乔叟(1342/43～1400年)
Chaucer, Geoffrey
英国诗人。出身中产阶级，在活跃而多变的生涯中，他是受到三位国王宠信的廷臣、外交官和公朴，而写诗只是副业。他的第一部重要诗作《公爵夫人的书》（1369/1370）是悼念兰开斯特公爵夫人的梦幻哀歌。1380年代，他写出的成熟作品包括：圣华伦泰节的梦幻景像《百鸟会议》，描述一次鸟类择偶的大会；优秀的悲剧诗歌传奇故事《特洛伊罗斯与克瑞西达》；未完成的梦幻作品《贞洁妇女的传说》。他最有名的作品是未完成的《坎特伯里故事集》（1387～1400），为错综复杂的戏剧性叙事作品，以人们到坎特伯里的贝克特圣地朝圣为架构，导出丰富多采、各式各样的故事合集；不仅是中世纪英文最着名的文学作品，也是英国文学史上最伟大的作品之一。在这部作品和其他作品中，乔叟使南方的英语方言确立为英格兰的文学用语，他也被视为第一位伟大的英国诗人。
English version：
1342/43～1400年
Chaucer, Geoffrey
English poet. Of middle-class birth, he was a courtier, diplomat, and civil servant trusted by three kings in his active and varied career, and a poet only by avocation. His first important poem, Book of the Duchesse (1369/70), was a dream-vision elegy for the Duchess of Lancaster. In the 1380s he produced mature works including The Parliament of Fowls, a dream-vision for St. Valentine's Day about a conference of birds choosing their mates; the fine tragic verse romance Troilus and Criseyde; and the unfinished dream-vision Legend of Good Women. His best-known work, the unfinished Canterbury Tales (written 1387-1400), is an intricate dramatic narrative that employs a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury as a framing device for a highly varied collection of stories; not only the most famous literary work in Middle English, it is one of the greatest works of English literature. In this and other works Chaucer established the southern English dialect as England's literary language, and he is regarded as the first great English poet.