ABSTRACT
Troilus and Criseyde has been regarded as Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘greatest artistic achievement’. The differences between Il Filostrato and Chaucer’s poem may be expressed from yet another standpoint, by considering the principal persons of the two stories. The most notable set of changes constitutes what the late C. S. Lewis called the ‘medievalisation’ of Boccaccio’s poem Il Filostrato. Chaucer the young Dreamer offers outright pity. In a later tradition of narrative there is room for prior manoeuvre, for softening the shock and for speaking a prepared elegy for transitory happiness. Pandarus probes and Troilus is on the defensive; until, outmatched, he at last reveals the name of his beloved. Troilus, as against Boccaccio’s Troilo, is an innocent in love: where Troilo can speak of past successes, Troilus can report only hearsay about lovers In Troilus and Criseyde, as in The Book of the Duchess, the only possible response is pity.
