① French influence period (1359 ~ 1372): mainly translating and imitating the works of French poets, creating Mourning for the Duchess, and translating the long French medieval narrative poem Legend of the Rose in London dialect.
② Italian influence period (1372 ~ 1386): The poet was exposed to the progressive thoughts of bourgeois humanism.
The creative works of this period, such as The Hundred Birds Congress, Troy and Clayside, and The Story of a Good Woman, reflect the author's creative attitude and humanistic views in the face of life reality.
③ Maturity (1386 ~ 1400): Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in the last 15 years.
He reached the peak of his creation in both content and skill.
Heroic couplets initiated by him were widely adopted by later English poets and were known as "the father of English poetry".
Chaucer's early works were influenced by Italian and French literature.
He introduced knight legends, lyric poems and animal fables from French literature into English literature.
His early work Trollos and Clay Side (1385) has vivid and delicate characters and humorous language.
Since 1377, Chaucer has been sent to the European continent for many times and has been exposed to the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio.
The anti-feudal and anti-religious spirit and humanistic thoughts of these writers profoundly changed Chaucer's creative thoughts and began to turn to realism.
Troles and Comisside, a narrative poem adapted from a long poem by Boccaccio, abandoned the tradition of dreams and fables and replaced it with a description of characters and life details in real society. This is Chaucer's first realistic work.
Chaucer wrote Canterbury Tales in the last fifteen years of his life (1387- 1400).
This is his most outstanding work.