Chaucer and the Poets

Winthrop Wetherbee is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities Emeritus at Cornell University.

• Introduction1. The Narrator, Troilus, and the Poetic Agenda2. Love Psychology: The Troilus and the Roman de la Rose3. History versus the Individual: Vergil and Ovid in the Troilus4. Thebes and Troy: Statius and Dante's Statius5. Dante and the Troilus6. Character and Action: Criseyde and the Narrator7. Troilus Alone8. The Ending of the Troilus

"There is no doubt that this book is one of the most important works, not only on Troilus, but on Chaucer's poetry as a whole, to have appeared in recent years. Without putting forward elaborate theoretical propositions, without an excessive use of secondary material, without unnecessary jargon, Winthrop Wetherbee has written something with which all Chaucerians (and many medievalists) will have to reckon in the future."-Speculum "This book takes a distinguished place in the controversy over Chaucer's reading of the classics and, more generally, over the nature of classical influence in later medieval poetry. Wetherbee argues convincingly that Chaucer knows several of the Latin classics-especially Vergil, Ovid, and Statius-directly, thoroughly, and in sufficient detail to make complicated, subtle allusions to their poetry."-Modern Language Quarterly