Beginning of Essay
...I think some of Chaucer belongs to his time and that much of that time is dead, extinct, and never to be made alive again. What was alive in it, lives through him..._ --John Masefield Geoffrey Chaucer¦s world was the Europe of the fourteenth century. It was ....

Middle of Essay
.... and it¦s affects on his writing was immense. London of that time was not the London of today. It was a walled city, guarded against invasion, but long enough time had passed since such a threat had approached that the defenses had loosened. Houses perched upon the walls, and Chaucer in fact, lived for a time in a house built over Aldgate, (one of the gates of the city). London was a city less than three-quarters of a square mile in size: It ran east and west along the Thames less than one and a half miles, and extended northwards less than half a mile. Over 20,000 people were packed into this small area; the diversity of the inhabitants was ....