Chaucer wrote a number of works that were directly influenced or inspired by Greek mythology. These include short poems like “Complaint of Mars” and “Complaint of Venus” as well as longer ones, like “Troilus and Cressida” and “Anelida and Arcite.” Even in his most famous work, The Canterbury Tales, there is a direct link to ancient Greece, with the Knight’s tale telling the story of Theseus, king of Athens in Greek mythology. This paper will discuss how stories of gods, legends, and traditions of ancient Greece greatly influenced English writer and poet Geoffrey Chaucer.
Greek mythology had captured the imaginations of people in the West for centuries. The Romans were so enamored of Greek mythology that they essentially adopted the Greek beliefs as their own, Latinized them (gave them Roman names to replace the Greek ones), and built their own altars and shrines and temples honoring them. Jupiter and Zeus, Mars and Ares, Athena and Minerva—they are the same gods and goddesses, just with different names. As Christianity took over the West falling the fall of pagan Rome, the Christian beliefs took root throughout the West. The old myths died until humanism brought them back during the High Renaissance (Panofsky). Chaucer was inspired by the Italian poet Boccaccio, who was greatly influenced by the humanism of the time and the return of artists to their Western, pre-Christian roots: the old myths of Greece. Chaucer thus used these myths that were very popular at the time that he was writing to inspire and serve as the basis for many of his own poems and stories. He was influenced by them because many artists in the West were being influenced by them at the end of the Renaissance (Storm).
One of the best examples of this Greek influence is in “The Knight’s Tale,” in which the character of the tale of two knights named Palamon and Arcite are friends who fall out with one another over a Grecian woman named Emily. Emily is the is the sister in law of Theseus, duke of Athens, and a predominant character in many ancient Greek dramas and legends. The two knights are enemy combatants of Theseus in his war with Creon; they are caught and imprisoned. They then see Emily from their cells...
Works Cited
Arner, Timothy D. “Chaucer's second Hector: the triumphs of Diomede and the possibility of epic in Troilus and Criseyde.” Medium Aevum 79.1, (2010), 68.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/teachslf/kt-par2.htm
Panofsky, Erwin, and Fritz Saxl. “Classical mythology in mediaeval art.” Metropolitan Museum Studies 4.2 (1933): 228-280.
Storm, Melvin. “The Mythological Tradition in Chaucer’s” Complaint of Mars”.” Philological Quarterly 57.3 (1978): 323.
Weever, Jacqueline de. "Chaucer's Moon: Cinthia, Diana, Latona, Lucina, Proserpina." Names 34.2 (1986): 154-174.
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