Scholars have long investigated the French, Italian, and English influences on the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. However, they have largely neglected the impact of authors and texts from the Iberian Peninsula.<\/p>\n
There are several routes by which Chaucer could have been exposed to Iberian sources. First of all, he\u00a0may have come into direct contact with Spanish and Catalan texts\u00a0during his time in the Iberian Peninsula. In 1366, Chaucer travelled to Castile, receiving a safe conduct from the king of Navarre en route, and he may have been in the Iberian Peninsula for over a year. Some scholars have even hypothesized that Chaucer was at the battle of N\u00e1jera on April 3, 1367, with his future companions Thomas Percy, William Beachamp, John Devereaux, and Guichard d\u2019Angle.<\/p>\n
Chaucer could also have encountered Spanish texts through his connection to John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and one of his principal patrons. In 1372, John of Gaunt married Constance, the oldest surviving child of Pedro I of Castile. This marriage allowed the duke to claim the throne of Castile in the name of his wife following her father\u2019s overthrow and death. It also led to his palace at the Savoy becoming a type of Castilian court in exile. Given his relationship with John of Gaunt, as well as his wife\u2019s position as one of Constance\u2019s attendants from 1372-1387, it is likely that Chaucer would have come into contact with Castilian exiles while visiting the Savoy. Although John of Gaunt was ultimately unsuccessful in gaining a crown for himself, he did arrange for one of his daughters, Philippa, to become queen of Portugal, and another, Catherine, to become queen of Castile.<\/p>\n
Chaucer\u2019s interest in the Iberian Peninsula is clear throughout his work. Chaucer mentions \u201cSpain,\u201d or things Spanish in ten of the stories of the Canterbury Tales<\/em> (Yeager 194-195). Chaucer also mentions Petrus Alfonsi in the Tale of Melibee<\/em>, and he provides a detailed account of Pedro I\u2019s death in the Monk\u2019s Tale<\/em>.<\/p>\n The mention of Alfonsi is particularly evocative because it suggests one possible area of Iberian influence. In the early twelfth century, Alfonsi wrote the Disciplina Clericalis<\/em>, which was the first instance of a frametale \u2013 a popular literary structure in Arabic and Middle Eastern literature that embeds various discrete stories within a larger framing device \u2013 being composed in Latin (Wacks 25). Around a century and a half later, Alfonso X had the Arabic frametale Kalila wa-Dimna<\/em> translated into the Castilian Calila e Digna<\/em>. In the following decades, the frametale became a popular vernacular literary structure in the Iberian Peninsula. For instance, Ramon Llull, Don Juan Manuel, and Juan Ruiz all composed frametales in the early fourteenth century. This development in the Iberian Peninsula may have had an important, although indirect, influence on the composition of Chaucer\u2019s own frametale, the Canterbury Tales<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some scholars have also argued for a more direct influence. John Barker, for instance, argues that the many textual similarities between the Libro de Buen Amor <\/em>and Chaucer\u2019s\u00a0Pardoner\u2019s Tale<\/em> could not have been accidental (609). Although he admits that both texts could have used the same source, Pope Innocent III\u2019s De contemptu mundi sivi de miseria condicionis humane<\/em>, Barker claims that the shared details in both texts \u2013 such as drunkenness, taverns, and gambling \u2013 suggests that the Libro de Buen Amor <\/em>was the immediate source for the Pardoner\u2019s Tale<\/em> (610).<\/p>\n Another scholar, Thomas Garb\u00e1ty, argues that Boccaccio\u2019s Il Filostrato <\/em>was not the only source for Chaucer\u2019s Troilus and Criseyde<\/em> (459). Instead, he posits that Chaucer was also influenced by the twelfth-century Pamphilus de Amore <\/em>and the Libro de Buen Amor<\/em>. In addition to being a re-telling of the story from the Pamphilus, <\/em>Garb\u00e1ty claims that Chaucer\u2019s Criseyde bears a strong resemblance to Juan Ruiz\u2019s Do\u00f1a Endrina, that Pandarus matches the traditional stereotype of a Spanish \u201ctrotaconventos\u201d (a Spanish term for a go-between), and that Boccaccio\u2019s Troilio was far too bold to have been the inspiration for Chaucer\u2019s Troilus (468-469).<\/p>\n Additionally, Eugenio Olivares Merino has shown that Chaucer may have based his account of Pedro I\u2019s death in the Monk\u2019s Tale <\/em>on Pero L\u00f3pez de Ayala\u2019s history of the king (492). In particular, the second stanza includes a clear criticism of Bertrand du Guesclin, which is included by L\u00f3pez de Ayala but not found in contemporary accounts of the event composed in French, Catalan, or Latin.<\/p>\n One final area where Iberian influence may be seen in Chaucer\u2019s work is in his figure of the Pardoner. Among the reasons that the Pardoner is such a fascinating character is that he is a religious figure who is open and unrepentant about his own misdeeds. Although anticlerical literature was fairly common in the Middle Ages, it is difficult to think of another religious narrator who presents himself in such a negative way, except for one: Juan Ruiz\u2019s pseudo-autobiographical narrator of the Libro de Buen Amor, <\/em>the Archpriest of Hita.<\/p>\n Chaucer was not only influenced by French, Italian, and English texts, but also by works coming out of the unique political and cultural milieu of medieval Iberia. One of the most important Iberian contributions was the development and transmission of the frametale literary structure to Europe, first in Latin translations, and eventually in original vernacular compositions. In addition to this indirect influence, however, there are strong arguments suggesting that Chaucer was exposed to and directly influenced by specific Iberian authors and texts, although further study is needed.<\/p>\n Bretton Rodriguez, Ph.D. <\/p>\n WORKS CITED<\/p>\n Barker, John. \u201cInfluencia de la literatura espa\u00f1ola en la literatura inglesa.\u201d Revista de <\/em>cultura y vida universitaria<\/em> 23.4 (1946): 593-610.<\/p>\n Garb\u00e1ty, Thomas. \u201cThe Pamphilus<\/em> Tradition in Ruiz and Chaucer.\u201d Philological Quarterly <\/em>46\u00a0(1967): 457-470.<\/p>\n Olivares Merino, Eugenio. \u201cJuan Ruiz\u2019s Influence on Chaucer Revisited: A Survey.\u201d\u00a0Neophilogus<\/em> 88 (2004): 145-161.<\/p>\n Wacks, David. Framing Iberia: Maqamat and Frametale Narratives in Medieval Spain<\/em>.\u00a0Brill: Leiden. 2007.<\/p>\n Yeager, R.F. \u201cChaucer Translates the Matter of Spain.\u201d In England and Iberia in the <\/em>Middle Ages, 12th<\/sup>-15th<\/sup> Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Exchanges<\/em>. Edited by Mar\u00eda Bull\u00f3n-Fernandez. Palgrave Macmillan: New York (2007): 189-215.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scholars have long investigated the French, Italian, and English influences on the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. However, they have largely neglected the impact of authors and texts from the Iberian Peninsula. There are several routes by which Chaucer could have been exposed to Iberian sources. First of all, he\u00a0may have come into direct contact with … <\/p>\n
\nAssistant Professor of Humanities
\nBo\u011fazi\u00e7i University<\/p>\n