Confronts the humor and "problematic sexual biases evident” in TC. Focuses on the consummation scene of Book III and the ways that "#MeToo activism" can inform a conversational pedagogy for engaging with the text, including analysis of the narrator's…
Chaucer sets up Criseyde's behavior, from first love to betrayal, as a reflection on woman's perilous social state. In so doing he questions the judgment passed on her by a male-centered society and religion, even though it is represented in his own…
Schibanoff, Susan.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 76 (1977): 326-33.
Criseyde's "aubes" of TC, III and IV, wherein she swears her constancy to Troilus, ironically recall the "impossibilia" of anti-feminist lying-songs, which warned men not to put trust in women.
Widespread acceptance of C. S. Lewis's belief that Criseyde's ruling passion is fear has resulted in a limited version of her motivation, for an equally powerful force, "routhe," works sometimes with and sometimes against her fear. The two forces…
Taylor, Ann M.
American Notes and Queries 17 (1978): 18-19.
In Criseyde's debate on whether to take Troilus as a lover (2.598-812), the word "thought" occurs fourteen times, the most dense usage in the poem, reflective of Criseyde's practice of thinking before acting. In contrast, "thought" in Troilus' case…
Hodges, Laura F.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 37-58.
Hodges analyzes Criseyde's costume rhetoric, comparing details of her dress (and how it changes throughout the work) with mourning customs of late fourteenth-century England.
Chaucer's evocation of contrasting senses of "frend" sharpens his depiction of Criseyde's precarious state in Troy. Lacking advisors, and thus dangerously dependent on Pandarus and Troilus, she also belongs to a network of relationships devoted…
Knapp, Peggy A.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 231-54.
Knapp examines how Chaucer makes Criseyde beautiful to his audience (then and now) and how critical readings of her character rely on cultural constructs of aesthetic beauty.
Daly, Saralyn R.
Notes and Queries 208 (1963): 442-44.
Maintains that anachronistic details of Criseyde's address to night in TC 3.1429-42 deviate from traditional albas and indicate that she "challenges God" in favor of her own will, indicated by her unorthodox attitude toward Providence.
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 185-206.
Reads courtly love in TC through a Levinasian lens: courtly desire is ethical because it is never satisfied. Yet, Criseyde's case disallows a direct application of Levinasian ethical theory. Mitchell comments on the role of fortune in TC, the…
Includes chapters on Benoît, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson, Shakespeare, and Dryden, treating Chaucer's Criseyde as "the most delightful of them all"--a character of "infinite complexity and infinite charm."
Pearsall, Derek.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 17-29.
Analyzes TC 2.449-62, 3.568-81, and 5.1016-29 to show syntactically "the process by which Criseyde exercises her will, makes a choice, without acknowledging (it)...while preserving her image...as a passive instrument of forces greater than herself"…
Suggests Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde challenges the "traditional 'descriptio' as a restrictive benchmark of feminine beauty." Describes Criseyde's transformations in TC as an "experiential journey through love and war."
Gallagher, Joseph E.
Modern Language Quarterly 36 (1975): 115-32.
Foreshadowing submission to Troilus and Diomede, Criseyde's erotic dream of the eagle symbolizes her fear of man's aggressive nature and her belief in love's ennobling influence. Throughout the poem love modifies the worst in Troilus, the warrior,…
Burnley, J. D.
Studia Neophilologica 54 (1982): 25-38.
Argues that the phrase "slydynge of corage" used to characterize Criseyde's moral character refers to "infirmity of resolve" but also involves unstable affections.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 47-55.
Criseyde's status as a widow and her self-conscious concern with her "honour" and "estat" help characterize her as someone "concerned with maintaining herself and her household as independent units." Her inconstancy is a rational response to her…
Characterizes Criseyde in TC as a good, even perfect, courtly heroine until she is unfaithful to Troilus, a result of the very human "weakness in the face of death." More than does Boccaccio in "Filostrato," Chaucer creates a sense of inevitability…
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…
Jacobs, Nicolas.
Gerald Morgan, ed. Chaucer in Context: A Golden Age of English Poetry (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 279-94
Discusses Criseyde's "slipperiness and unreliability" in TC, focusing on her last letter to Troilus, which is "Chaucer's own addition," as a way of understanding her character.
Cioffi, Caron Ann.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 87 (1988): 522-34.
Susan Schibanoff (JEGP, 1977) is in error when she argues that the "impossibilia" testifying to Criseyde's love (TC 3.1492-98) suggests the medieval genre of the antifeminist lying-song. Rather, such "impossibilia" belong in a courtly context, and…
Fleming, John V.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. 277-98.
Against the backdrop of two of his own studies exploring the classical roots of TC, Fleming argues that Chaucer subverts gender stereotypes and the force of literary tradition as much as he can by giving Criseyde a measure of agency and by depicting…
