TERMS: courtly love, chivalric romance, heroic poem, tragi-comedy, palinode, rime royal
THEMES: English culture and society in the aftermath of the Norman invasion. The impact of Chaucer's travels in Italy. The nature of the medieval romance and the courtly love convention. Chaucer's adaptation of Boethius's views on free will. Fortune and her wheel. Tensions between this-worldly and other-worldly perspectives in the epilogue.
READINGS: Troilus and Criseyde