Romanticized History and Historicized Romance: Narrative Styles and Strategies in Four Middle English Troy Poems

Description: The genres of history and romance in Middle English Troy poems are distinguished by contrasting attitudes towards sources and the historicity of the subject; by a corresponding contrast in attitudes towards the historical distance between past and present, pagan and Christian; and by differences in thematic and structural unity.; In Chaucer's TC, the historicizing values and strategies of a Christian translator co-exist with the romanticizing values and strategies attributed to the fictional pagan author, "Lollius." Chaucer's use of this dual persona is shown to be a technique for reconciling pagan and Christian values and for harmonizing the historicizing and romanticizing tendencies.