Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde

Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde
ISBN-10
1501707094
ISBN-13
9781501707094
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
256
Language
English
Published
2016-11-01
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Author
Winthrop Wetherbee

Description

In this sensitive reading of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Winthrop Wetherbee redefines the nature of Chaucer’s poetic vision. Using as a starting point Chaucer’s profound admiration for the achievement of Dante and the classical poets, Wetherbee sees the Troilus as much more than a courtly treatment of an event in ancient history—it is, he asserts, a major statement about the poetic tradition from which it emerges. Wetherbee demonstrates the evolution of the poet-narrator of the Troilus, who begins as a poet of romance, bound by the characters’ limited worldview, but who in the end becomes a poet capable of realizing the tragic and ultimately the spiritual implications of his story.

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