Style

Abstract

Abstract This chapter analyses the crucial role of stylistic variety in the exploration of love by such a stylistically self-conscious poem as Troilus and Criseyde. The chapter’s opening section focusses on a play of style in the poem’s alertness to distinctions of style and register. Then comes a section on the poem’s use of: romance vocabulary; terms linked with pagan belief; learned and scientific terminology; Troilus diction that overlaps with Chaucer’s Boethian translation, Boece; nonce words prefixed with un- and other uses of prefixes and suffixes. Next is a section on Chaucer’s use of hyperbole and superlative—and of oaths, acclamations, and endearments—concluding with the poem’s references to the heart. There follows analysis of the poem’s imagery: heat and cold; light and darkness; sight and blindness; navigation; binding and constraint; hunting and bird imagery. Two concluding sections address proverbial language and stylistic aspects of versification in Troilus.