is entirely new. This is not an analysis of the
Tales, but a presentation of how the poet's imagination has been adapted in the English-speaking world from the 1800s into the 21st century. Chaucer is found at "the heart" of the literary outreach of our culture. Novelists, poets, authors of children's books--stage , television, radio and film--all find inspiration and challenge in the medieval poet. Ellis finds him "elusive" and "intriguing." As a new collection of information, I found it surprising at times.
And, if I may digress, it delighted me that Ellis, in his conclusion, touches upon the fact that the Pilgrims never reach Canterbury. "The
Tales does not need 'finishing' because it stands in its present state as 'an artistic unified whole,' its so called incompletion part of a deliberate design." It does my heart good to see it stated so clearly, to recognize the destination as beyond the end of the narration.
The two books are very different. Neither is a formal presentation of research. Though they both are built on research, their aim is to intrigue the general reader regarding Chaucer, the great English poet. Try them. The image you hold of Geoffrey Chaucer will be altered significantly.
