Mars the Exegete in Chaucer's 'Complaint of Mars'
- Author / Editor
- Dean, James M.
Mars the Exegete in Chaucer's 'Complaint of Mars'
- Published
- Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 128-40.
- Description
- Compares Chaucer's treatment of the Mars and Venus fables with Ovid's and with other medieval versions to demonstrate that Chaucer created Mars as a misguided commentator on his own story. Chaucer's audience, familiar with Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose" and other sources, would have judged that Mars willfully misreads his situation. Nowhere else in Chaucer are the dangers of misapplied exegesis so clearly and painfully exposed.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Complaint of Mars.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.