Chaucer's Ovidian Arts of Love.

By Michael A. Calabrese. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. Pp. x + 170. $29.95.

Chaucer's Ovidian Arts of Love investigates how Chaucer uses Ovid's poetry in order to reflect on his own arts of love in Troilus and Criseyde, the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, and the Retraction to the Canterbury Tales. Calabrese contends that Ovid's influence on Chaucer was heavily mediated by medieval commentaries and vernacular literature; though the study does not offer extensive original new research into medieval Ovids, it does treat a few welcome new primary texts. Most centrally, this book argues that for the best part of his literary career Chaucer was concerned about the ethical, Christian implications of neo-Ovidian amatory and poetic arts. Calabrese is unlikely to persuade those disinclined to agree with this position, and the idea is not new. The book more originally proposes that Chaucer was influenced by a perceived chronology in Ovid's career: palinodes supplant early amatory writing. This substantially repeats the position …