Chaucer and the Latin Classics

Author / Editor
Harbert, Bruce.

Title
Chaucer and the Latin Classics

Published
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 137-53.

Description
Clarifies various difficulties in determining "how much classical Latin literature" Chaucer knew and details his relative familiarity with works by Cicero, Livy, Cato, Lucan, Statius, Claudian, Virgil, and Ovid. Chaucer was little influenced by moralized versions, but his occasional errors, samples of his "weak poetry," and his uses of translational aids indicate that he was a middling Latinist. Comments on many works and includes sustained consideration of Chaucer's adaptations of Ovid in the Dido and Aeneas story of LGW.

Alternative Title
Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background.

Chaucer Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Language and Word Studies