Translation and the Squire’s Fabulous “Traveling Icon” Narrative Venture

ABSTRACT Utilizing the matter of composite romance, Chaucer’s Squire’s two-part avant-garde tale, like a traveling icon inviting heuristic response, juxtaposes the styles of the Late Romanesque/Early Gothic and the Later Gothic to demonstrate how the inevitable transformation of nonmimetic into mimetic fiction is effectuated by translation. In emphasizing perpendicularity, individualization, and isolation, Part I’s quasi-symmetrical frame underscores effective acts of translation by the Squire and the Mamluk stranger-knight, enclosing for contrastive purpose a middle section that details the disempowerment of ineffective translation, as voiced by Cambyuskan’s birthday guests. In emphasizing organic horizontality and particularization, Part II’s asymmetrical frame underscores Canacee’s acts of effective translation, enclosing for contrastive purpose a middle section that details the disempowerment of ineffective translation, as voiced by the jilted falcon. Having ultimately posited a foundational moment consisting of the presence of the fabulous, anthropomorphized avian body and mind, the Squire recommits to the contest by reintroducing the marvelous narrative stuff of composite romance, only to be cut off.