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The purpose of this study is to trace the changes that the story of Troilus-Cressida underwent from age to age and to discover how these came about and how they influenced the form and concept of Chaucer's and Shakespeare's versions of the tale.

Conversations among scholars in the study of Chaucer have been essential in constructing the foundations on which we now stand. However, in light of recent pressures in the very competitive and practical aspects of academic life, the scholarly conversation is often lost amidst the desire to find any obscure point on which to publish simply for the reason that no one has yet said anything about it. There is certainly a usefulness to exploring all facets of Chaucer's work, but there is also a need to slough off the cumbersome coat of 'publish-or-perish' scholarship in favor of carrying on a more meaningful conversation which may contribute to new readings or interpretations, epiphanies, or canon-altering revelations. This bibliography was begun for two purposes. First, as a bibliography, it was made to serve its users in a convenient and comprehensive manner. Second, it was made to illustrate the conversations of recent years, or lack thereof, among scholars concerned with the character and actions of Criseyde in the Troilus. Criseyde is arguably the quintessential character in Chaucer's works. She is wonderfully enigmatic, and her role in the Troilus spawned six hundred years of debate. The chapters which follow testify to the complexity of Criseyde. As she caught the eye of multiple authors from classical antiquity to the Elizabethan age, she continues to entice scholars to read and re-read her in various articles, chapters, and books. This is supported by the fact that nearly one quarter of all scholarship published (over four hundred works) on Troilus and Criseyde since 1986 deals expressly with Criseyde, herself. This bibliography is constructed as it is in the hope of providing a more convenient tool for scholars. The Riverside Chaucer serves as an adequate starting point because of its comprehensive compilation of notes and studies on Chaucer's works, including the Troilus. Since nothing of similar stature has appeared since, this bibliography will begin in 1986, the year in which the Riverside's compilation came to an end. Chapter 1 of this study looks at recent scholarship which examines the origins of Chaucer's Criseyde. While W.W. Skeat and R.K. Root provided us long ago with detailed lists and accounts of Chaucer's sources for the Troilus, today's scholars continue to make new additions to these, as well as new interpretations and readings which suggest further, new or different sources. The final chapter of this work examines the scholarship that reads Criseyde's role in the poem as a whole, not focusing on any one scene or act. Scholars such as David Aers and Jill Mann provide critiques on the nature of Criseyde from our initial sight of her in Book I to her final departure from the poem in Book V. Interestingly, recent scholarship on Criseyde tends to focus on one or more specific scenes in a specific book within the poem. Scholars deconstruct Criseyde's entrance at the Palladium in Book I, her reaction to Pandarus' goading her to love Troilus in Book II, or descriptions of her dress in the Greek camp in Book IV. Therefore, in structuring this bibliography, rather than focusing on themes, I sought to frame the scholarship with the poem's own narrative structure. Thus, chapters two, three, four, and five are comprised of scholarship that examines Books I, II, III, and Books IV and V of the Troilus. Users who question certain scenes in one of the poem's books can then look to the corresponding chapter of this bibliography to find whether scholars have conversed about the scene or scenes in question. In a sense, this bibliography examines Criseyde's existence prior to Chaucer's poem, her activity within Chaucer's poem, and her reputation upon exiting Chaucer's poem. This bibliography seeks to put scholarship together in such a way as to confirm whether or not scholars are continuing conversations about Chaucer's Criseyde. In many cases we find that conversations do exist and are carried forward. New landmarks in scholarship, for example Piero Boitani's edited collection The European Tragedy of the Troilus or David Aers' Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, are made apparent by the number of other scholars conversing on arguments and suggestions made by the contributing authors of these two works. Scholars pick up where their predecessors leave off in continuing arguments, patterns of interpretation, and close readings of Criseyde. Further, scholars begin new conversations. In some instances, both old and new conversations fail to move forward, whether by mischance or 'entente.' It is essential that we continue these colloquial discussions of scholarship as the critical scope of Chaucer studies widens, rather than rocketing forward as it did with the work of Skeat, Root, Donaldson, and Robertson in the early and mid twentieth-century. Certainly, we can disagree, but let us remember the ease with which C.S. Lewis discusses Medieval literature in his Discarded Image and the warmth of a conference session at MLA, NCS, or Kalamazoo, in which Chaucerians gather to move forward as one body rather than a mix of warring clans, prima donnas, or renegade dissenters. Scholarship aside, I offer this bibliography lastly to demonstrate the wonders of Chaucer's poetic arts and their chief exemplar, Criseyde. / Master of Arts

