Peter Brown & Jan Čermák 
England and Bohemia in the Age of Chaucer 

New essays examining Bohemia as a key European context for understanding Chaucer’s poetry.


Chaucer never went to Bohemia but Bohemia came to him when, in 1382, King Richard II of England married Anne, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV. Charles’s splendid court in Prague was renowned across Europe for its patronage of literature, art and architecture, and Anne and her entourage brought with them some of its glamour and allure – their fashions, extravagance and behaviour provoking comment from English chroniclers. For Chaucer, a poet and diplomat affiliated to Richard’s court, Anne was more muse than patron, her influence embedded in a range of his works, including the
Parliament of Fowls,
Troilus and Criseyde, the
Legend of Good Women and
Canterbury Tales.


This volume shows Bohemia to be a key European context, alongside France and Italy, for understanding Chaucer’s poetry, providing a wide perspective on the nature of cultural exchange between England and Bohemia in the later fourteenth century. The contributors consider such matters as court culture and politics, the writings of Richard Rolle, artistic style, Troy stories, historiographic writing and travel narrative; they highlight the debt Chaucer owed to Bohemian culture, and the affinities between English and Bohemian literary production, whether in the use of Petrarch’s tale of Griselde, the iconography of the tapster figure, or satires on the Passion of Christ.

Innehållsförteckning

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction, Peter Brown and Jan Čermák

Lines of Communication

1: Richard II, Queen Anne, Bohemia: Marriage, Culture and Politics

Michael Bennett

2: Recommended Reading: Richard Rolle in Bohemia

Michael Van Dussen

3: The Golden Book of the Knight Wenceslas: Travelling, Piety and Diplomacy in Late-Medieval Europe

Marek Suchý

Cultural Analogues

4: Making Sense of the Past: Czech and English Vernacular: Histories in the Fourteenth Century

Helena Znojemská

5: Beyond Nations: Translating Troy in the Middle Ages

Venetia Bridges

6: Mock Passions in England and Bohemia

Lucie Doležalová

7: The Evil Tale of Evil Briselda: Griselda’s Wicked Counterpart

Klára Petříková

8: The Image of the Tapster in England and Bohemia

Jan Dienstbier

9: Bohemian and English Painting in the Last Decades of the Fourteenth Century: Tracing the Bohemian Influence

Lenka Panušková

Rethinking Queen Anne

10: Contextualizing the
Legend of Good Women: Some Possible Bohemian Perspectives

Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards

11: Humility and Empire: Anne of Bohemia, Chaucer and the Virgin Mary

David Wallace

General Bibliography

Index

Om författaren

A. S. G. Edwards is Honorary Professor of Medieval Manuscripts at the University of Kent at Canterbury.