토파즈 경 연대기: 초서, 스펜서, 릴리, 셰익스피어

Abstract

Among twenty four tales included in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Topas is unique in the sense that the tale is not only told directly by the pilgrim Chaucer, the general narrator, but is also stopped by Harray Bailey, the owner of the inn, even before the tale introduces the main plot. What is more interesting is that the tale receives great attentions from the writers in the later periods. Edmund Spenser, John Lyly, and William Shakespeare, among others, revive Sir Topas motif in their major works, so as to expand and/or modify the meaning of the character. What part of Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Topas draw special interest from these writers? How and why do these writers adapt the original tale in their works? This paper is to examine Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Topas and to investigate how the meaning of the tale is manifested in different works of the writers in the later periods, so that we could understand how a single work of literature becomes a part of great tradition of English literature.