Chaucer and the Tradition of the Roman Antique

This is a detailed investigation of Chaucer's poetics in two of his master works.

Barbara Nolan (Author)

9780521051002, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 February 2008

408 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.4 cm, 0.602 kg

This is a detailed investigation of Chaucer's poetics in Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight's Tale in relation to an important continental narrative tradition. It is the first such wide-ranging study since Charles Muscatine's seminal Chaucer and the French Tradition and the first book to argue in detail that Chaucer's poems, Boccaccio's Filostrato and Teseida and the twelfth-century French romans antiques participate in a distinct formal tradition within the protean field of medieval romance. By close examination of the formal and ethical designs of each poem, Barbara Nolan explores both the compositional practices shared by all of the poets she discusses, and their calculated differences from each other. Her analysis culminates in a full examination of Chaucer's richly original response to the continental verse narratives from which he borrowed. No other study offers so full and careful a delineation of the compositional features that distinguish the roman antique from other forms of romance in the Middle Ages.

Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction
1. Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie and the compositional practices of the roman antique
2. Plaits, debates, and judgments in the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman de Troie and the Roman d'Eneas
3. The poetics of fine amor in the French romans antiques
4. From history into fiction: Boccaccio's Filostrato and the question of foolish love
5. Boccaccio's Teseida and the triumph of Aristotelian virtue
6. Saving the poetry: authors, translators, texts, and readers in Chaucer's Book of Troilus and Criseyde
7. The consolation of Stoic virtue: Chaucer's Knight's Tale and the tradition of the roman antique
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]