SOURCE: "English Literature," in The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1833-1836, Vol. I, edited by Stephen E. Whicher and Robert E. Spiller, Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 205-88.

Emerson, an influential literary figure and philosopher during the nineteenth century, founded the American Transcendental movement. In the following excerpt from a lecture delivered in 1835, he places Chaucer in the English literary tradition, praising him for his delightful and authentic literary portraits.

Geoffrey Chaucer in the unanimous opinion of scholars is the earliest classical English writer. He first gave vogue to many Provençal words by using them in his elegant and popular poems, and by far the greater part of his vocabulary is with little alteration in use at this day. He introduced several metres which from his time have been popular forms of poetic composition until ours. Moreover he either is the author or the translator of many...