"Un-English" Chaucer: Macaronic Verse and Codicological Form in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27.

Author / Editor
Behrend, Megan.

Title
"Un-English" Chaucer: Macaronic Verse and Codicological Form in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27.

Published
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 1-43; 6 b&w illus.

Description
Uncouples Chaucer's fifteenth-century reception from "monolingual nationalist ideas of Englishness," focusing on rhetorical and codicological features of two trilingual love lyrics in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27 (Gg): "De amico ad amicam" and "Responcio." Argues that the poems are "integral" to Gg and that their forms and presentation "mobilize the permeability and fungibility of languages in contact," aligning Chaucer with a "multilingual future" rather than monolingual Englishness. Suggests that a Gg illustration may be a Chaucer portrait. Includes comments on the use of French in manuscript copies of PF, and epistolary form in LGW and TC.

Chaucer Subjects
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Chaucerian Apocrypha
Parliament of Fowls
Troilus and Criseyde
Legend of Good Women