Structural Parallels Between Book 1 and Book 4

The narrative of Book 4 is shaped so as to accord with such a reading. Both 1 and 4 open with invocations to

Furies that are derived from Statius (1,6-9; 4, 22-24), and in both the war creates a crisis(Calkas's defection,

Antenor's capture) that leads to a scene of pleading (Criseyde before Hector, Calkas before the Greeks) and

then to a large public event (the feast of the Palladion, the Trojan parliament) at both of which Troilus is stricken

and retires alone. He is then in both cases visited by a consoling Pandarus, whereupon the scene shifts, again

in both cases, to Criseyde, whom we find first with her ladies, then alone, then with Pandarus. The first section

of the poem moves towards its conclusion with Troilus and Criseyde in bed together and in accord, and so

too does (with unhappy qualifications) Book 4.

(Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History [1991], p. 128)