[In The Life and Times of Chaucer Gardner] shows both his scholarship and his imaginative talent. Many external facts about Chaucer's life are available; little can be discovered about his inner life, nor about many of the important events of the times. Gardner furnishes what has been learned over the years, and uses his novelist's skill for the rest. Some of this works; some doesn't.
Perhaps the chief problem with the book is that Gardner never aims at a specific audience. The general reader will find out far more than he wants to know…. All the dubious data of Chaucer's career are mentioned: his uncertain date of birth, his education, employment, patronage, the questionable details of his marriage and fatherhood, his jobs and places of residence, his financial successes and failures. No place in all this is there certainty. Gardner has to fill in much of his account with "Probably," or "It seems likely that …" and "It would be pleasant to think that…." As a result, much of the book is too detailed and too full of minutiae to please the popular audience. As for the scholar, there is too much summary recounting of well-researched commonplaces to be of real appeal. Surprisingly, for a novelist of Gardner's stature, the tone and style of the work is spotty, moving from pedantic to chatty without warning.
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