Chaucer's May 3 and Its Contexts

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

Title
Chaucer's May 3 and Its Contexts

Published
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 155-98.

Description
Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited intellectual autobiography" of Chaucer, perhaps because he associated the date with the signing of the Treaty of Brétigny on this day in 1360 when England lost its military advantage over France.

Contributor
Cox, Robert C.

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

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde
Knight and His Tale
Nun's Priest and His Tale
Chaucer's Life