Rothschild, Victoria.
Review of English Studies 35 (1984): 164-84.
The symbolic structure of PF reinforces meaning; its three sections mirror the divisions of time; allusions to time and nature point toward a natural rather than social hierarchy. As an epithalamium, PF involves the natural world in a…
Eckhardt, Caroline D.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 41-63.
As a translation of "Roman de la Rose," Chaucer's Rom is remarkably faithful; nevertheless, Chaucer did make changes to create greater "ease" and intimacy."
apRoberts, Robert [P.]
Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, eds. Medieval Studies Conference Aachen 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 131-41.
Eugene Vance's belief that Criseyde's love is a matter of sexual arousal culminating when Troilus rides by is at odds with Chaucer's depiction of the growth of Criseyde's love, changed from the "Filostrato," to show Criseyde falling in love at first…
Brown, William H.,Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 83 (1984): 492-508.
In TC, Chaucer used the tradition of Joseph of Exeter and Benoit (who had drawn on Dares) to emphasize Troilus's public career rather than his private affairs.
Clark, S. L.,and Julian N. Wasserman.
Chaucer Review 18 (1984): 316-27.
Hundreds of references in TC to the heart are not casual but calculated. The heart is both a vessel and something that can be placed within a vessel. Allusions contrast Pandarus and Diomede with the two lovers and also contrast Criseyde with…
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 167-84.
In TC 2.78ff., Chaucer distinguishes between Statius's "Thebiad" and the "Roman de Thebes" to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde, to emphasize the uncle-niece relationship, and to affect tone and atmosphere. In 5.145ff., he uses Statius to develop…
Like Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," TC is veiled literary autobiography. About love, TC is also about love poetry but rejects Boccaccio's philosophy and poetics.
Fyler, John M.
Res Publica Litterarum 7 (1984): 73-92.
In TC, especially bks. 2 and 4, Chaucer selected and reconstituted details from Dante and the classics for ironic purposes, treating sources as "history." Appendix: Petrarch's annotations to "Aeneid."
In TC, a vision of love and death, Chaucer uses black and white to portray Criseyde as ambiguous: she shares her whiteness with Venus but is linked with death and its symbolic blackness.
Chaucer's "inventio" results in a rearrangement of concepts at the end of TC--a result of the process of composition. Exploiting the narrator, TC is in accord with Boethian and Aquinan aesthetics.
Milowicki, Edward J.
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 11:1 (1984): 12-24.
Through the virtue of hope and a sense of penance, Troilus's courtly love and death in TC parallel divine love and salvation, showing the influences of Dante's "Commedia" and Boethius's "De consolatio philosophiae."
The word "hazelwode" in Pandarus's proverbs ridiculing the lovers' fatuous hopes indicates Chaucer's familiarity with the miraculous powers attributed to hazel in Celtic divination and healing rites.
Criseyde's sexually charged endearments for Troilus in bk. 3 of TC provided amusement for Chaucer's contemporary audience, adding new dimensions to Criseyde's character.
Wack, Mary F.
Pacific Coast Philology 19 (1984): 55-61.
The medieval medical view of love as materialistic, deterministic, and ethically neutral shapes the thematic development of TC. In the first three books, Troilus, Pandarus, and Criseyde are patient, physician, and cure. In bks. 4 and 5, Troilus's…
Wallace, David.
American Notes and Queries 23 (1984): 1-4.
In his adaptation of Boccaccio in TC, Chaucer Latinizes his source, pretending to follow the classical "Lollius." The same tendency may be observed in vocabulary, as Chaucer adds several words of Latin origin to the lexicon, glossing them with the…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984.
A study of literary allusion in the "Troilus," with specific reference to the "Roman de la Rose," Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Dante. Suggests that the poet-narrator of the poem evolves from a writer in the tradition of courtly romance to a poet in…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Lois Ebin, ed. Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), pp. 153-76.
Parallels between the "Thebiad" and TC, particularly when viewed in light of the Christianized Statius in Dante's "Purgatorio," point to a pattern of engagement and transcendence that characterizes Chaucer's narrator. At the end of TC, the narrator…
Wood, Chauncey.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1984.
Asks for a "Gowerian" reading of TC--by which is meant "moral Gower," the poet of "honeste," married love. "What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato" was to re-shape the story of the besotted Trojan prince as a warning to the inhabitants of "New…
Bremmer, Rolf [H.], Jr.
N. R. Arhammar et al., eds. Miscellanea Frisica: A New Collection of Frisian Studies (Assen: Van Gotcum, 1984), pp. 357-70.
In later medieval Latin and Middle English, Frisia had a negative reputation: "Frise" often means "Phrygia," while Latin "Phrygia" could mean "Frisia." Refutes the general acceptance of "Frise" (Rom 1093) as "Frisia" but accepts the usual…
Those who insist on reading historical allusions into For's concluding stanza miss C̀haucer's subtle plea that charity, and not Fortune's favor, be the motivating force in human affairs.
