Chaucer's English Lesson

Abstract

Pound was right. Chaucer basically took over his art from the and, of course, the Italians.2 Having spoken French at the court, having written (possibly) his first poems in that language, and having traveled to such places as Navarre, Rhethel, Florence, and Milan, he imbibed European culture and learned a truly international lesson about vernacular writing.3 But does Chaucer the prose translator display the same lesson? Take the case of Boece. That Chaucer chose to use Jean de Meun's Livres de confort de Philosophie as a trot for his own version means that he understood the relevance of French translation to English practice. But he departed from his source in an important and surprising way: he omitted a translator's prologue.4 Unlike most translators, who in prologues explain the circumstances of production and reception, Chaucer forgoes detailing what some critics see as the clearly perceived need to make Boece available to his contemporaries. ' He would not even adapt Jean's prologue, despite a sufficient precedent to do so: Jean himself had translated portions of a prologue by William of Ara-