Distance and Predestination in "Troilus and Criseyde."

Description: Assesses the "artistic role" in TC of the narrator--a commentator and a "historian [who] meticulously maintains a distance between himself and the events in the story." Explores "temporal, spatial, aesthetic, and religious" devices in the poem (especially in the proems) that help to create a "sense of distance between Chaucer as character and his story," arguing this "sense of distance and aloofness" is "the artistic correlative to the concept of predestination." The "historian-narrator," then, is analogous to God as foreknower but not causer of outcomes. Troilus approaches the narrator's perspective when he accepts destiny.

Chaucer Subjects: Troilus and Criseyde
Style and Versification
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations