The Politics of Chaucer's Boece
By focusing on the historicity and politics of translation, I discuss in this paper the political motive and functions of The Boece, Chaucer's translation from Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophiae. After examining the political implications of Boethius's work, I argue that the Latin source provides an insight into the nature of royal power, especially its perversion into tyranny. From the investigation of the history and politics in the early 1380s when the young Richard began to establish his sovereignty firmly, I suggest an educational motive of Chaucer's Boece for the king: the translation might have been aimed at giving the young king lessons about what constitutes a tyrant, thus warning him of the vices and dangers of aggregating excessive governing power. I also suggest that, during the period from the mid-1380s to 1399 when the king became more and more tyrannical, The Boece may have had potential resonance with the concerns of the king's opponents, his magnates, about the misuse of royal power. I conclude with the observation that, contrary to Chaucer's expectations of diverting the king from the dangerous road of excessive power, his Boece could have served as one of the tools of attack for the magnates to confront, and eventually depose, Richard Ⅱ.
Shaping The Nation: England, 1360-1461
PART 1: POLITICAL SOCIETY PART 2: WORK AND WORSHIP PART 3: MEN AND EVENTS CONCLUSION: THE EMERGING NATION
Byron: Augustan and Romantic
The impact of Byron's writings - an evaluative approach, William St Clair "My brain is feminine" - Byron and the poetry of deception, Jerome J. McGann Byron and the romantic heroine, Malcolm Kelsall Byron and the Empire in the East, Marilyn Butler Byron Augustan - mutations of mock-heroic in "Don Juan" and Shelley's "Peter Bell the Third", Claude Rawson continuities and discontinuities of language and voice in Dryden, Pope, and Byron, Bernard Beatty Augustan satires and Panegyrics on London and Byron's image of the city, Michael Gassermeier Byron, Pope, and the Grand Tour, Michael G. Cooke Byron in Italy - the return of Augustus, Donald H. Reiman "Don Juan" transformed, Anne Barton Byron's "Wrong Revolutionary System" and romanticism, Hermann Fischer the quintessential Byron, Leslie A. Marchand.