The Earthly Paradise is William Morris's homage to Geoffrey Chaucer. After the success of his The Life and Death of Jason (1867), Morris channeled much of his artistic energy into writing poetry. He had been discouraged by the poor reception of his first volume of poetry, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858) and consequently turned his attention to the production of visual art and to the establishment of his soon-to-be-successful commercial art firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company. But the urge to write poetry never left him, and he began to formulate a collection of narrative poems that would imitate Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Life and Death of Jason had originally …
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Citation: Boenig, Robert. "The Earthly Paradise". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 October 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1011, accessed 22 November 2024.]
