A Study of Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde文献综述

 2022-08-11 03:08

Literature Review

Abstract: Based on CNKI China Academic Journal paper database and authentic foreign monograph, this article makes a survey of the previous researches on Chaucerrsquo;s Troilus and Criseyde or other materials closely related to the topic. After collecting, sorting out and analyzing the research results of this medieval poem, a conclusion can be made that the domestic researching trend of analyzing the story is mostly from the perspective of feminism and courtly love; while there are abundant and remarkable literary criticism abroad. The confronting problems are the insufficient domestic studies and repeated research perspectives in the general academic literature research field. These deficiencies pose new challenges to domestic medieval literature research, but also point out a new direction.

Key words: Chaucer; Troilus and Criseyde; studies; abroad; home

  1. Introduction

When it comes to one of Chaucerrsquo;s greatest works, for a long time, many studies have focused their attention on the female character Criseyde to explore the authorrsquo;s attitude and thinking towards feminism, or the courtly love between Troilus and Criseyde in terms of the natural sexual behavior; while the study which put emphasis on the hero Troilus appears much less frequently. Despite of that, although there are numerous researches about Chaucer and his work aboard, only few academic studies of this poet can be found in Chinese medieval literature research field. Whatrsquo;s worse, the broadness of this kind of research still needs to be enlarged.

From the first World War to the 1950s, Western formalist literary criticism, represented by new criticism, developed rapidly. The new criticism emphasizes the objectivity of criticism, regards the work as an independent and self-sufficient work of art, and ignores the authorrsquo;s writing intention and social context. Boothrsquo;s The Rhetoric of Fiction pays more attention to the author and the reader, aiming to systematically study the techniques and means of authorsrsquo; influence and control over the readers. When Boothrsquo;s work came out, it was the decline of “external criticism” on the authorrsquo;s life, social context and other factors, and the boom of “internal criticism” on the text itself. In such an atmosphere, if we emphasize the author outside the text, it is undoubtedly against the historical trend. Therefore, the concept of “implied author” came into being.

Since there is always a strong bond between the author and the reader in medieval poetry, and usually the poet will show up in the process of story telling as “I”, who are actually telling the story. Readers may make a mistake or find it hard to distinguish whether it is the real author expressing or a character in his or her creation. As a result, thanks to the invention of Wayne Booth, the implied author can be a beneficial concept for readers and critics to better understand Chaucerrsquo;s work.

  1. Different versions of the love story of Troilus and Criseyde

“Troilus and Criseyde” is a traditional courtly love story set in the Trojan War. Although the names of the characters are basically from Homerrsquo;s Iliad, the story itself was created in the middle ages. Since then, the love story between Troilus and Criseyde has been recreated successively in various forms by great writers of different times, and thus, it has gradually become one of the classic prototypes in English literature. The most famous ones are Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Testament of Cresseid by Robert Henryson, and Troilus and Cressida by William Shakespeare. Before that, Benoicirc;t de Sainte-More, a French poet, wrote the old French poem Roman de Troie; in the late 1930s, Boccaccio, a great Italian writer, wrote “Filostrato”. According to these two books, Chaucer had the main basis of creating his long poem Troilus and Criseyde.

  1. Relative researches on the Chaucerrsquo;s work Troilus and Criseyde

3.1 Foreign Research Status

Studies on Chaucer and his work abroad are extremely sufficient with a historical context. There are two core journals about Chaucer, The Chaucer Review and Studies in the Age of Chaucer, providing the thesis and dissertation mainly of Chaucer or about other works at that period of time. After collecting, exploring and analyzing, their research results can be sorted into three different aspects. As to the poem Troilus and Criseyde, scholars point of views vary with each other.

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