Love and Love Not …

This chapter explores Geoffrey Chaucer’s (c. 1340–1400) verse narrative Troilus and Criseyde as a richly layered meditation on the complexities and contradictions of gentle love. Framed by Chaucer’s engagement with earlier European literature, including The Romance of the Rose and the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio, his tale recycles the tragic romance of Troilus and Criseyde, a legendary episode of the Trojan War. Chaucer cleverly swifts the work’s narrative focus between the passionate warrior Troilus, the vulnerable widow Criseyde, and the manipulative go-between Pandarus. Their interaction, described with irony as well as nostalgia, recalls a number of earlier medieval stories of love. Importantly, Chaucer offers a sympathetic portrayal of Criseyde as a victim of manipulation, in stark contrast with Boccaccio’s misogynistic portrayal in Filostrato . Ultimately, Troilus and Criseyde emerges not only as a “little tragedy” of doomed love but also as a sophisticated commentary on the limits of fin’amor in a world shaped by inherited codes of honour, social constraint, and human fallibility.