• Critten Rory

In the minds of most modern readers, Chaucer's reputation stands on his vast, unfinished story collection, The Canterbury Tales (1388-1400). By contrast, the poet's late medieval contemporaries and early modern successors appear to have deemed his neatly crafted epic, Troilus and Criseyde (1382-86), to be of equal, if not superior, importance. This course invites students to undertake a close reading of the Troilus, Chaucer's masterwork of love, sex, war, and betrayal, and to think about some of its repercussions in later English literature.

We will begin with a consideration of the sources of Chaucer's poem, in particular the Filostrato of Giovanni Boccaccio (late 1330s), before proceeding to study the Middle English text of Troilus and Criseyde in detail. Of particular interest will be the tensions caused by Chaucer's attempts to explore Criseyde's infamous betrayal of her lover from Criseyde's own perspective. With a view to fleshing out our enquiry, we will also examine one later response to Chaucer's text: the Testament of Cresseid (before 1492) by the Scottish poet, Robert Henryson.

Students will write an exam (90 minutes) in the last week of class commenting on a passage from one of the set texts. Passages that might be set for commentary will be advertised as such as we progress through the readings.

• To introduce students to Chaucer's epic poem and to some of the sources that he adapted in its writing.
• To introduce students to the medieval traditions of writing about Troy.
• To enhance students' reading facility in Middle English. The goal is that students will more easily be able to access Middle English texts in student editions.

Reading for the course will be posted online (Moodle). A timetable will be announced in week 1.