Editing Geoffrey Chaucer (section)

===Early criticism===
{{quote box|width=27%|align=right|quote="The language of England, upon which Chaucer was the first to confer celebrity, has amply justified the foresight which led him to disdain all others for its sake, and, in turn, has conferred an enduring celebrity upon him who trusted his reputation to it without reserve."|source=—T. R. Lounsbury.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cannon |first1=Christopher |title=The Myth of Origin and the Making of Chaucer's English |journal=Speculum |date=1996 |volume=71 |issue=3 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |pages=646–675 |doi=10.2307/2865797 |jstor=2865797 |s2cid=161798842 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2865797}}</ref>}}
The poet [[Thomas Hoccleve]], who may have met Chaucer and considered him his role model, hailed Chaucer as "the firste fyndere of our fair langage".<ref>Thomas Hoccleve, ''The Regiment of Princes'', ''TEAMS'' website, [http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/hoccfrm.htm University of Rochester, Robbins Library]</ref> [[John Lydgate]] referred to Chaucer within his own text ''The Fall of Princes'' as the "lodesterre (guiding principle) … off our language".<ref>As noted by Carolyn Collette in "Fifteenth Century Chaucer", an essay published in the book ''A Companion to Chaucer'' {{ISBN|0-631-23590-6}}</ref> Around two centuries later, Sir [[Philip Sidney]] greatly praised ''Troilus and Criseyde'' in his own ''Defence of Poesie''.<ref>"Chawcer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and Creseid: of whome trulie I knowe not whether to mervaile more, either that hee in that mistie time could see so clearly, or that wee in this cleare age, goe so stumblingly after him." The text can be found at [http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/defence.html uoregon.edu]</ref> During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Chaucer came to be viewed as a symbol of the nation's poetic heritage.<ref>Richard Utz, "Chaucer among the Victorians", ''Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism'', ed. Joanna Parker and Corinna Wagner (Oxford: OUP, 2020): pp. 189–201.</ref>

In [[Charles Dickens]]' 1850 novel ''David Copperfield'', the Victorian era author echoed Chaucer's use of [[Luke 23:34]] from ''Troilus and Criseyde'' (Dickens held a copy in his library among other works of Chaucer), with [[G. K. Chesterton]] writing, "among the great [[Gospel#Canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John|canonical]] English authors, Chaucer and Dickens have the most in common."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Besserman |first1=Lawrence |title=The Chaucer Review |date=2006 |publisher=Penn State University Press |pages=100–103 |url=https://www.academia.edu/20310557}}</ref>