Anelida and Arcite: An incomplete poem by Chaucer. The poem tells the story of faithless Arcite to Queen Anelida. The first 270 lines are written in rhyme royal and 140 lines in varying metrical patterns. (Italian Group)

The Parlement of Fouls: It’s a dream poem by Chaucer in 699 lines of rhyme royal. It has been thought to be a poem in celebration of a marriage, perhaps the marriage of the young Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in 1382. The poem is the first reference to the idea that St. Valentine’s Day was a special day for the lovers.

The poet falls asleep after a prologue in which he makes the Boethian lament that he has not what he wants and he has what he does not want. He then has a vision of a garden in which three eagles pay attention to a beautiful ‘formel’ (female). Then there follows a long dispute about love and courtship. The dispute centers on the opposition between the courtly love approach of the noble eagles and pragmatism of the duck. The debate is unresolved and the birds agree to assemble a year later to decide. (Italian Group)

Troilus and Criseyde: Chaucer’s longest complete poem in 8239 lines of rhyme royal, probably written in the second half of 1380s. Chaucer takes his story from Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato. In the story Troilus falls in love with Criseyde, a widow whose father Calchas leaves Troy and joins the Greeks. The first three books tell us how Troilus with the help of Pandarus, Criseyde’s uncle, finally charms her. In the fourth book, she has to go to the Greek camp because of the political reason and she promises to come back at the tenth day but she does not. Troilus writes to her but gets only evasive answers. Finally at his battle with Diamede he finds in Diamede’s hand a brooch which he had given to her. Ultimately he dies at the hand of Achilles. (Italian Group)

The House of Fame: An unfinished by Chaucer in 2158 lines of octosyllabic couplets. After the prologue on dreams and an invocation on god of Sleep in Book I the poet dreams of the temple of Venus where on the walls he reads the depicted story of Dido and Aeneas. He then comes out and sees a golden eagle shining in the sky. It is from the same family of Dante’s eagle in the ninth book of Purgatorio. In Book II, the bird seizes him and carries him to the House of Fame and tells him during the journey that in the House of Fame he will learn about love affairs and hypocrisies of man. In Book III he watches in House of Fame the candidates approach the throne for fame, some being granted and others rejected.

The poem owes much to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s poem is also a dream poem and divided into three books. And Dante in Divine Comedy is guided by Virgil. (Italian Group)

The Legend of a Good Woman: It is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets which he later used throughout the Canterbury Tales.

The poet falls asleep and sees in his dream that Cupid appears before him followed by twenty lady martyrs for love. Cupid accuses him for writing only about faithless female characters like Criseyde and as a penance instructs him to write about faithful women, beginning with Cleopatra. But in the poem Chaucer only finished eight stories and the ninth is left unfinished. Some of the good characters are – Cleopatra, Dido, Thisbe, Medea and Lucrece. (Italian Group)