"What Bach and Beethoven are to music, Chaucer and Shakespeare are to English poetry."
"Shakespeare was a towering romantic genius,....
Chaucer on the other hand, was a sort of medieval, well-tempered Bach."
Some writers major on emotion, while others place the mind ahead of everything. The best poets and writers in general combine the two in the necessary balance for the work, cheating neither feeling nor thought.
The Life and Times of Chaucer by John Gardner, Alfred A. Knopf, 1977
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