Chaucer and the Medieval Latin Poets. . Part B: The Satiric Tradition

Published: Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 172-83.

Description: Argues that medieval Latin satiric writers such as Nigel of Longchamps and Walter of Châtillon contributed to the "essential nature" of Chaucer's "poetic imagination." In WBP, NPT, and elsewhere, Chaucer capitalizes on the satiric potential involved in presenting different interpretations in differing contexts, and thereby evoking a sense--as Goliards do--of the "promiscuity of rhetoric, logic, moralizing, etymologizing, and quoting."

Chaucer Subjects: Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations; Wife of Bath and Her Tale; Nun's Priest and His Tale