English Language and Literature Commons^™

Tied In Lusty Leese: Animalization And Agency In Troilus And Criseyde, Kendra Marie Slayton

Masters Theses

Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde is a tale fraught with ambiguity, and particularly so concerning issues of gender, agency, and free will. Critical readings often focus on depicting TC as Chaucer’s didactic portrayal of a flawed and transitory humanity, with Troilus’s death and transcendence taken as the primary lens through which to seek final meaning in the poem. However, I argue that Chaucer’s use of natural tropes, vocabulary, and artistry also reveal that the poem, before it reaches its transcendental ending, indicts not only the mortal world at large but more specifically the at-times misogynist conventions of the genre itself. Specifically, …