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Chaucer's Troilus And Shakespeare's Troilus: A Comparison Of Their Declines, Laura Devon Flesor

Masters Theses

Only in the last ten years have critics worked to establish a more than superficial link between Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Part of the problem in this area of study was that scholars had ignored textual evidence proving that Shakespeare’s main source was Chaucer’s great poem. Current source-studies, outlined in the opening pages of this thesis, validate comparative treatments of the two texts.

This thesis steps beyond the issue of indebtedness into the realm of characterization, particularly the elements of Chaucer’s characterization of Troilus that Shakespeare chose to present to his Elizabethan audience and …