Chaucer as a poet of transition?

Chaucer is a poet of transition between a conversational
colloquial style and a lofty poetic style.

As Dante and
Petrarch, two poets Chaucer cites throughout the Canterbury Tales, exalted the Italian
language through the refinement of their native Tuscan vernacular, Chaucer enriches
English. He does this first by choosing to engage with English when many of his
contemporaries preferred to write in Latin, and second by borrowing not just plots but
words from other languages, particularly French.

Beyond
this, he is able to navigate the idiomatic language of his pilgrim characters without
debasing his high form. The language is direct, emphatic and immediate, while still
triumphing not just by evoking the literary muses, but also in his high style
particularly in the opening lines of the Prologue.