Translating the Near East in the Man of Law's Tale and Its Analogues

Abstract

Using Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and other Middle English narratives of falsely accused heroines as its test case, this article develops a comparative methodology for analyzing representations of the Near East that focuses on their adaptation of earlier (Anglo-)French sources and juxtaposing them with these sources' late medieval remaniements. It argues that Gower's “Tale of Constance,” the Northern and Southern Octavian, and, especially, Le Bone Florence of Rome, as well as the bookmakers who preserved the romances in question, exhibit various strategies for defusing the crusader ideology of their francophone counterparts. Chaucer, in turn, both appropriates these maneuvers and escalates the conflict between Christianity and Islam that underlies the Constance story in Trevet's Les Cronicles, only to contrast it with an inner struggle against idolatry advocated in the Parson's Tale.