Browse Items (16012 total)

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…

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…

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…

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…

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 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…

TC 1.78-82 is based on Machaut's Le jugement du roy de Behaigne and his Remede de fortune.

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.

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.

A shortened version of a paper in Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 167-85.