Genre and Source in 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Published: Lee Patterson. Acts of Recognition: Essays on Medieval Culture (Notre Dame, Id.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), pp. 198-214.

Description: Considers Chaucer's understanding of "tragedy" in Bo, MkT, and TC, tracing this understanding to Dante's use of the term in his "Inferno," where it is affiliated with history. In TC, Chaucer chose to emulate Boccaccio's "Filostrato" because doing so allowed him to explain an "original catastrophe [the fall of Troy] by exploring the origins of a catastrophic love affair." Chaucer found, however, that such an explanation cannot be sustained. Reprinted as "'Troilus and Criseyde': Genre and Source" in Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway, eds. Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press), pp. 244-62.

Alternative Title: Acts of Recognition: Essays on Medieval Culture.; Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England.

Chaucer Subjects: Troilus and Criseyde.; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations; Boece; Monk and His Tale