Synopsis
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" and"The 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.
Booknews
Examines Chaucer's re-contextualizing of story and the ways in which he re-tailors old texts into new apparel. After a polemical introduction, five chapters reveal Chaucer confronting the implications of Nominalism and Realism to translation in his . The next four chapters consider "borrowings" from old texts which are put to modern use in Chaucer's stories. A final chapter sums up Chaucer's style of translation with a look at two translations from Petrarch. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.