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Appreciative discussion of the accomplishments of individual artists, designers, musicians, and authors, emphasizing their labors and the nature of their accomplishments. Chapter 2, "Chaucer: The Man in the Fourteenth-Century Street," discusses…

Focuses on critical commentary on Chaucer by William Godwin, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage Landor, concluding with a survey of efforts by Romantic writers to claim that Chaucer shared their outlooks.

Investigates credulity as a feature of radical medieval thought (Marsilio of Padua, William of Ockham, John Wycliffe) and as depicted in Boccaccio and Chaucer. A creative artist rather than a philosopher or theologian, Chaucer uses various characters…

Henryson's preface to the "Testament of Cresseid" is to be taken seriously. Having read Chaucer, he picked up "an euther quair" that portrays Cresseid as a whore. His poem therefore accurately reflects a contemporary apologia for his heroine.

Aronstein shows how Henryson, influenced by late-fifteenth-century attitudes toward women, especially prostitutes, returns the story of Criseyde to its pre-Chaucerian misogynistic purpose. The article examines the story's literary history and its…

In its bleak presentation of love, Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" responds in a complex way to Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde in TC, making apparent the "spiritual and ethical limitations of the world view that frames the experience of…

Compares the representation of Cresseid and Dido in Robert Henryson's "The Testament of Cresseid" and in Gavin Douglas's "Eneados," along with other female figures, mortal and immortal, and reflects on the differences between these Scottish poems and…

Chaucer and Shakespeare use different narrative techniques to lend ambiguity to the characterization of Criseyde/Cressida, but each uses ambiguity to create sympathy for his character.

Compares Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde, Henryson's of Cresseid, and Shakespeare's of Cressida, assessing Shakespeare's "transformation" of the character as typical of "Jacobean sensibility."

Video recording of lecture (ca. 31 min.), with illustrations, accompanied by an edited text of the lecture in the Course Guidebook (pp. 37-42). Describes the plot of TC, emphasizing the ambiguities of Criseyde and contrasting her character with that…

Medieval notions of crime were broader than modern ones. Chaucer's views on justice and crime, as reflected in FrT, MLT, and ClT, are elusive. It seems he was "seriously doubtful about the value and practical application of any systematic view of…

Examines "exceptional crimes" in CT in the context of the main English legal texts that regulated, prosecuted, and punished medieval criminals. The procedural singularities of this type of prosecution are explored first through the analysis of the…

Examines the contexts of Criseyde's tears in an antifeminist tradition, to which Chaucer and TC respond, and engages with the revisions to depictions of Criseyde's weeping in TC. Uses insights from sociology and behavioral psychology to argue that…

Shows how the narrator's "wildly emotional attitude" toward Criseyde contributes to her characterization in TC, describing how and where nuances of style and point of view raise questions for the reader despite--even because of--the narrator's…

Examines TC 2.442-76, Criseyde's first interview with Pandarus. The passage shows a Criseyde "who is essentially innocent, but who has a capacity for self-deception." Most of her sleight is practiced against herself, not against Pandarus.

Revisiting his own "Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde," Wetherbee argues that Criseyde is in many ways a more complex, mature, and heroic character than is Troilus. Troilus, the narrator of TC, and especially the narrator of…

Despite previous treatment by critics, Criseyde is a pitiable character and a "good citizen of Troy." The treatment she receives at the hands of her own relatives, the Trojans, and the Greeks justifies her unfaithfulness to Troilus.

Criseyde rejects the values of courtly love that Troilus embraces. In her relation with Diomede, Criseyde rejects courtly love and its attachment to death in favor of a life-affirming love.

Examines a series of passsages that characterize Criseyde's relations with her lovers.

Examines Criseyde in light of medieval social and religious ideals of femininity.

Modern psychological analysis of the codependent personality reveals the enigmatic nature of much of Criseyde's behavior. Her drive to please and the absence of healthy boundaries in relationships with others indicate that she lacks a clear sense of…

In Book 2 of TC, Criseyde gains subjectivity as a "reader" of Antigone's song. Although the narrator encourages female readers to "read like men" by identifying with Troilus, Margaret More Roper, in a letter to her father Sir Thomas More, aligns…

Uses Heidegger's language concerning the "concealing" and "unconcealing" of truth to examine the narrative layers through which readers interpret Criseyde's character. Criseyde's speeches subtly but forcefully unconceal her own "trouthe," raising…

Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde had to remain true to Boccaccio's account of her as a betrayer of Troilus, both underlining and undercutting her traditional character and conveying Boethius's idea of the nature of "human felicite."

Explores the allusions to Statius's "Thebaid" in TC and identifies several structural similarities between the poems. Criseyde's reading of the epic and Cassandre's summary of it depict female consciousness of history and awareness of the…