Geoffrey Chaucer first linked Valentine’s Day with romantic love in his poem Parlement of Foules, commonly modernized as Parliament of Fowls. The fourteenth-century dream vision describes birds gathering on Saint Valentine’s Day to choose their mates.
The poem is usually dated to around 1381–1382 and contains roughly 700 lines. Nature presides over a comic parliament in which three male eagles compete for one female eagle, while the other birds debate love, choice, and social order. The female eagle ultimately asks for another year before deciding.
Chaucer’s poem provides the earliest recorded association between Saint Valentine’s Day and romantic love, according to influential literary scholarship. It is therefore often credited with helping create the holiday’s romantic meaning rather than merely recording an already-established tradition.
The claim should not be oversimplified. Scholars debate which Valentine feast Chaucer meant and note that other poets wrote about birds pairing around the same period. Even so, Chaucer is the standard answer because his poem is the earliest well-known surviving literary link.