ABSTRACT

The affair of Troilus and Criseyde came to be accepted in English literature as a classical love-story like those of Jason and Medea or Ulysses and Penelope, but the ancient world knew nothing of their passion. The love-story first appears in Benoit de Sainte-Maure’s long French poem Roman de Troie, which transformed the meagre details of Dares and Dictys into a lavish romance of the pagan world with a distinctly pro-Trojan bias. The beautiful final lines of Troilus, which recommend the love of Christ instead of the vagaries of human affection, seem not to have been thought a sufficiently clear moral to the story, and several attempts were made to remedy the perceived defect. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is unique in its time and remained exceptional thereafter in refusing to make Criseyde an exemplum of feminine wickedness. Troilus is more various, with many more competing layers and aspects, than most discussions of it recognize.