Advice without Consent in Troilus and Criseyde and The Canterbury Tales

In Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Hector’s speech at the Trojan Parliament that Criseyde must not be traded to the Greeks for the war hero Antenor because the Trojans “usen here no wommen for to selle” (4.182) is doubly ironic.3 Not only do the Trojans in fact sell her for Antenor, but Pandarus has already procured her for Troilus, both of whom are present at the assembly. As Pandarus tells Troilus not long before the younger man first sleeps with her: “for the am I bicomen, / Bitwixen game and ernest, swich a meene / As maken wommen unto men to comen” (3.253-255).