1. Biography
2. Works
   1. French period
      1. The Romaunt of the Rose
      2. The Boke of Duchesse
   2. Italian period
      1. The Parliament of Foules
      2. The House of Fame
      3. The Legend of Good Women
      4. Troylus and Cryseide
   3. English period
      1. The Canterbury Tales
         1. The Plot
         2. The Structure
            1. General Prologue
            2. introduction of the characters, setting in time and place
            3. Twenty-four Tales
            4. Prologue and Epilogue
            5. Departure
            6. human, linked to worldly pleasures
            7. Destination
            8. Canterbury symbol of the Celestial City
            9. the end of life, allegory of the human life
            10. Journey: Allegory of the Course of Human Life
            11. Plan to write another cycle of tales
            12. The way back to London, the terrestrial city
         3. The General Prologue
            1. Meaning of the pilgrimage: event in the calendars of nature and piety
            2. Connotation of springtime: human beings as part of the rebirth of nature
            3. Connotation of the shrine
            4. restorative power of the saint parallels that of nature
         4. The characters
            1. A portrait of English feudal society
            2. Denial of social hierarchy of the time
            3. Individualisation and dynamism
            4. Importance of realistic, descriptive details
      2. Style
         1. Realism and Allegory
            1. realism in the medieval sense
            2. use of the convention of exaggeration, caricature and grotesque
            3. allegory
            4. pilgrimage as a key metaphor for life: we are all pilgrims on the way to Heaven
         2. Narration
            1. Each tale narrated by a pilgrim
            2. Chaucer as reporting pilgrim
            3. tells what he sees
            4. use of irony, interplay between real and unreal
            5. the reader
            6. is left to decide whether what he is reading is true or not
         3. Verse
            1. long, narrative poen in verse
            2. rhyming couplets, iambic pentameter
3. Father of the English language
   1. Middle English dialect as literary language