Obscenity in Three English Lives of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1700–1803

ABSTRACT Charges of obscenity against the works of Geoffrey Chaucer have circulated throughout the past century or so, but the topic does not appear to have been of much concern in accounts of his life produced in English in earlier centuries. Seventeen accounts of Chaucer’s life were produced in English between 1532 and 1815, but only those by John Dryden (in Fables Ancient and Modern, 1700), Thomas Warton (in The History of English Poetry, 1774), and William Godwin (Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1803) discuss obscenity. This article argues that, despite the fact that all three writers go to some lengths to excuse or dismiss Chaucer’s obscenity, the popularity and influence of their accounts of Chaucer’s life have likely contributed to the preoccupation with Chaucerian obscenity seen in later centuries.