"Chaucer has not lacked for biographies, but Marion Turner’s is of a rare ambition and competence. Its method is geographical, even topographical, approaching the poet’s life by way of the disparate places he spent his time, in body & in imagination."
Conversation
"How useful is the idea of “Europe” in a study of the 14thC? Not very, actually. In all his writings, Chaucer used the word “Europe” only twice. In both instances he was evoking the legendary geography [wherein] Europe is the third of the world repopulated by Noah’s son Japheth."
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"Vernacularization was to poetry what Thomism had been to theology: an adventurous attempt to reconcile the wisdom of the Ancients to the revelation of the Incarnation, to adapt the classical inheritance to the needs of a Christian society."
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"Chaucer’s first portrait, that of an ideal knight, tells us the knight loves 5 things: chivalrie, trouthe, honour, fredom, and curteisie. All these words exist in contemporary English with slight orthographic variation; but not a single one of them means what you think it does."
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Replying to
we need a Chaucer scholar to clarify!
or wade through the work of many scholars compiled here --> sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/gloss
fascinating stuff
e.g.
*treu-love = four-leafed sprig of herb Paris
*tristicia = excessive sadness!
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