Chaucer - Troilus And Criseyde

If you’ve ever wanted to experience heartbreak, high drama, and catastrophic decision-making… but with more footnotes and a faint aroma of seminar room carpet, Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (A.C. Spearing, 1976) is ready to take you by the hand and lead you into the elegant, doomed world of medieval romance.

Because yes: Chaucer wrote Troilus and Criseyde, and it is essentially the original “this will end badly” love story — set against the backdrop of Troy, where everyone is already having a terrible time and somehow still finds energy for yearning. Troilus falls hard. Criseyde is clever, cautious, and very aware that survival often matters more than poetic vows. Politics intrudes, as it always does. Promises are made. Letters are exchanged. Feelings are felt. And then history does what it does best: tramples the delicate parts.

A.C. Spearing — one of those reassuringly confident guides from the era when literary criticism wore a sensible jacket — steps in to make the whole thing legible, meaningful, and oddly addictive. This is not the sort of book that shrieks “Chaucer is FUN!” in neon. It’s more the quietly persuasive voice that says, “Give it a chance — the complexity is the point,” and before you know it you’re nodding along, underlining sentences, and briefly considering using the phrase “courtly love” in real life (don’t).

What you get here is a companion that helps you see why the poem matters: the psychology, the irony, the moral unease, the way Chaucer can be both tender and ruthless in the same stanza. You’ll also get a sense of how medieval romance works when it’s done by someone who is too intelligent to believe his own genre completely — which is precisely why it remains so fascinating. It’s love, but with a raised eyebrow.

And let’s be honest: reading Troilus and Criseyde in the modern world is a special kind of pleasure. You watch people attempt sincerity while surrounded by unreliable friends, shifting alliances, and the ancient equivalent of a bad group chat. It feels… familiar. The costumes are different, but the emotional weather is the same: longing, uncertainty, self-justification, and the slow realisation that your grand narrative may not be shared by the universe.

This is the 1976 Edward Arnold edition, ISBN 0713158549, in Good condition — which is perfect for a book like this. You don’t want it pristine. You want it slightly seasoned, like it’s been carried to lectures, annotated in the margins by someone quietly panicking about a deadline, and then shelved with the satisfied air of “I survived Chaucer.”

Ideal for students, returning readers, medievalists, tragic-romance enthusiasts, and anyone who enjoys watching human beings make doomed choices in beautifully constructed language — with a helpful guide nearby to explain what just happened and why it matters.

Sold by Crappy Old Books, where even the most exquisite medieval heartbreak can be had for the price of a paperback and a bit of courage.

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