Virgil in Medieval England - Figuring the Aeneid From the Twelfth Century to Chaucer

Klappentext What happens when a prestigious text of one period is read and reused in a different! much later world? What can we learn from the annotations accumulated by a single manuscript as it moved among different institutions and readerships? In this study Christopher Baswell takes as his model Virgil's ancient epic poem The Aeneid! which held many kinds of appeal for the culture of the Middle Ages. He examines a series of Latin manuscripts of the text which were copied in twelfth-century England but reused and reannotated for three centuries! and shows how their users approached the epic in very different ways. He then charts the progression from the Latin of the original to the vernaculars of the Roman d'Eneas and Chaucer's House of Fame and Legend of Good Women! to show how medieval vernacular poets used Virgil's prestige to lay their own claim to poetic and even political authority. Zusammenfassung Taking as its model Virgil's Aeneid! this study examines the impact on medieval culture of an ancient text! through both its manuscript annotations and its reincarnation in vernacular versions such as the Roman d'Eneas and Chaucer's House of Fame. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction: manuscripts and their contexts; 1. Auctor to Auctoritas: modes of access to Virgil in medieval England; 2. Pedagogical exegesis of Virgil in medieval England: Oxford All Souls College 82; 3. Spiritual allegory, platonising cosmology, and the Boethian Aeneid in medieval England: Cambridge, Peterhouse College, 158; 4. Moral allegory and the Aeneid in the time of Chaucer: London, BL Additional 27304; 5. The romance Aeneid; 6. Writing the reading of Virgil: Chaucerian authorities in the House of Fame and the Legend of Good Women; Conclusion; Apendices; Notes; Bibliography, Indexes.

Product details

• Authors: Christopher Baswell, Christopher (Barnard College Baswell, Baswell Christopher
• Assisted by: Patrick Boyde (Editor), Alastair Minnis (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 22.06.2006
• EAN: 9780521027083
• ISBN: 978-0-521-02708-3
• No. of pages: 460
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Medieval; Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; English, LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry, LITERARY CRITICISM / Ancient & Classical, Literary studies: classical, early & medieval, Literary studies: poetry & poets, Literary studies: ancient, classical and medieval, Literary studies: poetry and poets