You are looking at 1-20 of 94 entries
Achātēs
Character in mythology, faithful lieutenant of Aeneas in the Aeneid; a late source ascribes to him the killing of Protesilaus (Eustathius Ad Iliadem 2. 701).T. Weber, Fidus Achates (1988).[...]
Aeneid
An epic poem in Latin hexameters by Virgil, recounting the adventures of Aeneas after the fall of Troy.
Aleyn
Referred to in The Parliament of Fowls (316ff.), is Alan of Lille or Alanus de Insulis (c.1120–1202/3), a famous master of the schools of Paris whose Latin writings, imbued with ...
Anchises
In Greek legend, the ruler of Dardanus and father of Aeneas; according to the Aeneid, when Troy fell he was carried out of the burning ruins on his son's shoulders.
Aragon
An autonomous region of NE Spain, bounded on the north by the Pyrenees and on the east by Catalonia and Valencia; capital, Saragossa. Formerly an independent kingdom, which was conquered in the 5th ...
Arionis harpe
The constellation Lyra. In The House of Fame, the constellation is so mentioned, while in the following book the harper ‘Orion’ is named, suggesting that Chaucer believed the constellation Orion ...
art
This word (L. ars) is sometimes used in unfamiliar ways in medieval English. It can mean skill, or art as against nature (cf. V.197)—as in Dr Johnson's example ‘to walk ...
Ascanius
In literature and myth, son of Aeneas. He appears in the Aeneas‐legend by the 5th cent. bc, at first as one of several sons of Aeneas. The gens Iūlia claimed him as eponymous founder with an ...
Atiteris
Appears among the pipers and minstrels in The House of Fame (1227). The name is often explained as a corruption of Virgil's Tityrus, the shepherd-singer of the first Eclogue. But ...
auctour and auctoritee
(L. auctor and auctoritas). The ME words can mean respectively ‘creator, originator’ as well as ‘author’, and ‘authority’ in its legal, political, and ecclesiastical senses. However, when used of ...
Ballenus
Belinous or Belenos (Balanus), a disciple of Hermes Trismegistus, appears among the magicians in The House of Fame (1273). He is said to have discovered underneath a statue of Hermes a book which ...
Bere
Constellation of the (Greater) Bear, Ursa Major, or the brightest star in it. The name probably has a prehistoric ancestry, and the tradition that ‘the Wain’ is a vulgar alternative ...
bird
A class (Aves) of endothermic (see endotherm) vertebrates that are adapted for flight, bipedal walking or running, and, in some species, swimming on or below the surface of water; flightless species ...
Boccaccio
(1313–75),Italian writer, poet, and humanist. He is most famous for the Decameron (1348–58), a collection of a hundred tales told by ten young people who have moved to the country to escape the Black ...
Breseyda
A Trojan girl captured by Achilles, taken from him by Agamemnon. The story is told in the Iliad, but Chaucer knew it from Ovid's Heroides (3) and from Benoît de ...
Canon of Chaucer's Works
(see also entries for individual works). It is not always easy to establish the authentic works of a medieval writer. They often exist in MSS copied after the author's death ...
Castor and Pollux
In Greek mythology, the twin sons of Jupiter and Leda and brothers of Helen, the Dioscuri.
Catalonia
Catalonia came into being, like the other Christian principalities of the northern Iberian peninsula, after the Arab-Berber conquest of the 8th century. The expeditions made by the Franks and ...
Chanticleer
The cock in Reynard the Fox, and in Chaucer's ‘The Nun's Priest's Tale’ (see Canterbury Tales, 20) as Chauntecleer.
chronology of Chaucer's works
Because of the paucity of clear contemporary references and the absence of external evidence, the dating of the works is only approximate (for fuller details, see the individual titles). Even ...
