John O'Toole (producer) in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956. O’Toole was the CEO of the Washington, D.C. -based production company, Eli Productions, for over 20 years. He wrote and produced documentaries, TV shows, and radio series on topics that included the arts and the aging process, many of which aired on NBC, CBS, and public television and radio. His work earned him a Writers Fellowship by The National Endowment for the Arts. In 1979, he wrote a TV miniseries adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's "Leatherstocking Tales", which aired on PBS and earned an Outstanding Writer Emmy nod. He also did
The Canterbury Tales that the greatest contribution of "The Canterbury Tales" to English literature was the popularisation of the English vernacular in mainstream literature, as opposed to French, Italian or Latin. English had, however, been used as a literary language centuries before Chaucer's time, and several of Chaucer's contemporaries—John Gower, William Langland, the Pearl Poet, and Julian of Norwich—also wrote major literary works in English. It is unclear to what extent Chaucer was seminal in this evolution of literary preference. While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems, the intended audience of "The Canterbury Tales" is more difficult to determine.