Classical Imitation and Interpretation in Chaucer's "Troilus"

Description: Engages major critics of TC on the matter of interpretation, accepting the Robertsonian definition of TC as a tragedy and viewing Robertson's work as implicit in three decades of critical controversy. Examines textual dilemmas basic to the controversy, focusing on poetic ambiguity; classical imitation, especially "elegant patterns of textual relationships"' and "the parameters of medieval Christian humanism."; Beyond the use of sources (Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, Jean de Meun, and Petrarch), Chaucer is a "medieval classicist" in his understanding and use of classical poetic techniques. In TC, he attempts to "reconstruct a spiritually foreign culture"--a "religious archaeology." Chaucer, a creative imitator, consciously uses "amphibologies" and "ambages" (ambiguities) to unite poetic past and artistic tradition.; Fleming explores the confrontation of pagan past and Christian present in TC, showing how Chaucer used "the tragic limitations of the lovers, mirrored by those of a doomed civilization, to examine fatally inadequate conceptions of loving and speaking." He treats ambiguity, "dramatized images of religious and amatory idolatry," and "the many-layered theme of 'interpretation'".

Chaucer Subjects: Troilus and Criseyde.; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.