Chaucer Translator

by Taylor, Paul Beekman

• ISBN13: 9780761809647
• ISBN10: 0761809643
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-12-11
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

This book argues that Chaucer's theory of translation is based upon particular hermeneutic procedures of the day applied to the authoritative literary texts in the European cultural tradition. These texts encompass the European tradition extending from Plato through Christian humanism and Jean de Meun to Italian and French contemporaries. The work displays Chaucer's development as a translator from early attempts to render contemporary French poetry in an English courtly idiom to the later masterly translations in Troilus andThe Canterbury Tales. The later translations disdain mirroring Latin and vernacular texts with English and instead read through the surface of a literary source to a sense Chaucer "discovers" or "invents". Throughout the book, emphasis is placed on Chaucer's sensitivity to the poetic possibilities in the polysemy of the English language.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Chaucer's Strategies of Translation	p. 1
Genesis and Apocalypsis: Zephirus and the Canon's Yeoman's Breath	p. 19
Translating Spiritual to Corporeal in the Dusk of the Miller's Tale	p. 39
Timothy, Jeremiah and Chaucer's Parson	p. 51
Translating Thought Into Word and Deed: From Plato and Jean de Meun	p. 67
Augustine, Boccaccio and Chaucer's Pardoner	p. 87
Redressing Nero's Array	p. 105
Translating the Latin Muses	p. 119
Seeing through the Eye of the Lynx	p. 143
Translating Two Guillaumes	p. 155
Chaucer's Games With His Names	p. 171
Translating Petrarch By Loving Criseyde and Killing Grisilde	p. 179
Bibliography	p. 191
Index	p. 203
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