England and Bohemia in the Age of Chaucer

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New essays examining Bohemia as a key European context for understanding
Chaucer's poetry.Chaucer never went to Bohemia but Bohemia came to him when, in 1382, King
Richard II of England married Anne, daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV.
Charles's splendid court in Prague was renowned across Europe for its patronage of
literature, art and architecture, and Anne and her entourage brought with them some of its
glamour and allure - their fashions, extravagance and behaviour provoking comment from
English chroniclers. For Chaucer, a poet and diplomat affiliated to Richard's court, Anne
was more muse than patron, her influence embedded in a range of his works, including the
Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women and Canterbury Tales.
This volume shows Bohemia to be a key European context, alongside France and Italy, for
understanding Chaucer's poetry, providing a wide perspective on the nature of cultural
exchange between England and Bohemia in the later fourteenth century. The contributors
consider such matters as court culture and politics, the writings of Richard Rolle, artistic
style, Troy stories, historiographic writing and travel narrative; they highlight the debt
Chaucer owed to Bohemian culture, and the affinities between English and Bohemian literary
production, whether in the use of Petrarch's tale of Griselde, the iconography of the
tapster figure, or satires on the Passion of Christ.