#  Portrait of Chaucer 

 



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This celebrated portrait of Chaucer occurs in the manuscript at the beginning of the Melibee (with Sir Thopas apparently taken as a kind of prologue to the prose tale). The obvious lack of proportion between the figure of Chaucer and the horse may be due to the use of a tracing of some earlier model. One might compare this portrait to the next earliest, that in Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes [click here](/hoccleve-portrait-chaucer)) and to the Harvard Portrait, which is much later [(click here)](/harvard-portrait). See Derek Pearsall, Chaucer, for a discussion of all the early portraits of Chaucer.