The Value of 'Eschaunge': Ransom and Substitution in Troilus and Criseyde

Author / Editor
Murray, Molly.

Title
The Value of 'Eschaunge': Ransom and Substitution in Troilus and Criseyde

Published
ELH 69 : 335-58, 2002.

Description
The medieval chivalric practice of ransom illuminates the preoccupation with double sense, surrogacy, and substitutions in TC. Working with the poem's depiction of character, its narrative structure, and its insistently metaphoric language, the resonances of ransom suggest that value and meaning are generated, rather than threatened, by separation and exchange.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.