ABSTRACT
In the Troilus, with one of the stories that he found among the trophies in Venus’s temple in the Parlement of Foules, he once more takes up the subject of love’s problems and paradoxes. The Troilus is an ambitious work, probably Chaucer’s first one to be laid out on a really large scale and to show, fully absorbed into its texture and structure, the impact of the new Italian models and ideas concerning the scope and dignity of poetry which were, in part at least, the fruit of the Italian journeys. The main differences between Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde have often been described. Criseida is a young widow, easily won, and seeing no reason why she should not have a love affair like everybody else. Superficially at least, Troilus is the least altered from Boccaccio’s conception of the character, in that he remains an ideal lover; but on analysis the changes are numerous and significant.
