Troilus is the hero, but Criseyde is the more appealing character
Title: “Troilus is the hero, but Criseyde is the more appealing character.”
The aim of this work is to analyze the complex and contradictory characters presented in Chaucer`s Book of Troilus and Criseyde. Therefore it is necessary to point out some crucial aspects of the poem, such as the literary genres the poem refers to and the typical roles dealing with the genre of romance, which is the main literary category the poem belongs to. Chaucer`s extraordinary ability to combine, fuse and match different literary genres makes the Book of Troilus and Criseyde one of the masterpieces of Medieval English literature. The author, once come into contact with the French and Italian literary tradition, gives birth to a poem that is “distinctively and essentially sui generis” (Brown 186). In fact It is hard to establish which genre Troilus and Criseyde belongs to, but recent critics classify the poem as a “plurality or hibridity of genres” (Brown 185). The most punctual definition comes from Barry Windeatt, who depicts the poem as a blend of “epic, romance, history, tragedy, drama, [...] and lyric” (Brown 186).
Even if the poem constantly interchanges from one genre to another, it is possible to highlight a stronger inclination towards both epic (e.g. proemio, invocations to Greek deities) and romance (e.g. the theme of love affair and the leitmotiv of the courtly hero).
In addition to it, Chaucer is in debt also with the fabliau genre and with the Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, whose version of Troilus and Criseyde is Chaucer`s main source of inspiration. The literary genre called “fabliau” refers to French brief comic tales in verse, usually coarse and dirty. It also parodies in a very cynical way the high values and ideals of courtly
The aim of this work is to analyze the complex and contradictory characters presented in Chaucer`s Book of Troilus and Criseyde. Therefore it is necessary to point out some crucial aspects of the poem, such as the literary genres the poem refers to and the typical roles dealing with the genre of romance, which is the main literary category the poem belongs to. Chaucer`s extraordinary ability to combine, fuse and match different literary genres makes the Book of Troilus and Criseyde one of the masterpieces of Medieval English literature. The author, once come into contact with the French and Italian literary tradition, gives birth to a poem that is “distinctively and essentially sui generis” (Brown 186). In fact It is hard to establish which genre Troilus and Criseyde belongs to, but recent critics classify the poem as a “plurality or hibridity of genres” (Brown 185). The most punctual definition comes from Barry Windeatt, who depicts the poem as a blend of “epic, romance, history, tragedy, drama, [...] and lyric” (Brown 186).
Even if the poem constantly interchanges from one genre to another, it is possible to highlight a stronger inclination towards both epic (e.g. proemio, invocations to Greek deities) and romance (e.g. the theme of love affair and the leitmotiv of the courtly hero).
In addition to it, Chaucer is in debt also with the fabliau genre and with the Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio, whose version of Troilus and Criseyde is Chaucer`s main source of inspiration. The literary genre called “fabliau” refers to French brief comic tales in verse, usually coarse and dirty. It also parodies in a very cynical way the high values and ideals of courtly
Bibliography: Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde Trans. Barry Windeatt. United States: Oxford University Press Inc, .2008. Print Chaucer, Geoffrey, Larry Dean Benson. The riverside Chaucer: Reissued with a new foreword by Christopher Cannon. Great Britain: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print Spearing, A. Colin. Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. Great Britain: The Camelot Press Ltd., 1976. Print Peter Brown, Ed. A companion to Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000. Print Brewer, Derek. A New Introduction to Chaucer. United States of America: Addison Wesley Longman, 2004. Print Steve Ellis, Ed. Chaucer: an Oxford guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Oxford, UK; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994. Print Morgan, Gerald. The tragic argument of Troilus and Criseyde (vol. 1). Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. Print McAlpine, Monica. The Genre of Troilus and Criseyde. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978. Print