Paradigms of Personality: Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and the Traditions of Ovid and Dante

Description: TC can be read with two distinct poetic traditions in mind: the serious, Platonic ideal represented by Dante, which desires absolute truth, purposeful behavior, and an immutable self; and the Ovidian rhetorical ideal which upholds behavior shaped by circumstances and the role-playing self. Chaucer uses his love-story paradigmatically to show how each kind of self acts and reacts.; He sets in motion four possible ways to organize the world: Troilus, the unself-conscious, serious, committed self; Criseyde, the unself-conscious, role-playing self; Pandarus,the self-conscious role player; and the narrator, the self-conscious, serious self; and then shows the consequences each one has, both for the individual and those around him.