Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. by James M. Dean and Harriet Spiegel

Abstract

Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. Edited by James M. Dean and Harriet Spiegel. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2016. Pp. lxviii, 391. ISBN: 978-155481-005-5. $19.95 (paperback); $13.95 (ebook).When I first started teaching medieval literature at the university level, there were no adequate teaching editions of Chaucer's great, yet difficult poem Troilus and Criseyde. It is experientially hard for the 'yonge, fresshe folks, he or she' addressed in the poem's envoi to gain access to it except through feats of the sympathetic imagination. Before we even get there, though, both the poem's language and its imbrication in an increasingly inaccessible literary tradition daunt the fresh young contemporary readers of Middle English. Unlike the Canterbury Tales, for the Troilus there has been little in the way of pedagogical materials that would help bridge the gap between the poem's demands and the skills and experience of its new readers.We are now gifted with two excellent teaching editions of the Troilus: alongside the Norton, edited by Stephen A. Barney and using the same critical text as the standard Riverside Chaucer, Broadview now offers this new edition, whose different textual basis and supplementary choices make it a worthy alternative more suitable in many pedagogical situations. Its text is based on a single manuscript, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, Manuscript 61 (Cp), emended from other manuscripts only where the base manuscript is clearly defective. As the editors note, Cp is an excellent witness from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, easily available in digital format as well as facsimile for anyone who wishes to check a reading. As a consequence of the single-text approach, the notes treat textual considerations more frequently than is usual in teaching editions, and account for every major editorial intervention. For courses in Chaucer or medieval literature, these notes seem directed less toward students than toward instructors, who may be more familiar with the Riverside edition and thus would benefit from the orientation to this text. Otherwise the notes offer clear paraphrases of difficult passages, with relatively few gestures toward other literary works important to the poem's complex intertextuality. Marginal glosses are generous, which makes up partly for the too-brief glossary. Anyone wishing to pay detailed attention to lexis, however, would need to consult other reference works like the Middle English Dictionary or A Chaucer Glossary.The text is accompanied by an up-to-date introduction covering Chaucer's life and times, his literary affiliations, and his professional positions in the king's household; brief treatments of the literary tradition behind Troilus, the poem's characters, structure, philosophical stance, and pagan setting; versification and reception; and a succinct summary of many of the influential interpretations of the poem from the comparatist approach of Lewis, through the debates between patristic exegetes and New Critics; and also attending to feminist, new historicist, postmodern, and queer theory approaches. …