But Including This, Here Are At Least Seven Different Themes Borrowed From Marco Polo's Book, On Which To Be Sure His Poetical Contemporary Plays The Most Extraordinary Variations.

[Sidenote: Chaucer and Marco Polo.]

[78 bis. - In the third volume of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Oxford, 1894, the Rev. Walter W. Skeat gives (pp. 372 seqq.) an Account of the Sources of the Canterbury Tales. Regarding The Squieres Tales, he says that one of his sources was the Travels of Marco; Mr. Keighley in his Tales and Popular Fictions, published in 1834, at p. 76, distinctly derives Chaucer's Tale from the travels of Marco Polo. (Skeat, l. c., p. 463, note.) I cannot quote all the arguments given by the Rev. W. W. Skeat to support his theory, pp. 463-477.

Regarding the opinion of Professor Skeat of Chaucer's indebtedness to Marco Polo, cf. Marco Polo and the Squire's Tale, by Professor John Matthews Manly, vol. xi. of the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1896, pp. 349-362. Mr. Manly says (p. 360): "It seems clear, upon reviewing the whole problem, that if Chaucer used Marco Polo's narrative, he either carelessly or intentionally confused all the features of the setting that could possibly be confused, and retained not a single really characteristic trait of any person, place or event. It is only by twisting everything that any part of Chaucer's story can be brought into relation with any part of Polo's. To do this might be allowable, if any rational explanation could be given for Chaucer's supposed treatment of his 'author,' or if there were any scarcity of sources from which Chaucer might have obtained as much information about Tartary as he seems really to have possessed; but such an explanation would be difficult to devise, and there is no such scarcity.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 354 of 1256
Words from 96690 to 96996 of 342071