Value in Love: A Materialist Analysis of Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Description: The central issue for interpretation in TC is the nature and source of human value. The two primary ways in which values are established and tested in the poem are through the use of a significant amount of philosophical material relating to the problem of freedom of the human will, and by the creation of a socio-cultural structure which emerges from the dialectical interaction between the "courtly love" aspect of the poem and the specific historical setting of the Trojan war.; The dynamic of the poem can be described as the interplay between the philosophical and the socio-cultural elements.