The Mexican Chaucer: Philology south of the border

This essay focuses on the reception of Geoffrey Chaucer's work in Mexico. It points out, in the first place, the possibility of conceiving Mexico as part of the transhistoric legacy of the European Middle Ages in light of the country's colonial and postcolonial contexts. Next, and perhaps more importantly, the text analyzes the problems involved in translating Chaucer in and for Mexico. After an extensive survey of the history of Chaucer's translations into Spanish, Ariza‐Barile examines how the translations have adapted to the context of Mexican academic and reader communities, and he addresses why Mexico has never generated a compelling translation from Middle English.