Geoffrey Chaucer — "A man may do no synne but if he wole."
A man may do no synne but if he wole.
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More from Geoffrey Chaucer
"Wel koude he rede a lessoun or a storie, / But al above that he koude singe."
"He knew the tavernes wel in every toun / And every hostiler and tappestere / Bet than a lazar or a beggestere."
"He was a Reve, and a sclendre colerik man. His berd was shave as ny as ever he kan."
"And in a word, she was a right good creature."
"In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon / That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon."
About Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
English poet, civil servant, and the father of English literature; The Canterbury Tales (~1387-1400) is the founding text of English-language storytelling. Closely associated with Giovanni Boccaccio (his Italian predecessor; the Decameron preceded the Canterbury Tales by ~40 years). For an intellectual contrast, see John Wycliffe, English theologian and Lollard reform-movement leader — Wycliffe and Chaucer were near-contemporaries in the same English Christian world — Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Pardoner are the canonical literary defense of fleshly humanity against the Lollard moral austerity that would later become English Puritanism. Earthy storytelling vs proto-Protestant moralism.