Geoffrey Chaucer : The Father of English Literature

Abstract

Chaucer wrote in continental accentual-syllabic meter ,a style which had developed since around the 12th century as an alternative to the alliterative Anglo-Saxon metre. Chaucer is known for metrical innovation ,inventing the rhyme royal and was one of the finest English poets to use the five-stress line, a decasyllabic cousin to the iambic pentameter. Now considered the “Father of English Literature,” Chaucer wrote in the English vernacular while court poetry was still being written in Anglo-Norman or Latin. The decasyllabic couplet Chaucer used for most of The Canterbury Tales later evolved into the heroic couplet, commonly used for the epic and narrative poetry in English. Chaucer is also credited with pioneering the regular use of iambic pentameter.