Chaucer's Arthuriana

Abstract

I trace Chaucer's increasingly complex use of the Arthurian legend. In his early dream visions, Chaucer mirrors his Italian and French sources; however, his Arthurian allusions diverges from his predecessors to reflect the negative attitude found in fourteenth-century England towards the Arthurian myth. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer is indebted to the French tradition; he models Troilus on Lancelot. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer explores how the Arthurian legend permeates contemporary English society, critiquing both the clergy, who cite the legend's lack of morality, and the aristocracy, who use the legend to establish a superficial superiority. Through his invocation of the popular figure of Gawain in The Tale of Sir Thopas and The Wife of Bath's Tale, Chaucer criticizes his fellow romance writers in the former tale and offers an Arthurian tale from the mouth of one of the female pilgrims in the latter. The Wife of Bath rejects the traditional glorification of Gawain in order to recast him as a nameless rapist, stripped of his famous name as punishment for his transgression of female sovereignty.