Assess Chaucer's contribution to English poetry.

Chaucer is
sometimes referred to as the "father of English poetry." Part of the reason for this
is that he was writing in Middle English and his work marks a major transition between the
scanty remnants we have of Anglo-Saxon epic and early religious poetry and the development of a
modern English poetic corpus. 

Perhaps Chaucer's most important achievement
was his role in the formation of the English vernacular as a tool for poetry. Most of the
English poets in his period wrote in French or Latin for court or ecclesiastical audiences. In
contrast, Chaucer wrote in English, which was accessible to a wider audience. His subject
matter, too, while it included courtly romance, also often dealt with the ordinary lives of the
bourgeois. In The Canterbury Tales, for example, among his pilgrims are
many commoners, who are described in an unusually realistic manner.

Chaucer
is also a key figure in the development and regularization of iambic pentameter as the standard
meter for English poetry. He was especially important for using accentual syllabic verse that
blended the strong stress tradition of Old English with French accentual
meter.