Rhetorical Rhythms of Troy: Chaucer, Guido delle Colonne, and the Ars dictaminis

Geoffrey Chaucer’s engagement with Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae (1287) is more rhetorical than historical. This article examines Chaucer’s use of Guido’s Latin color and cadence in Troilus and Criseyde and the Legend of Good Women, which reflects principles of the ars dictaminis, as they emerge within the Italian vernacular of Filippo Ceffi and epistolary instruction in artes dictandi, especially those produced in late-fourteenth-century England. In this context, Chaucer’s citation of Guido and Ovid in the Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea acquires a valence associated directly with the ars dictaminis, which includes the teaching of cursus, a method of rhythmical punctuation evident throughout Guido’s Historia. This article argues that Guido’s color and cadence emerge in Chaucer’s work at the level of style, which reveals how thoroughly the historical matter of Troilus and the Legend relies upon the subtle use of rhetorical forms.