First full study of Chaucer’s readings and translations of Petrarch suggests a far greater influence than has hitherto been accepted.
Despite the fact that Chaucer introduced Petrarch’s work into England in the late fourteenth century, Petrarch’s influence has been very little studied. This book, the first full-length study of Chaucer’s reading and translation of Petrarch, examines Chaucer’s translations of Petrarch’s Latin prose and Italian poetry against the backdrop of his experience of Italy, gained through his travels there in the 1370s, his interaction with Italians in London, andhis reading of the other two great Italian medieval poets, Boccaccio and Dante. The book also considers Chaucer’s engagement with early Italian humanism and the nature of translation in the fourteenth century, including a preliminary examination of adaptations of Chaucer’s pronouncements upon translation and literary production. Chaucer’s adaptations of Petrarch’s Latin tale of Griselda and the sonnet ‘S’amor non è’, as the
Clerk’s Tale and the ‘Canticus Troili’ from
Troilus and Criseyde respectively, illustrate his various translative strategies. Furthermore, Chaucer’s references to Petrarch in his prologue to the
Clerk’s Tale and in the
Monk’s Tale provide a means of gauging the intellectual relationship between two of the most important poets of the time.
WILLIAM T. ROSSITER is Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, University of East Anglia.
Table of Content
Introduction: Forms of
Translatio
Father of English Poetry, Father of Humanism: When Chaucer ‘met’ Petrarch
‘The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen’: Petrarchan Inversions in Chaucer’s
Filostrato
‘But if that I consente’: The First English Sonnet
‘Mutata veste’: Griselda between Boccaccio and Petrarch
‘Of hire array what sholde I make a tale?’: Griselda between Petrarch and Chaucer
Conclusion: ‘translacions and enditynges’
Bibliography
About the author
WILLIAM ROSSITER Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, University of East Anglia.
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