Optical Allusions and Chaucerian Realism: Aspects of Sight in Late Medieval Thought and 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Author / Editor
Klassen, N.

Title
Optical Allusions and Chaucerian Realism: Aspects of Sight in Late Medieval Thought and 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Published
Stanford Humanities Review 2:2-3 (1992): 129-46.

Description
Surveys the late-medieval science of optics, focusing on Alhazen, Grosseteste, Bacon, Ockham, and their links between optics and epistemology. In Boccaccio's "Filostrato," sight is merely a convention of courtly literature, but Chaucer's optical references in TC add theological and philosophical depth to the conventional use.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.