Chaucer in Denmark

This study is an investigation of a subject never explored before: the translations and the reception in Denmark of the most important English poet from the Middle Ages Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400) from the first appearance in 1782 of a transformation of one of his Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, to the present day.

Ebbe Klitgård analyses the story of Chaucer in Denmark also as an exemplary study of the history of English education, culture, language and literature in Denmark. Klitgård demonstrates that the cultural transmission of Chaucer is historically bound by the changing cultural ties between the English speaking world and Denmark. In this way the story of Chaucer in Denmark becomes an illustrative and very complicated story of cultural change.

Ebbe Klitgård is an Associate Professor in British Studies at Roskilde University. His Ph.D. thesis Chaucer’s Narrative Voice in The Knight’s Tale was published by Museum Tusculanum Press in 1995, and he has since then published widely in the field of Chaucer and the Late Middle Ages. With Gerd Bayer he co-edited Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe, published by Routledge in 2011. His publications also include articles in translation studies and modern British fiction.