'Sely Dido': A Good Woman's Fame

Author / Editor
Ruff, Nancy K.

Title
'Sely Dido': A Good Woman's Fame

Published
Classical and Modern Literature 12 (1991): 59-68.

Description
Chaucer's ironic treatment of the Dido legend in LGW and HF involves a naive narrator who erroneously sympathizes with Dido; a medieval audience would have recognized differences from the treatment of Dido in Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides. Chaucer signals the reader to question the written word and reveals a mistrust of poetic fiction.

Chaucer Subjects
Legend of Good Women.