Rhetoric and Sophistry in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Author / Editor
Kokonis, Michael.

Title
Rhetoric and Sophistry in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Published
Yearbook of English Studies (Thessalonika) 1 (1989): 367-99.

Description
Reviews recent rhetorical analyses of TC, examining how and how much "rhetoric affects the composition" of TC. Kokonis first reviews the "history and evolution of rhetoric"; then shows how rhetoric became part of "medieval aesthetic tradition," and in particular of the composition of TC; and finally evaluates how Chaucer, "conveying the dominant spirit of his age, employs the dialectical aspects of this art, that is, rhetoric versus sophistry," in TC.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.