For the Shakespeare play, see Troilus and Cressida.
Geoffrey Chaucer reciting before nobles
Troilus and Criseyde (/ˈtrɔɪləs ...krɪˈseɪdə/) is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war during the siege of Troy. It was written in rime royale and probably completed during the mid-1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it as the poet's finest work. As a finished long poem, it is more self-contained than the better known but ultimately unfinished The Canterbury Tales. This poem is often considered the source of the phrase: "all good things must come to an end" (3.615).
Although Troilus is a character from Ancient Greek literature, the expanded story of him as a lover was of Medieval origin. The first known version is from Benoît de Sainte-Maure's poem Roman de Troie, but Chaucer's principal source appears to have been Boccaccio, who re-wrote the tale in his Il Filostrato. Chaucer attributes the story to a "Lollius" (whom he also mentions in The House of Fame), although no writer with this name is known.[1] Chaucer's version can be said to reflect a less cynical and less misogynistic world-view than Boccaccio's, casting Criseyde as fearful and sincere rather than simply fickle and having been led astray by the eloquent and perfidious Pandarus. It also inflects the sorrow of the story with humour.
The poem had an important legacy for later writers. Robert Henryson's Scots poem The Testament of Cresseid imagined a rambunctious fate for Criseyde not given by Chaucer. In historical editions of the English Troilus and Criseyde, Henryson's distinct and separate work was sometimes included without accreditation as an "epilogue" to Chaucer's tale. Other texts, for example, John Metham's Amoryus and Cleopes (c. 1449), adapt language and authorship strategies from the famous predecessor poem.[2] Shakespeare's tragedy Troilus and Cressida, although much darker in tone, was also based in part on the material.
Troilus and Criseyde are usually considered to be a courtly romance, although the generic classification is an area of significant debate in most Middle English literature. It is part of the Matter of Rome cycle, a fact which Chaucer emphasizes.[3]
^Hornstein, Lillian Herlands (1948). "Petrarch's Laelius, Chaucer's Lollius?". Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. 63 (1). Modern Language Association: 64–84. doi:10.2307/459407. JSTOR 459407.
^Richard Utz, "Writing Alternative Worlds: Rituals of Authorship and Authority in Late Medieval Theological and Literary Discourse." In: Creations: Medieval Rituals, the Arts, and the Concept of Creation. Ed. Sven Rune Havsteen, Nils Holger Petersen, Heinrich W. Schwab, and Eyolf Østrem. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007, pp. 121–38.
^C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, pp. 30–31, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969.
and 27 Related for: Troilus and Criseyde information
TroilusandCriseyde (/ˈtrɔɪləs ... krɪˈseɪdə/) is an epic poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus...
Troilus (English: /ˈtrɔɪləs/ or /ˈtroʊələs/; Ancient Greek: Τρωΐλος, romanized: Troïlos; Latin: Troilus) is a legendary character associated with the...
in particular Chaucer's version of the tale, TroilusandCriseyde, but also John Lydgate's Troy Book and Caxton's translation of the Recuyell of the Historyes...
"to set the world on six and seven", is used by Geoffrey Chaucer in his TroilusandCriseyde. It dates from the mid-1380s and seems from its context to...
(1374 to 1386). His Parlement of Foules, The Legend of Good Women, andTroilusandCriseyde all date from this time. It is believed that he started The Canterbury...
English context, earlier than that. Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century TroilusandCriseyde uses it in a way that shows it was already a traditional religious...
quality. Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems TroilusandCriseydeand the Parlement of Foules, written in the later fourteenth century...
antisemitic" and that Peake's claim "was not antisemitic". Guilty Until Proved Innocent (2009), Dina Geoffrey Chaucer – TroilusandCriseyde (2009), Criseyde (dramatised...
and he even visited Italy two or three times. His TroilusandCriseyde, written in the 1380s, begins as follows, using lines sometimes of 11, and sometimes...
appears in the Iliad but has no connection with Troilus, Diomedes or Calchas. Indeed, the story of Troilusand Cressida does not appear in any Greek legends...
third longest of Chaucer's works, after The Canterbury Tales andTroilusandCriseyde, and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the...
formed a poisonous snake from her hair, which bit and killed him. In Book I of Chaucer's TroilusandCriseyde, the narrator calls upon her to help him to write...
a term used in the Middle English poem TroilusandCriseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, in a line given to Criseyde: "at dulcarnoun, right at my wittes ende"...
Hell in Dante's Inferno, and winkingly, as between Pandarus andCriseyde in Chaucer's Troilus. The Marquis de Sade was famously fascinated with "perverse"...
compliments in their verse: Chaucer dedicated his TroilusandCriseyde in part to "moral Gower", and Gower reciprocated by placing a speech in praise of...
Paradiso, Cantos 18 through 20 Il Filostrato, IV.3. Troilusand Cressida, Book IV.50–56 TroilusandCriseyde, Book IV.53 Chronica do Emperador Clarimundo, pages...
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem TroilusandCriseyde (1370), Pandarus plays the same role, though Chaucer's Pandarus is Criseyde's uncle, not her cousin. Chaucer's...
poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1621 to 1622. He is noted for his translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's TroilusandCriseyde into...
books, including The Song of Songs (1925), TroilusandCriseyde (1927), The Canterbury Tales (1928), and The Four Gospels (1931) are considered classics...
Shahnameh. In English, Beowulf and Chaucer's TroilusandCriseyde are among the first important long poems. The long poem thrived and gained new vitality in the...
the romance between Troilusand Chryseis described in Geoffrey Chaucer's TroilusandCriseydeand in William Shakespeare's Troilusand Cressida is a medieval...
unfinished work The Legend of Good Women and briefly alluded to the myth in his epic poem TroilusandCriseyde. John Gower included the tale in his Confessio...
dedicates his poem TroilusandCriseyde to the contemporary poet John Gower and to Strode: "O moral Gower, this book I directe To the, and to the, philosophical...
and mental climate were naturally not dreamed of.... [In Chaucer's TroilusandCriseyde], [t]he manners, the fighting, the religious services, the very traffic-regulations...
Pyramus and Thisbe (Ancient Greek: Πύραμος καὶ Θίσβη, romanized: Pýramos kai Thísbe) are a pair of legendary, ill-fated lovers from Babylon whose story...
Global Information