Monday, March 5, 2007

Barney, Stephen A. “Troilus Bound”

Barney, Stephen A. “Troilus Bound”. Speculum. 47.3 (1972): 445-458.

Barney is looking at the theme of imprisonment in the Troilus. In order to do this he examines source material as well as the Canterbury Tales to find common themes of imprisonment. There are two types of bondage: the bondage of Fortune and the bondage of love. The bondage of Fortune, the author notes, is mentioned in “The Knight’s tale” in connection with Theseus’s chain of love speech (which is also Boethian). The bondage of love is then broken up into three kinds: sexual attraction, marriage, and the “harmonious linkages of the universe”. Barney mentions that both the Miller and the Merchant call marriage a trap, which seems to contrast Chaucer’s typically light hearted attitude towards sexual desire. This article was a little hard to get through because the thesis statement was a little hard to find. But as an explanation of the relational dynamics of Chaucer, it works well enough.

On JSTOR. Rachel M

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