Troilus and Criseyde and Women’s Reading in Late Medieval England: Between Troy and Thebes
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Abstract
Troilus and Criseyde, written by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1382 and 1386, has long been considered one of his masterpieces. Although the narrator’s declared purpose is to recount the sorrow experienced by Troilus, Priam’s son, in the aftermath of his love affair with Criseyde, the contextualization of the story in Troy and the introduction of the matter of Thebes extend the story’s possible meanings. Starting from the analysis of the scene in Book II in which Criseyde reads, together with two of her ladies, about the siege of Thebes, our aim is to single out a series of elements which tie Troilus and Criseyde to the sociocultural context in which it was composed. These elements include, at a historical level of analysis, the connotations attached to the siege of Troy as the backdrop for the action; related to this, the overtones of the allusions to Theban history and to its sources in late-medieval England, and their implications for the plot; lastly, the extent to which the scene is representative of the reading practices common in England at the close of the 14th century, particularly among women.
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