Though Petrarch wrote his sonnets about his beloved Laura in Italian, he expected to be remembered for his Latin epic poems. In England during Chaucer's time, Latin was not so much the language of choice as was French. Since the Normans had ruled England for three hundred years, everyone who was anyone spoke and wrote in French. Chaucer's friend and rival, "moral Gower," wrote a treatise in Latin, the
Vox Clamantis (circa 1379-1381), and one in French, the
Mirour de I'Omme (circa 1376-1378), to match his great English work the
Confessio Amantis (circa 1386). Arid so it was not at all assumed that an English writer would write in English, especially not someone in the odd personal circumstances of Chaucer.
We can assume Chaucer was quite comfortable with Latin since he translated Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy into English, and yet we have a suspicion that he did not have John Gower's fluency. For example, we often find him using French translations of Latin texts, the French Livre Griseldis instead of Petrarch's Latin version of the story of Griselda or the Ovide Moralise instead of the Latin Metamorphoses.
This is a free page. This page contains 187 words. This
biography contains 11,782 words (approx. 39 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Geoffrey Chaucer Access Pass.
