Talks
Chaucer’s First Success: Being Tactful with the Duke
by Tom Shippey
Date: Tuesday 9 November 2010
Chaucer’s first poem we know of is a long elegy for Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster. Its content posed certain problems, which Chaucer neatly and revealingly solved, before going on to a profitable career as poet, civil servant, and royal secret agent.