Who Murdered Chaucer?

May 21, 2019 10:13 PM - by Terry Jones

In this spectacular work of historical speculation Terry Jones investigates the mystery surrounding the death of Geoffrey Chaucer over 600 years ago. A diplomat and brother-in-law to John of Gaunt, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, Chaucer was celebrated as his country's finest living poet, rhetorician and scholar: the preeminent intellectual of his time. And yet nothing is known of his death. In 1400 his name simply disappears from the record. We don't know how he died, where or when; there is no official confirmation of his death and no chronicle mentions it; no notice of his funeral or burial. He left no will and there's nothing to tell us what happened to his estate. He didn't even leave any manuscripts. How could this be? What if he was murdered?
posted by Chrysostom (2 comments total)

Yes, I think it's fair to say the book supports the argument more robustly than a blurb can indicate (this review lays it out a bit more in detail). I'd say it makes a good case for Archbishop Arundel being behind Chaucer's sudden apparent disappearance.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:09 AM on May 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

I really don't think that there's really anything mysterious about a guy who was around 60 "disappearing from the record" in medieval times, though. And his children seem to have inherited wealth and taken prominent positions, which doesn't exactly parse with Dad having gotten done for heresy. From a first pass of the Guardian article, it looks exactly like the usual Shakespearian authorship guff, where a quite usual lack of evidence is spun into a fantasy.
posted by tavella at 8:39 PM on May 23, 2019