Until very recently, Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the famous Canterbury Tales, was considered the sole father of English literature, to the detriment of his immediate successors, in particular Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate, who were among the first to praise him for their own legitimization. This article considers the modalities of this literary succession and its failure, as well as the monumentalization of Chaucer at the end of the 15th century.