Europe

"Europe" is hardly mentioned in Chaucer's works, and the adjective "European" did not yet exist in his language. Seeking to understand what Europe, nevertheless, meant to him, this chapter examines his references to it in The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde, and The Man of Law's Tale and compares them with similar passages in other fourteenth-century texts. The available evidence suggests two cultural trends: a global perspective that considers Europe in relation to other parts of the world without insisting on its supremacy and an emergent Eurocentrism. Chaucer expresses the latter tendency only to subvert it by radicalizing the former point of view.