'Peple' and 'Parlement' : An Examination of the Prisoner Exchanges Depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Giovanni Boccaccio's 'Il Filostrato'

Author / Editor
Wheeler, Jim.

Title
'Peple' and 'Parlement' : An Examination of the Prisoner Exchanges Depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Giovanni Boccaccio's 'Il Filostrato'

Published
English Language Notes 37.3: 11-24, 2000.

Description
The exchange of Criseyde for Antenor in TC inserts "peple" and a "Parlement" into the negotiations described in "Il Filostrato," a change resulting from the political context of 1381, when the peasants revolted and Parliament became more sensitive to their wishes than to those of the knightly estate. Chaucer thus indicts the fourteenth-century analogues of "peple" and "Parlement": the peasants and English Parliament.

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