Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury TalesChaucer, Geoffrey
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Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey
English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500
1438. _Oëtes_ (as in Guido); properly _Aeëtes_, Ovid, Her. xii. 51. He was
king of Colchis, and father of Medea.
1447. 'Then should I be bound to requite thy toil.'
1453. _Argus_, the builder of the ship Argo, in which Jason undertook the
voyage. The name is given by Guido (see the E. Troy-book, l. 273), by
Valerius Flaccus, in his Argonauticon, lib. i. 314, and in the Argonautics
of Apollonius Rhodius.
1457. As Bech points out, Chaucer here copies the remark in
Dares:--'Demonstrare cos qui cum Iasone profecti sunt non uidetur nostrum
esse: sed qui uolunt eos cognoscere, Argonautas legant.'--De excidio Troiae
historia, ed. Meister, 1873; cap. 1. The reference is to the Argonauticon
of Valerius Flaccus, lib. i., where the list of the Argonauts may be found.
It also occurs in bk. i. of the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius. It is a
dreary catalogue; or, as Chaucer says, a sufficiently long tale. There is a
shorter list in Statius, Thebaid, bk. v. All the lists make much of
Hercules (see l. 1454).
1459. _Philotetes_ (so spelt by Guido, see the Eng. version, p. 12, ll. 6
and 10, where the passage from Guido is quoted) was the name of the pilot
to the expedition. Valerius Flaccus identifies him with Philoctetes, son of
Poeas or Pæas; as he introduces him by the name of Poeantius; Argon, i.
391.
1463. _Lemnoun_, Lemnos; it is very common to quote proper names in forms
resembling the accusative case. This, as Chaucer says, is not in Guido, but
in Ovid; see Ovid's Heroid. vi. 50, 117, 136. At the same time it would be
interesting to know _what version_ of Guido Chaucer followed; for it is a
very singular fact, that whilst the story of Hypsipyle is neither in the
alliterative Eng. version, nor in Lydgate, it _does_ occur, at this point,
in a _Spanish_ version, printed at Medina in 1587. There the heading of bk.
ii. c. x. is--'Como Iason aporto co_n_ tormenta a la Isla de Lemos, y caso
con la infanta Hisifile.'
1467. _Isiphilee_, Hypsipyle, daughter of Thoas, and queen of Lemnos; she
saved her father when the women of Lemnos killed all the other men in the
island, and subsequently entertained Jason. As the letter in Ovid does not
give all the circumstances, perhaps Chaucer consulted Valerius Flaccus,
Argonauticon, lib. ii., and Statius, Thebais, lib. v., or, perhaps, the
Fables of Hyginus, cap. xv.; but he makes more of Hercules than do these
authorities, and seems to be inventing.
1468. _Thoas doghter the king_, the daughter of king Thoas. This is the
usual idiom; see my note to Squi. Tale, F 209.
1469. Cf. Valerius Flaccus, Argon. ii. 311:--
'Ecce procul ualidis Lemnon tendentia remis
Arma notant: rapitur subito regina tumultu,
Conciliumque uocat: non illis obuia tela
Ferre, nec infestos deerat furor improbus ignes,
Ni Ueneris saeuas fregisset Mulciber iras.'
In Statius, Theb. v., the Lemnian women receive the Argonauts with
hostility at first, and attack them with missiles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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