Ambiguity and Interpretation: A Fifteenth-Century Reading of 'Troilus and Criseyde'
- Author / Editor
- Patterson, Lee.
Ambiguity and Interpretation: A Fifteenth-Century Reading of 'Troilus and Criseyde'
- Published
- Speculum 54 (1979): 297-330. Reprinted as Chap. 4 in Lee Patterson. Negotiating the Past (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 115-53.
- Description
- Literary meaning is not an "atemporal constant but a historical variable." The appropriate challenge to exegetical criticism comes through a history of reading. Examines TC in light of the medieval understandings of love articulated as the "seven tokens of carnal love" in "Disce mori," a fifteenth-century treatise for religious women that explicitly refers to TC. Thus, Patterson locates TC within the context of "amor" and "amicitia," as understood by the fifteenth-century reader.
- Alternative Title
- Negotiating the Past.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Chaucer's Influence and Later Allusion.