Who Murdered Chaucer? : A Medieval Mystery

Rating:
Summary: Was He Murdered ? -- Chaucer Imaged
Review: Like the recent "Will In The World" by Stephen Greenblatt, another medieval scholar has written another brilliant research book searching for answers on the life of another English writer where no answers exists. Whereas Mr. Greenblatt was creating a life of William Shakespeare based on very meager documention, Terry Jones and his co-authors are speculating on the death of Geoffrey Chaucer where NO documentation exists at all of his death. Chaucer just disappears from the public record in 1400.

This book benefits from both Mr. Jones days as a Monty Python member and his prior research books on the Middle Ages. It is extremely readable and entertaining, regardless of the unprovable supposition that Chaucer was possibly murdered for political reasons.

This book should be called "Chaucer: His Life, His Works, His World" but Donald Howard had already claimed that title for his fine 1987 biography of Chaucer. Mr. Jones went for a more marketable title, suggesting a murder mystery where no proof exists even of the year of Chaucer's death. At 416 pages, it is 200+ pages shorter than Mr. Howard's work (who focused more attention upon an analysis "The Canterbury Tales").

Regardless of the alleged murder, this book is worth reading for its solid research, beautiful illustrations and readable writing style (the reader should see the Amazon excerpt via the Search Inside feature to see if they agree). It is a fun book to read.