Courtly Love Hate Is Undead: Sadomasochistic Privilege in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Author / Editor
Megna, Paul.

Title
Courtly Love Hate Is Undead: Sadomasochistic Privilege in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde."

Published
In Russell Sbriglia, ed. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 267-89.

Description
Uses Slavoj Žižek's analysis of privilege and courtly love to assess the major characters of TC: the "servile aggression" of the narrator; Pandarus's "patriarchal privilege"; Crisyede's "ethically heroic" decisions about loving her husband, Troilus, and Diomede; and Troilus's transition from "masochistic courtly lover" to "sadistic courtly hater." Compares these with Shakespeare's Troilus and Othello; Leonard, in Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket"; and the "sadomasochistic privilege" of 2014 California spree-killer Elliot Rodger.

Contributor
Sbriglia, Russell, ed.

Alternative Title
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek .

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde