Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Romance and the Orient
- 2 Mercantilism and Faith in the Eastern Mediterranean: Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, Boccaccio's Decameron 5, 2, and Gower's Tale of Constance
- 3 Two Oriental Queens from Chaucer's Legend of Good Women: Cleopatra and Dido
- 4 Chaucer's Squire's Tale: Content and Structure
- 5 A Question of Incest, the Double, and the Theme of East and West: The Middle English Romance of Floris and Blauncheflur
- 6 Le Bone Florence of Rome and the East
- Conclusion
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Le Bone Florence of Rome and the East
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction: Romance and the Orient
- 2 Mercantilism and Faith in the Eastern Mediterranean: Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, Boccaccio's Decameron 5, 2, and Gower's Tale of Constance
- 3 Two Oriental Queens from Chaucer's Legend of Good Women: Cleopatra and Dido
- 4 Chaucer's Squire's Tale: Content and Structure
- 5 A Question of Incest, the Double, and the Theme of East and West: The Middle English Romance of Floris and Blauncheflur
- 6 Le Bone Florence of Rome and the East
- Conclusion
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
IT is of primary interest that the Middle English romance, Le Bone Florence iof Rome, like other closely allied western versions of the so-called “chaste wife tale,” is related to analogous oriental tales about heroic women who remain steadfast in virtue against persecution and adversity. Of secondary interest within the context of the romance's relationship to the East is the presence of Constantinople; it is from that eastern city that Florence's unwelcome suitor, “Syr Garcy,” comes early in the story. Finally, it is notable in comparing Le Bone Florence of Rome to its oriental analogues that there is a motif shared by the eastern and western treatments of the story, namely that of justice and the specific form of justice that would have been known to medieval thinkers as piety.
Constantinople
In the first half of the romance, a war is fought by Roman “knyƷtys” on behalf of an “emperowre” of Rome whose daughter, Florence, a Christian, refused the marriage proposal of “Syr Garcy” of Constantinople – not for reasons of orthodoxy because he was a heathen like the Sultan who is the suitor of Chaucer's Custance, but quite simply because he was old and unattractive. Dieter Mehl is correct in his observation that “we are not even told in so many words whether the old Garcy is a Christian or not and there is certainly no crusading spirit” in the tale (Mehl, 140–41).
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- Information
- The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance , pp. 108 - 124Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003