Why did Chaucer write The Canterbury Tales in English?

One of the reasons Chaucer is so important is that he made the decision to write in English and not French. In the centuries following the Norman invasion, French was the language spoken by those in power. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first major works in literature written in English. read more

The Canterbury Tales is the most famous and critically acclaimed work of Geoffrey Chaucer, a late-fourteenth-century English poet. Little is known about Chaucer’s personal life, and even less about his education, but a number of existing records document his professional life. read more

Chaucer never says overtly why he chose that language in the Canterbury Tales itself, though by the time he really got started on that project in the mid-to-late 1380s, he had already written a dozen or so works in English rather than French or Latin, so he’s continuing an earlier trend. read more

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1345–1400) was enormously popular in medieval England, with over 90 copies in existence from the 1500s. Its popularity may be due to the fact that the tales were written in Middle English, a language that developed after the Norman invasion, after which those in power would have spoken French. read more