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…
McAlpine, Monica E.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 25: 199-224, 2003.
In her "active suffering," Criseyde reflects a Boethian notion of agency. In her prudential counseling of Troilus, she properly dissuades him from "treasonable elopement in time of war." The article explores how Criseyde's advice to Troilus and her…
The germ of Chaucer's phrase "and by the reyne hire hente" is found in Benoit's "Roman de Troie." Benoit uses a similar phrase four times. This is further evidence that Chaucer was conflating Boccaccio and Benoit.
Considers how "history becomes the unconscious of romance" in TC. Criseyde is pronounced dead at the opening of the work (1.56) but does not die in the story; as a "symptom of the poem's disavowal of history and materiality, she also marks its…
Argues that moral and psychological interpretations of TC--readings that judge the characters and those that empathize with their experiences--are "not as incompatible as their adherents would have us believe." Chaucer's rich depictions of his…
Renoir, Alain.
Orbis Litterarum 16 (1961): 239-55.
Assesses Criseyde's character in light of Carl Jung's theory of the nature of love as a "result of the incomplete human soul seeking its complement"—the "anima" seeking its "animus." Troilus's failure to act disappoints Criseyde's courtly…
Sepherd, Robert K. .
Sederi: Journal of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies 4 : 229-36, 1993.
Considers Shakespeare's Cressida to be a "delicate literary graft" of the ambiguous aloofness of Chaucer's Criseyde and the "frankness personified" of Henryson's Cresseid.
Benson, C. David.
Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 23-40.
Describes the writers' approaches to their source in Chaucer: Lydgate as a "scholarly commentator" and Henryson as a poet who exploits "Chaucer's innovative literary devices" in an original way. …
Boenig, Robert.
Bruce L. Edwards, ed. The Taste of Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), pp. 138-48.
Reads C. S. Lewis's essay on TC, "What Chaucer Really Did to 'Il Filostrato'" (1932), as an index to how Lewis adapted H. G. Wells' novel "The First Men in the Moon" in his own "Out of the Silent Planet." Because of Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's…
Bethurum, Dorothy, ed.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
Six essays by various authors and a summary Introduction by the editor. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature under Alternative Title.
Morse, Charlotte C.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), no. 130), pp. 71-83.
Between 1910 and 1952, attitudes toward ClT were overtly hostile. Since 1952, however, criticism has been "apologetic in nature," with teacher-critics constructing "Christian allegorical," philosophical, psychological, and political readings "to…
Edwards, A. S. G.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 85-94.
Noting that MLT has often been apologized for or ignored, Edwards surveys critical approaches to the tale: the date of its composition, its place in the Canterbury sequence, source study, biography, narrative voice, the problem of Constance,…
