Chaucer in Outremer: Exploring the Historical Imagination of Chaucer's Depiction of the Holy Land and Crusade in The Man of Law's Tale

     Chaucer's imagination of places and times through the Canterbury Tales is vast and vivid, but its historical understandings and nuances are often harder to identify. This paper intends to examine just that, the... [ view full abstract ]

     Chaucer's imagination of places and times through the Canterbury Tales is vast and vivid, but its historical understandings and nuances are often harder to identify. This paper intends to examine just that, the historical basis of Chaucer's imagination of the Holy Land in The Man of Law's Tale. Through studying the mapmaking traditions of Chaucer's day (and their political and spiritual implications), courtly notions of Crusade and commerce, and the stated desire for imperial Christian dominion over the effective center of the world, we can understand what Chaucer perceived the Outremer of his day to be.