ONLY a fortunate few in medieval Europe can have escaped experiencing the physical facts of war, its dangers and privations, and the psychological corollary – the fear and anticipation of war, the pains of grief, and the social dislocation which resulted from war. Armed conflict in its diverse manifestations was an anticipated trial of medieval life, and one could expect that medieval literature would be replete with images of warfare. It is the more striking, then, that the extensive poetic oeuvre of Geoffrey Chaucer's work is notable for the infrequency of the appearance of feats of arms and scenes of chivalric prowess. That a poet so conscious of his relationship to the ‘authoritative’ literature of the past should choose not to drink from so major a fountain-head of themes and styles from the Epic, Tragic and Romance traditions demands explanation. In justifying the writing of a book entitled Chaucer and War, Pratt ventures the claim:

It proves impossible, however, to read Chaucer's works as mirrors of the violence of his times, or as commentary either on specific conflicts or on the nature of war itself. Chaucer's refusal to use the stock tropes of literary heroism as foundation stones of his narrative, or even as garnish, proves to be a key strategy in revealing both his awareness of the centrality of the ideology of war in the perpetuation of the aristocratic culture of his day, and his need to evade the expectations this imposed on him as a writer.