Medieval Club of New York: Marilynn Desmond

Marilynn Desmond, SUNY Binghamton

Chaucer and the Matter of Troy: Reading the Blank Spaces in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61

The only illustrated manuscript of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde–Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 6–contains an elaborate frontispiece as well as 90 blanks spaces for images that were never produced. These blank spaces paradoxically represent an intertextual and even inter-visual dialogue with the matter of Troy in the tradition of universal history known as the Histoire ancienne jusq’à César. Situating Chaucer’s Troilus in relation to the pan-European dissemination of the matter of Troy in the Histoire ancienne illustrates the resilient materiality of the book as artefact, the non-human agent responsible for the survival and itineraries of pre-modern texts.

March 4, 2016, 7:30 PM CUNY Graduate Center, English Common Room.