Dryden Refurbishes Chaucer's Barnyard

Author / Editor
Rowland, Beryl.

Title
Dryden Refurbishes Chaucer's Barnyard

Published
Archiv 217 (1980): 349-54.

Description
The Augustans were the last English poets to possess enough confidence in their own idiom to attempt to make Chaucer their contemporary. Dryden's modernization of Chaucer was intended to achieve verisimilitude for his 17th-century audience. It would surprise him to know that his transformation would require elucidation for 20th-century readers.

Chaucer Subjects
Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.