How did Geoffrey Chaucer’s verse help develop the heroic couplet?

Geoffrey Chaucer was the first poet to make extensive use of the heroic couplet in English literature during the 14th century, effectively establishing it as a foundational form in English prosody.12

Chaucer’s contribution centered on his development of a 10-syllable line with alternating accents and regular end rhyme, which served as the direct ancestor to the later, more formalized heroic couplet. In The Canterbury Tales, he employed iambic pentameter—a line consisting of five metrical feet, each featuring an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one—to create a rhythmic structure that would eventually become the predominant meter in English verse.34

While Chaucer’s early use of the form lacked the strict regularity and rhetorical precision later perfected by poets such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope, his work was instrumental in popularizing the meter. By integrating these rhyming pairs into his narratives, Chaucer provided the essential framework that allowed the heroic couplet to evolve into the preeminent English verse form.432