There are notable references in Chaucer to the Neoplatonic auctores such as Martianus Capella, Boethius, Macrobius and Alain of Lille.They stand us in good stead in showing Chaucer working not in insular seclusion but in an active dialogue with the great continental tradition of Neoplatonism. The image of Chaucer as a cosmopolitan poet is indeed familiar enough, particularly to the reader of Troilus and Criseydey where is suggested in a Dantesque manner the author's ambition to affiliate himself with the great European tradition of ‘poesye’, i.e. ‘Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan, and Stace’ (v, 1792).The transcultural negotiation here is in a sense simple and straightforward and even austere. But in the case of the dialogue with Neoplatonic auctores rather than those of ‘poesye’, things are as often as not characterised by obliqueness, a sense of humour and even irony. Perhaps this can be best seen if we focus our attention on some of the ideas and motifs which have a close association with Neoplatonism: love, the ascent to heaven, and Nature.

LOVE

To talk of these ideas and motifs in the intellectual milieu of the later Middle Ages means an inevitable reference, one way or another, to the so-called ‘twelfth-century renaissance’. Among representative figures of the movement are Alain of Lille, William of Conches and Bernard Silvester, who derive their characteristically Neoplatonic ideas largely from the Latinised Timaeus, Boethius, Macrobius and Martianus Capella.It is characteristic of the movement to emphasise the teleological aspect of the created universe, where man as microcosm is in essentials ordained to act as part of and in harmony with the macrocosm.