Chaucer's Pandarus and the Medieval Ideal of Friendship

Author / Editor
Cook, Robert G.

Title
Chaucer's Pandarus and the Medieval Ideal of Friendship

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 69 (1970): 425-36.

Description
Surveys medieval ideals of friendship and their classical and biblical roots, arguing that Chaucer presents a double view in his presentation of Pandarus's friendship for Troilus: "both the world's notion of what a friend is and the moralist's notion of what a friend is not." Discusses Chaucer's adjustments to Boccaccio's depiction of the friendship, and suggests that his double view results from the doubleness of Chaucer's narrative perspective.

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