JOHN M. FYLER. Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun.

Abstract

In this stimulating book, Professor Fyler seeks to explore the ways in which Chaucer, Dante and Jean de Meun come to terms with the question of the origins of language and its decline since the Fall of Man. The book sets up the intellectual traditions surrounding such questions in its first chapter, ‘The Biblical history of language’. This dense chapter moves in and out of a long and rich medieval tradition of commentary on the first eleven chapters of Genesis, with particular attention being paid to the creation of man, the parallel genealogies of Cain and Seth, the Tower of Babel and the figure of Nimrod. These observations are then set beside the tropological parallel of Pentecost. While the array of sources referred to is at times dizzying, the commentators’ dependence on Augustine is often highlighted. The latter emerges as the commentator who provides the fullest and most powerful reading of language and the Fall.