Neuse, Richard.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 199-210.
Echoes of Dante's "Commedia" in TC are not ironic. In each poem, love is religious, even theological, reflected in the characters' Christian references in TC. The poems are distinct not as Christian is distinct from pagan but as comedy is distinct…
Scanlon, Larry.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 211-23.
Explains Fortune as a figure that embodies historical flux and affirms aristocratic privilege. In TC, references to Fortune do not provide a philosophical norm against which to test the attitudes of the characters; the references assert politically…
Stanbury, Sarah.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 224-38.
Troilus and Criseyde fall in love through looking, here analyzed through medieval optical science, as a literary convention, and as a gendered social taboo. Stanbury contrasts the activity, passivity, and willfulness of Criseyde's gaze with that of…
Taylor, Karla.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticsm. MRTS, no. 104. Binghamton, N. Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 239-56.
Compares how Dante's Paolo and Francesca fall in love with the process of Criseyde's falling in love. Each poet self-consciously depicts love, but whereas Dante maintains a conventional view of his feminine character, Chaucer discloses the…
The occasions, imagery, and verbal play of the lyrical interludes in TC clarify Criseyde's role as a Christian archetype, one who leads Troilus from self-absorption to transcendence but who nevertheless remains ambiguous in her own silence and her…
Guthrie, Steven R.
English Studies 73 (1992): 481-92.
In TC, "shall" and "will" are important "to the characterization and overall modal texture." Chaucer appears to adumbrate John Wallis's seventeenth-century formula that "shall" expresses the speaker's determination to perform the intended action,…
Haahr, Joan G.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 257-71.
Compares the rhetoric of the passages in "Filostrato" and TC in which Criseyde first sees Troilus outside her window. Chaucer combines his own "fictional vision" with rhetorical and narrative conventions drawn from Ovid and romance to create the…
Havely, Nicholas R.
Medium Aevum 61 (1992): 250-60.
The discourse of antifraternalism is important in understanding Pandarus's role in relation to Troilus and, especially, Criseyde. Havely examines words that form part of that discourse.
Jordan, Robert (M.)
Chaucer Yearbook 1 (1992): 135-55.
Contrasts TC and ManT as examples of metafiction, showing that in each the narrative persona is not a character in any traditional sense but a voicing of the author's concerns with language and fiction. ManT overtly declares the instability of…
Kinney, Clare Regan.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 272-92.
In contrast to the 'Filostrato,' TC gives lyrical expression to both male and female speakers. Antigone's song is central to the female lyrical discourse in TC, establishing a "poetics of presence" that culminates in the poem's closing concern with…
McKinley, Kathryn L.
English Language Notes 30:2 (1992): 1-4.
Criseyde's niece Flexippe is named after Plexippus in Ovid's story of Meleager. The reference to Flexippe in TC 2 is clarified in TC 5 by Cassandra's relating this very story and giving it an allegorical interpretation.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 37 (1992): 14-26.
Discusses ambiguity in TC, first from the standpoint of the reader, then as a key to meaning, and finally from the imaginary standpoint of an ideal reader who can be at once sympathetic and detached.
Peyton, Henry H. III.
Tennessee Philological Bulletin 29 (1992): 6-13.
Compared to figures in Boethius's "Consolatio," Pandarus appears neither as Philosophia nor as Fortune but rather as an amplification of Fortuna. The leaping and hopping of TC 1-2 echo the upward climb of Fortuna's wheel, while the silence and…
Reale, Nancy M.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 155-71.
Compares the consummation scenes in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and Chaucer's TC, focusing on Pandarus's role, and demonstrates how Boccaccio served as Chaucer's intermediary in a critical dialogue with Dantean assertions about language, love, and…
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Chaucer Review 26 (1992): 350-68.
Chaucer altered his source to make Troilus guilty of the sin of sloth, depicting him as one who dislikes "love's work" and who rarely does it. By exploring this concept of sin in a courtly context, Chaucer shifts the moral focus of his work, causing…
Chaucer uses the word "syn" in TC ninety-nine times; the word "sith," thirty-one times. The former not only designates "since," but also reinforces the morality--or lack thereof--in the poem. The final "syn" clause is connected with Christ to…
Stillinger, Thomas C.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Stillinger addresses intertextual and formal strategies used by Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer "in search of new ways to make a book." The "Vita nuova" explores structures in relation to authority in prose and verse, and "Filostrato" mines the…
Storm, Melvin.
Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 154-61.
In TC 3, Chaucer evokes the geography and atmosphere of Dante's "Inferno," while in Pandarus's actions he evokes Virgil's role as guide through hell. These associations provide a context for "judging Troilus's position at the poem's centre" and…
Pandarus does not commit incest with Criseyde. Chaucer's contemporaries would not have allowed it, and the text itself, while titillating, does not admit of it. One discerns the narrator expressing his own involvement with the heroine, but there is…
Wentersdorf, Karl P.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 293-313.
"Hazel" imagery in medieval and Renaissance literature suggests a meaning for Chaucer's "haselwode" quite different from the traditional interpretations--one rooted in poetic convention (erotic imagery) and social custom (going a-nutting).
Critical introduction to major issues in the study of TC arranged by topic: date, text, sources, genre, structure, themes, style, imitation, and allusion before 1700. Discursive survey of each topic and subtopic, linked by reference to a…
Chaucer's lyrics have been neglected not because Chaucer was an incompetent lyric poet but because they have been overshadowed by his narrative poetry. Ruud introduces the lyrics to those not familiar with them, providing a separate "reading" of…
"The Plowman's Tale" was regularly included in editions of CT from William Thynne's second edition in 1542 until Thomas Tyrwhitt's 1778 edition. Various qualities of the tale might have led sixteenth-century readers to accept the poem as Chaucer's:…
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Bruce Henricksen and Thais E. Morgan, eds. Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990) pp. 77-92.
In medieval studies, which are threatened by pluralism, medievalists can communicate the intent of the originals (now translated) by using literary theory to examine "punning, allusion, quotation, and voice." Examines puns, etc. in TC, Dante's…
