Some secondary reading for Troilus and Criseyde

 

Relevant primary texts:

 

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. R.F. Green.

 

Robert Henryson, The Testament of Cresseid, in R.K. Gordon, ed., The Story of Troilus (1978). This also includes a translation of Boccaccio's Il Filostrato, Chaucer's primary source. There's a Penguin edition of the Testament available as well.

 

 

Selected criticism:

 

General:

 

Windeatt, Barry, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (1992)

 

Patterson, "Troilus and Criseyde and the Subject of History," in Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (1991), 84-164.

 

Monica McAlpine, The Genre of Troilus and Criseyde (1978?)

 

Wetherbee, Winthrop, Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde (1984)

 

 

 

Courtly Love:

 

Dodd, "The System of Courtly Love," in Schoeck, Richard J. and Jerome Taylor, Chaucer Criticism, 2 vols. (1961),  II, 1-15

 

Donaldson, "The Myth of Courtly Love," in E.T.  Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (1970)

 

Bloch, "'Mieux vaut jamais que tard': Romance, Philology, and Old French Letters,"Representations 36 (Fall 1991): 64-86

                                           

 

Criseyde (feminist and not-so-feminist accounts):

 

Donaldson, "Criseyde and Her Narrator," in E.T.  Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (1970)

       

Margherita, "Historicity and Femininity in Chaucer's Troilus,"  ch. 4 of Gayle Margherita, The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (1994)

 

Aers, "Masculine Identity in the Courtly Community," in David Aers,  Community, Gender, and Individual Identity (1988), 117-52.       

 

Dinshaw, "Reading Like a Man," in Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989), 28-64.

 

Donald R. Howard, "Experience, Language, and Consciousness: Troilus and Criseyde, II, 596-931," in Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley, ed. Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg (Rutgers U.P, 1970): 173-92, 362-3.

 

Stephen Knight, Geoffrey Chaucer (1986), chapter on C.

 

End of the Poem / Philosophical Issues:

 

Robertson, "Chaucerian Tragedy," in Schoeck, Chaucer Criticism, II, 86-121, or ELH XIX (1953): 1-37

 

Grady, "The Boethian Reader of Troilus and Criseyde" Chaucer Review 33 (2000)

 

Morton W. Bloomfield, "Distance and Predestination in Troilus and Criseyde," in Schoek & Taylor II

 

Donaldson, "The Ending of Troilus,"  in E.T.  Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (1970)

 

Fleming, John.  Classical Imitation and Interpretation in Chaucer's Troilus (1990)

 

Excellent bibliography on this topic in the notes to Matthew Giancarlo, “The Structure of Fate and the Devising of History in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” SAC 26 (2004)