Criseyde's Choices
- Author / Editor
- Pearsall, Derek.
Criseyde's Choices
- Published
- 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.
- Description
- 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" ("a profound investment in inexactitude and the obscuring of causes"), and convinces herself that she has no choice but to do what she wants to do.
- Pearsall examines the contemporary debate on free will and predestination and concludes, "Criseyde has only the illusion of this freedom." Criseyde is also compared with Griselda and Constance.
- Alternative Title
- Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2 (1986)
- Chaucer Subjects
- Troilus and Criseyde.
- Clerk and His Tale.
- Man of Law and His Tale.