True Colors: The Significance of Machaut's and Chaucer's Use of Blue to Represent Fidelity.

Author / Editor
Strakhov, Elizaveta.

Title
True Colors: The Significance of Machaut's and Chaucer's Use of Blue to Represent Fidelity.

Published
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 139-64.

Description
Considers Machaut's and Chaucer's uses of blue and green symbolism in relation to late medieval "armorial bearings disputes" to investigate the poets' concern with "issues surrounding the legibility of identity." Comments on color symbolism in SqT, Anel, and Wom Unc; examines Chaucer's disposition in the Scrope v. Grosvenor heraldic trial and related legal materials; and analyzes HF for the ways Fame's court reveals Chaucer's distrust of "fundamentally fallible external sign[s]" and the contingencies of public identity, also evident in Machaut's works.

Alternative Title
Machaut's Legacy

Chaucer Subjects
House of Fame
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Chaucer's Life
Squire and His Tale
Anelida and Arcite
Against Women Unconstant