Geoffrey Chaucer
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50 free Geoffrey Chaucer trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Geoffrey Chaucer lived several lives at once. He was a soldier, a diplomat, a civil servant and a member of Parliament, and in the hours left over he wrote the poems that persuaded readers the everyday speech of England could carry great literature. His pilgrims are still some of the liveliest characters in the language: vain, devout, greedy, funny and very human. This quiz covers the whole of that story. There are questions on his life and connections at court, on the road to Canterbury and the people who ride it, on the plots of the most famous tales, on his dream visions and translations, and on the printers, playwrights and film-makers who kept his work alive. It suits students meeting Chaucer for the first time as well as readers who already know their way around the tales. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Chaucer poem is thought to hold the first recorded link between Valentine's Day and romantic love?
Parlement of Foules
Parlement of Foules sets a parliament of birds choosing their mates on the saint's feast, and no earlier romantic meaning for Valentine's Day is known.
Q 02In 1374 King Edward III rewarded Chaucer with a daily gallon of which drink for the rest of his life?
Wine
Wine by the gallon was granted on Saint George's Day, when artistic work was traditionally rewarded, so it is read as an early royal nod to his poetry.
Q 03Chaucer was captured at the siege of Reims in 1360 and ransomed by the king during which long conflict?
Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War took the young Chaucer to France with the English army, and Edward III paid £16 towards his release.
Q 04In The Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims ride to Canterbury Cathedral to visit the shrine of which murdered archbishop?
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket was cut down inside the cathedral by knights of Henry II, and the martyr was soon reputed to have healing powers.
Q 05Chaucer was the first writer buried in what became Poets' Corner, inside which church?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey buried Chaucer as a royal official and tenant, not for his verse; a grander tomb followed in 1556 and Edmund Spenser was later laid nearby.
Q 06Which English actor played Geoffrey Chaucer opposite Heath Ledger in the jousting film A Knight's Tale?
Paul Bettany
Paul Bettany's scene-stealing Chaucer won him the London Film Critics' Circle award for British supporting actor of the year.
Q 07Chauntecleer, the vain hero of the Nun's Priest's Tale who is flattered and snatched by a fox, is what animal?
A rooster
A rooster so proud of his crowing that he shuts his eyes to sing, Chauntecleer escapes by coaxing the fox into opening its mouth to boast.
Q 08The famous opening lines of The Canterbury Tales praise the sweet showers of which month?
April
April's rain ends the drought of March in the poem's first lines, and with spring comes the urge to go on pilgrimage.
Q 09Chaucer wrote a prose manual for his ten-year-old son Lewis explaining how to use which scientific instrument?
An astrolabe
An astrolabe guide for a child is an odd legacy for a poet, yet Chaucer's is sometimes cited as the first technical writing in English.
Q 10When Anglo-Norman French and Latin dominated literature at court, which vernacular did Chaucer write his poetry in?
Middle English
Middle English in the emerging London dialect was Chaucer's choice, and almost two thousand words are first recorded in his manuscripts.
Q 11At which Southwark inn do Chaucer's pilgrims gather before setting out on the road to Canterbury?
The Tabard
The Tabard was a real inn, opened in 1307 where Borough High Street met the old road to Canterbury and Dover.
Q 12What prize, paid for by all the other pilgrims, does the Host promise for the best Canterbury tale?
A free meal
A free meal back at the inn was the stake, but the contest is never settled because Chaucer finished only a fraction of the stories he planned.
Q 13Which merchant-turned-printer chose The Canterbury Tales as one of the first books printed in England?
William Caxton
William Caxton studied the new trade in Cologne and ran a press in Bruges before opening his Westminster shop, some seventy-five years after Chaucer died.
Q 21Which seven-line stanza form, introduced to English poetry by Chaucer, carries his Troilus and Criseyde?
Rhyme royal
Rhyme royal may take its name from James I of Scotland, who used the stanza for his Chaucerian poem The Kingis Quair.
