Trojan Nobodies: Uncarnal Knowledge in Troilus and Criseyde

Abstract This article considers the distinct lack of bodies and embodiment throughout Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde . While it seems to be a war-time erotic romance in which the plot hinges on the physical threats and pleasures available to its characters, through its many contradictions and deceptions, the poem makes the bodies of Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus unknowable, even at their most crucial moments. It is through the frustration of bodily hermeneutics in Troilus and Criseyde that Chaucer signals his rejection of the romance genre and the beginning of an anti-Boethian turn that becomes the governing theme of the first fragment of the Canterbury Tales .