Book of the Duchess (Cyclopedia of Literary Places)
At a glance:
- Author: Geoffrey Chaucer
- First Published: 1370
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Type of Plot: Allegory
- Time of Work: Indeterminate
- Genres: Poetry, Allegory, Dream vision
- Subjects: Love or romance, Europe or Europeans, Poetry or poets, Dreams, England or English people, Death or dying, Kings, queens, or royalty, Allegory, Middle Ages, Knights or knighthood, Nobility, Fourteenth century
- Locales: Dreamscape
Places Discussed
Narrator’s bedroom. The poet’s persona begins by describing the unhappiness in love that prevents his sleep. This introduces the story of Seyx and Alcione, the dead husband appearing to his beloved wife as adapted from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (c. 8 c.e.; English translation, 1567). Rehearsing this myth allows correspondence of the bereaved Alcione and the bereaved Black Prince (Edward, Prince of Wales). Seyx’s ghost appears in Alcione’s bedroom, thus interlocking the locations of the mythic figure and the narrator.
When the narrator...
[The entire page is 819 words long]
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