Chaucer's St. Valentine: A Conjecture

Author / Editor
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.

Title
Chaucer's St. Valentine: A Conjecture

Published
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 108-45.

Description
Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'OrleĢans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and fertility, in the Christian holyday of Candlemas, and in legends of St. Valentine as "patron saint of the natural world," Chaucer's poem is indebted to Grandson's "Songe St. Valentin," although he "restored" Valentine's more direct association with nature.

Contributor
Cox, Robert C.

Alternative Title
Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Parliament of Fowls
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations