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The Character of Criseyde In Troilus & Criseyde

The purpose of this research is to examine the character of Criseyde in Chaucer's narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde. The plan of the research will be to set forth the narrative context in which Criseyde's character emerges and then to discuss the development of her personality, in connection to both the development of the personality of Troilus and the thematic structure of the poem as a whole.

The internal psychological character of Criseyde cannot be considered apart from her external sociological character. Further, her individual psychology seems to be most clearly understood in the context of prevailing cultural constructions of what women in general either are or should be. Now this can be a problematic exercise, inasmuch as there is evidence that Chaucer's own society was a cultural construction undergoing significant change. According to Coghill, Chaucer "attributed the fashions in love current in fourteenth-century Christendom, to his Trojan lovers," while also benefiting from two facts that make Troilus and Criseyde immune to charges of immorality (Coghill xxi). The first fact is that Criseyde, as a widow, does not carry the baggage of the "mystical value" of virginity prevalent in the culture of courtly love (Coghill xxi). Now this argues that Chaucer's social and cultural stance was quite steady and highly structured, subject, indeed, to Christian values. But the second fact of benefit to Chaucer's narrative vis-a-vis transforming fourteenth-century culture is more fundamental to the heart of the narrative. Coghill refers to a key difference between Troilus and Criseyde and other medieval romances, which is Chaucer's "full awareness that a romantic hero is often ridiculous, especially at his most romantic; but he is not in the least the less sympathetic for being so" (Coghill xxiv). This argues a sense of psychological realism in Chaucer's conception that runs counter to what could be called the received wisdom of the ...

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The Character of Criseyde In Troilus & Criseyde. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:33, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712065.html