Chaucer

G K Chesterton

A certain break or sharp change in history can hardly be sketched more sharply, than by saying that up to a certain time life was conceived of as a Dance, and after that time life was conceived as a Race.

If it is superstition to venerate the bones of a great man killed by a tyrant, is it anymore intelligent that millions of clerks should go down and merely gape at the Sea, without having even the sense to worship Neptune?

For those who are more than not familiar with Chesterton, it will come as no surprise that he was an admirer of Chaucer. It will also not startle you that he should write an entire book about the man, nor that such a book be more about how modern society has misunderstood its past than Chaucer's biography. Despite Chesterton's over-willingness to diverge from his topic and speak in broad, often critical terms, of his world and the world around him, there are actually quite a few insights into Chaucer in Chaucer.
If you are a person who feels a vagueness when others mention the 14th century, if you find that your ability to conceive of this amazing period of history often involves taking everything you know about life now, primitivising it and putting it in clothes of some goofy looking court jester, I would recommend a perusal of this easy-to-read tome. Chesterton will give you a much more respectful insight into these misunderstood times and perhaps suggest to your mind the possibility that people were wiser, maybe even happier in those days. It is also a possibility that Chesterton will enlighten you to some of the ridiculous conceits we have about ourselves as the highest yet reached rung on this mighty ladder which is civilization.
As a problem with the book it cannot be denied that Chesterton over-indulges in his often paradoxical and rhetorical mastery. There are times when the reader would like it if he would stop playing such fanciful word games for a moment and get down to the business of saying things outright. There is a bit too much of the bending back on itself in Chaucer.
But it is not to such an extent it will keep you from reaching the end or understanding his meaning.
Read Chesterton on Chaucer and you might just end up becoming a medievalist. 6/10