Criseyde’s Secrets and Her Letters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

Troilus and Criseyde is Geoffrey Chaucer’s re-rendering of Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato. In the second and fifth books of this poem, Chaucer presents either in summary or verbatim bodies of letters that are communicated between Troilus and Criseyde. My principal concern with this paper is to investigate the ways in which epistolary materiality is manifested in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, focusing on the letters of Criseyde. My claim is that the ways that Criseyde’s letters are articulated and (re-)presented manifest her complex material and affective realities that she most likely wants to conceal from the recipient Troilus. The reason why her letters constantly feel guarded, ambiguous, evasive, or prevaricating may be inseparable from the precarious circumstances that are beyond her control but she must still navigate through with utmost prudence and deliberation so as to sustain the values that she has been concerned about as a young widow. For the theoretical devices for my argument, I will draw on Gary’s Schneider’s epistolary materiality and Georg Simmel’s account on the peculiars of the letter as a mode of writing.