Latin Annotations in a Copy of Stowe's Chaucer and the Seventeenth-Century Reception of Troilus and Criseyde

Abstract

A set of newly discovered, seventeenth-century Latin annotations in a copy of John Stowe's 1561 Chaucer edition (Stanford University Library KC 1561. c4 f) augments our understanding of the reception of Troilus and Criseyde during that time. This article dates and identifies these annotations as quotations from Virgil and Seneca, and it explains their significance in the contemporary contexts of Chaucer reception: in particular, the growing association of Chaucer with writers of classical antiquity, the idioms of Jacobean drama, and the ways in which other copies of Chaucer editions were annotated in the period.