Criseyde's Oaths of Love: Do They Really Belong to the Tradition of Lying-Songs?

Author / Editor
Cioffi, Caron Ann.

Title
Criseyde's Oaths of Love: Do They Really Belong to the Tradition of Lying-Songs?

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 87 (1988): 522-34.

Description
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 the audience would have understood them as sincere. Their recurrence in Bk. 5 shows "how much unfailing love has failed."

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.