A Virgilian Source for Chaucer's 'White Bole'
- Author / Editor
- Clayton, Margaret.
A Virgilian Source for Chaucer's 'White Bole'
- Published
- Notes and Queries 224 (1979): 103-04.
- Description
- In the astrological setting of TC (2.54-55), Chaucer refers to Taurus as a "white Bole." The epithet probably came from Virgil (Georgics, I, 217-18), perhaps through the intermediary of Macrobius' "Commentary on the Dream of Scipio." It is suggested that it was "to Chaucer an obvious symbol for that in human behavior which is apparently attractive but actually ugly and destructive, specifically, unrestrained indulgence of sexual desire."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.