Chaucer's Jobs (Paperback, 2004 ed.)

Geoffrey Chaucer was not a writer, primarily, but a privileged official place-holder. Prone to violence, including rape, assault, and extortion, the poet was employed first at domestic personal service and subsequently at policework of various sorts, protecting the established order during a period of massive social upset. "Chaucer's Jobs" shows that the servile and disciplinary nature of the daily work Chaucer did was repeated in his poetry, which by turns flatters his aristocratic betters and deals out discipline to malcontent others. Carlson contends that it was this social and political quality of Chaucer's writings, rathen than artistic merit, that made him the "Father of English Poetry."