The Double Sorrow of Troilus: A Study of Ambiguities in ‘Troilus and Criseyde’

"Published in 1970, this is now an old book. It’s quite a short book. It’s written beautifully clearly. I remember reading it as an undergraduate, and I definitely read it as I was sitting down to write the Reader’s Guide . It’s a wonderfully lucid articulation of what the features of this text are which make its ultimate meaning debatable. There are places in the poem where characters are given parts of a philosophical work by Boethius called The Consolation of Philosophy , a work which would have been very recognizable to Chaucer’s readers. The central question in Gordon’s study of ambiguities is what those borrowings of Boethian material—the holding of Boethian material within the story—do for how we feel about these characters. Often, the bits of Boethius they quote are partial and not quite right. So, many readers have found this a way of introducing irony or another viewpoint on these characters. And just as Chaucer might be introducing Boethius into the poem in order to explore his narrative more deeply, he’s also using this narrative to see how meaningful or useful Boethius’s philosophical observations might be. Yes. And Gordon’s book works through the possible ambiguities and ironies which that creates. Can we apply a philosophical judgment to these characters? It’s tricky. Can we apply the Christian morals that are asserted at the end of the poem to these characters? We’re not sure. I like this book because it explains those debates in a way that’s very detailed, but it’s also schematic enough to let you know that to deal with any of those questions, you have to simplify the poem a fair bit. It shows you the levers and cogs and wheels of meaning that are working hard in the text."