This dissertation examines the concept of intention and its relationship to the idea of the moral self in late medieval England. Late medieval English writers often identified intention, as opposed to action, as the site of moral identity. Drawing on medieval legal distinctions between intended and unintended wrongdoings, penitential and confessional definitions of sin as intention (as opposed to sinful action), this dissertation traces the development of intention-based concepts of the moral self in English chronicles, parliamentary legislation and petitions related to the Rising of 1381, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, The Testimony of William Thorpe, and The Book of Margery Kempe;. These texts employed contemporary notions of intention to represent interiority and to establish morally coherent narratives. Late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century writers, however, not only draw on contemporary discussions of morality but also reshape them, applying theories of intention but nuancing and transforming them in the process. These discussions of intention inform our understanding the late medieval notion of the subject.

My dissertation demonstrates the importance of an examination of the literary works included as part of the curriculum in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century English grammar schools both for understanding the instruction of generations of schoolchildren and for reading the Middle English literature created and read by those trained in these schools. As Chapter 1 explains, thirty-four extant manuscripts used in an educational context in late medieval England, listed with their contents in the Appendix, suggest the identification of seven literary works that appear to have been taught most often: Disticha Catonis, Stans puer ad mensam, Cartula, Peniteas cito, Facetus, Liber Parabolarum, and Ecloga Theoduli. Considering these schoolbooks both individually and as a group reveals their usefulness for teachers and the instruction that they share: an emphasis on epistolary conventions, an awareness of the malleability of selves and social hierarchies, and the prioritization of ordinary human experience. As this project shows, the influence of the lessons of the grammar classroom pervades the production of vernacular literature and the reading practices of contemporary audiences. In Chapter 2, a reading of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde informed with a knowledge of the formal features of letter writing, particularly the attention to audience stressed in the grammar schoolbooks, reveals Criseyde’s control of both the story’s ending and the responses of readers through her final letter to Troilus. Chapter 3 offers a reexamination of The Book of Margery Kempe that argues against Kempe’s presumed illiteracy and demonstrates how she utilizes classroom teachings on self presentation in both her lived experience and the writing of her Book to manipulate her reception by her contemporaries and readers of the text. The final chapter turns to the works of John Lydgate to show how he incorporated the schoolroom’s emphasis on the diversity of ordinary human experience into his influential Fall of Princes, thereby spreading grammar school lessons to new audiences. Appreciating the teachings of the literary schoolbooks thus enables not only a better understanding of the grammar curriculum that shaped schoolchildren for two centuries but also a recognition of schoolbooks’ profound effect on authors and audiences in late medieval England. / text

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Since Benoit de Sainte-Maure's creation of the Briseida story, Criseida has evolved as one of the most infamous heroines in European literature, an inconstant femme fatale. This study analyzes four different receptions of the Criseida story with a special emphasis on the antifeminist tradition. An interesting pattern arises from the ways in which four British writers render Criseida: Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Crisevde is a response to the antifeminist tradition of the story (particularly to Giovanni Boccaccio's II Filostrato); Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid is a direct response to Chaucer's poem; William Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida aligns itself with the antifeminist tradition, but in a different way; and John Dryden's Troilus and Cressida or Truth Found Too Late is a straight rewriting of Shakespeare's play. These works themselves form an interesting canon within the whole tradition. All four writers are not only readers of the continually evolving story of Criseida but also critics, writers, and literary historians in the Jaussian sense. They critique their predecessors' works, write what they have conceived from the tradition of the story, and reinterpret the old works in that historical context.