Q 22Rhyming pairs of five-stress lines, pioneered by Chaucer in The Legend of Good Women, go by which name?
Heroic couplets
Heroic couplets went on to carry most of The Canterbury Tales and were later polished by John Dryden and Alexander Pope.
Q 23Chaucer's long poem Troilus and Criseyde sets a doomed love affair against which ancient war?
The Trojan War
Q 14Which author of the Decameron wrote the poems Chaucer reworked into the Knight's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde?
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio's Teseida became the Knight's Tale, cut from nearly 10,000 lines to 2,250, and his Il Filostrato became Troilus.
Q 15Which playwright co-wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen, a play based on Chaucer's Knight's Tale, with John Fletcher?
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare went back to Chaucer more than once: Troilus and Cressida also draws on one of his poems.
Q 16In Chaucer's tale of three rioters who set out to kill Death, what do they find beneath an oak tree?
Gold coins
Gold coins by the bushel make the three forget their quest, and greed finishes the job as each plots against the others until all are dead.
Q 17A knight in one Arthurian Canterbury tale has a year and a day to learn that women most desire what?
Sovereignty over their husbands
Sovereignty over their husbands is the answer an old hag trades for the knight's hand, and when he lets her choose her own form she turns young and faithful.
Q 18In the Miller's Tale, the student Nicholas tricks the carpenter John into expecting which disaster next Monday night?
A great flood
A great flood, twice as bad as Noah's, is the lie that puts the carpenter in a tub hung from the rafters while Nicholas slips off with Alisoun.
Q 19Which Duke of Lancaster, Chaucer's patron, became his brother-in-law by marrying Katherine Swynford?
John of Gaunt
John of Gaunt wed the sister of Philippa Chaucer in 1396, and three years later his son took the throne as Henry IV.
Q 20What is the name of the Southwark innkeeper who proposes and judges the Canterbury storytelling contest?
Harry Bailey
Harry Bailey was a real man, and one study argues the Prologue's cast echoes his own 1381 poll-tax list of Southwark residents.
The Trojan War stays in the background while Troilus, a son of King Priam, courts Criseyde by letter with her uncle's help.
Q 24Which sly uncle in Troilus and Criseyde, the lovers' go-between, gave English a word for catering to base desires?
Pandarus
Pandarus became 'a pander' thanks to Chaucer's poem, at first a noun for someone who furthers other people's illicit love affairs.
Q 25Which early Chaucer dream poem has a black-clad knight mourning White, a figure for Blanche of Lancaster?
The Book of the Duchess
The Book of the Duchess is thought to be Chaucer's first major work, and its repeated word White is almost certainly a play on the name Blanche.
Q 26In Chaucer's dream poem The House of Fame, which bird snatches the narrator and carries him into the sky?
An eagle
An eagle swoops as Chaucer tries to flee, lifts him skyward and, when he faints, rouses him by calling his name.
Q 27Chaucer made a prose translation of The Consolation of Philosophy by which sixth-century Roman?
Boethius
Boethius was a hazard as well as a hero for Chaucer, whose Latin copy was probably corrupt, which explains some slips in the translation.
Q 28In the Clerk's Tale, which peasant bride endures a series of cruel loyalty tests from the marquis Walter?
Griselda
Griselda bears her trials so meekly that her story recalls the biblical Book of Job, asking only for a proper burial when her child is taken.
Q 29The Canon's Yeoman's Tale exposes the shady tricks of practitioners of which medieval science?
Alchemy
Alchemy is described so accurately that Elias Ashmole later cited the tale as proof Chaucer had mastered the science himself.
Q 30Which Arts and Crafts designer's Kelmscott Press produced a lavish Chaucer with 87 Burne-Jones wood engravings?
William Morris
William Morris drew many of the designs and initials himself, and the Chaucer became the most famous of the 53 books his press published.