What Is the Meaning of Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars?"
- Author / Editor
- Williams, George.
What Is the Meaning of Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars?"
- Published
- Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57.2 (1958): 167-76.
- Description
- Considers Mars "as an exercise in describing human action and emotion in terms of a supposed astronomical event," with the planet/pagan god representing John of Gaunt in his affair with Katharine Swynford (Venus), Mercury representing Chaucer himself, and Phoebus, William Courtenay, Bishop of London. Suggests several onomastic puns and allusions to contemporary events to help date the occasion of the poem as "between April 12 and June 8, 1376.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Complaint of Mars
Chaucer's Life