ABSTRACT
In Troilus and Criseyde Geoffrey Chaucer has, in fact, taken the three central figures of the code as presented in the Roman de la Rose, the Lady, the Lover and the Friend, and has given them their correct characteristics, but at the same time he has made them credible human beings. Much of the attraction of Chaucer’s poem lies in his charting of the gradual progress of the love between Troilus and Criseyde. Troilus, Criseyde and Pandarus are real in a sense that the Man in Black never was, even though he may have represented John of Gaunt. In Chaucer Pandams has to tear off Troilus’s clothes and throw him into the bed of a Criseyde who quakes like an aspen leaf. Troilus is far less certain that it will work, but she persuades him that it is far better for both of them than flight together from Troy.
