An edition of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

Abstract

My purpose in writing this thesis has been to produce an edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde which makes that long and wonderful poem accessible to readers who are new to the language and literature of medieval England. One intended outcome of the thesis is that the edition be used as a teaching text in an introductory course in Middle English literature offered by the Department of English Language and Literature of Victoria University of Wellington, but the edition is designed to stand alone, outside the framework of any particular university course. The edition contains an introduction, designed to assist the reader by placing the poem in its cultural context, and a running glossary of difficult words and phrases presented alongside the text of the poem, designed to assist the reader with those aspects of Chaucer's English which are different from our own. The essay opening the thesis provides a rationale for the various aspects of the edition. My decision to base the edition on the text of the Riverside is justified by my assessment of the Riverside as a trustworthy rendition of the poem, following a review of the scholarship surrounding the textual tradition of Troilus and a careful comparison of the Riverside's text with a MS facsimile and several other editions. The purpose and conventions of the glosses and notes accompanying the text are then explained. Finally, a justification for and brief description of the critical material included in the introduction is given. An exact reproduction of the edition in the form it will be published by the English Department as Student Notes then follows. The introduction to the edition is divided up into sections discussing the poem's text and audience, its sources, the phenomenon of Courtly Love, Boethian philosophy, medieval astronomy and astrology, and Chaucer's language. At the end of the introduction there is a select bibliography divided into these sections, as well as sections containing general works, and other editions of the poem. A guide to using the edition—for the most part a description of the edition's conventions—immediately precedes the text of the poem. The five books of the poem, accompanied by side-glosses and footnotes, form the remainder of the edition.