ABSTRACT
W e rightly think about the characters of Troilus and Criseyde as if they were real people, however careful we may be to think in terms o f the poet’s art. There is no other way to discuss them, yet we must also take into account the poet’s manner o f presenting them. Most fundamentally we have to remember that we are dealing with a received story, a series o f events, whose outline and outcome the poet could not change if it were to remain that story. W e need also to remember the conventions, implicit and explicit. Many causal connections are omitted. Much that was taken for granted we miss, and we take for granted certain elements that did not exist, like the desire for complete consistency and unity in a work o f art.
