Mercury, Argus, and Chaucer's Arcite: "Canterbury Tales" I(A) 1384-90.

Author / Editor
Hoffman, Richard L.

Title
Mercury, Argus, and Chaucer's Arcite: "Canterbury Tales" I(A) 1384-90.

Published
Notes and Queries 210 (1965): 129-29.

Description
Reinforces previous arguments that the immediate source of Chaucer's description of "Mercury the slayer of Argus" in KnT is Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 1.671-72, adding that, like Argus, Arcite finds death by listening to the "persuasive and deceitful words of the god of eloquence."

Chaucer Subjects
Knight and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations