This thesis is a study of Shakespeare's character Troilus, from his play Troilus and Cressida, and a survey of twentieth-century criticism.

No description available.

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.

This study proposes to demonstrate that the Platonic doctrine of the ennobling power of love is of paramount importance in a number of Shakespeare's plays. This study has been limited to the three love tragedies because in them the ennobling power of love is a major theme, affecting both the characters and the plot structure. The plays to be studied are Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, and Antony and Cleopatra.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

No description available.

My argument assesses and reconfigures binary structures in Shakespeare’s plays and in Shakespeare criticism. I contend that ideas in early modern literature often exhibit three aspects, but that critics, who mostly rely upon a binary philosophical vocabulary, tend to notice only two aspects at a time, thereby “digesting” the third. My opening chapter theorizes the superimposition of triadic structures upon dyads, arguing that this new polyrhythmic strategy helps recapture an early modern philosophical perspective by circumventing the entrenched binary categories we have inherited from the Enlightenment. In Chapter Two, I examine the relationship of tyranny and conscience in Tudor politics, Reformed psychology, and Richard III. Early modern political theorists often employ a binary opposition of kingship and tyranny, and historians typically draw a binary distinction between absolutists and resisters. I argue that there were in fact three ideological positions on offer which these binaries misrepresent. As well, Reformed psychology emphasizes the relationship of the individual subject and an objective God, unmediated by community, and I propose that this opposition of subjectivity and objectivity digests the idea of intersubjectivity. In Richard III, Shakespeare interrogates the implausibility of Tudor political binaries and stages a nostalgia for intersubjective community and conscience. In Chapter Three I read the debates on value in Troilus and Cressida alongside contemporary economic writings by Gerard de Malynes on currency reform and “merchandizing exchange.” Our current models of value – intrinsic and extrinsic, use and exchange, worth and price – are emphatically binary, but the mercantile practices that Malynes describes depend upon a triadic conception of value. My contention is that Troilus and Cressida becomes a less problematic problem play when value is conceived as triadic rather than dyadic. In Chapter Four I explore early modern scepticism in connection with Coriolanus. Reading Montaigne and Wittgenstein in parallel, I distinguish between various conceptions of truth that are regularly grouped together under the blanket term “scepticism.” Then I turn to read Coriolanus as an experiment in competing modes of early modern epistemology, arguing that the play ultimately endorses the same sort of polyphonous Pyrrhonian scepticism that we find in Montaigne and Wittgenstein.

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.

This study is aimed to read Shakespeare's problem comedies, Troilus and Cressida and Measure for Measure into the historical and cultural context of dynamically-changing English Renaissance society at the turn of the sixteenth century. In the historical context of emerging capitalism, growing economic crisis, reformed theology, changing social hierarchy, and increasing sexual control, this study investigates the nature of complicated moral problems that the plays consistently present. The primary argument is that the serious and dark picture of human dilemma is attributed not to Shakespeare's private imagination, but to social, political, economic, and religious crises in early modern England.

本論文以女性主義的觀點來探討莎士比亞的劇本＜脫愛勒斯與克萊西妲＞。傳統的讀法傾向於將克萊西妲視為典型的淫蕩女性；然而我想證明批評家及劇中男性的對她譴責之不當。事實上她是被父權文化所壓迫的受害者。 本文共分為一篇序論及五個章節。序論中簡介來自各方批評家對本劇 的評價以及我對於本主題的研究動機。首章探討男女之間失衡的關係並揭露對愛情偏頗的觀念如何貶低了劇中戀人。第二章試圖揭穿劇中男性對於海倫的價值所持之無理性的觀念，海倫被貶為商品，一種所有物。第三章描述脫愛勒斯與克萊西妲之間的會面並仔細觀察克萊西妲對於女人規範的遵從。然而她刻意的屈從女性的角色反而被解釋為城府深沉的輕浮女子。第四章我希望顛覆傳統上所謂的「真誠的脫愛勒斯與虛偽的克萊西妲」之謬論。事實上她只是脫愛勒斯滿足性慾的獵物。她身為一個弱女子仰人鼻息的處境使得她沒有能力去愛。在最後一章我希望對本劇提供一個全面性的重新評估。藉由細心地審視莎士比亞對待這個傳奇性故事的描寫手法，我們可以發現莎氏其實免除了克萊西妲的罪過，她是被嚴重的誤解為虛偽的原型。 / The aim of this study is to examine Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida from a feminist perspective. Traditional reading tends to deem Shakespeare's Cressida to be a type of inconstancy, a female wanton, but I would like to prove that she does not eserve all the blame from critics as well as from the men in the play. In fact, she is oppressed and victimized in her patriarchal culture. The thesis is composed of one introduction and five chapters. The Introduction briefly outlines the various assessments from critics and the motivation of my research on the topic. Chapter One discusses the unbalanced relationship between man and woman, and uncovers how the contaminated conception of love degrades the lovers in the play. Chapter Two attempts to expose the irrationality of the male characters with regard to the worth of Helen, who is reduced to the status of commodity. Chapter Three delineates Troilus and Cressida's encounter, and scrutinizes Cressida's conformity to woman's decorum. However, her intentional subjection to woman's role is interpreted as a calculating flirt. In Chapter Four, I would like to subvert the traditional fallacy of "true Troilus" and "false Cressida." In fact, Cressida is only a prey to Troilus' sexual appetite. Her precarious position as a powerless woman renders her incapable of love. In the last Chapter, I wish to provide an overall reappraisal to the play. By carefully examining Shakespeare's treatment of the legendary story, we may discover that the playwright indeed exonerates Cressida who is seriously misunderstood as an archetype of falsehood.