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¶ … Troilus and Cressida, characters significant to Homer's depiction of the Trojan War in the epic Iliad by Homer, have been portrayed as different personalities in versions of the play written by Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare. Although the story is just adapted from Homer's epic, the two British writers created and used the lovers' story to make their own interpretation of life during the Trojan War, particularly the depiction of the characters of Troilus and Cressida during this significant period in the history of Western civilization. In Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the setting happens in the midst of the Trojan War. Troilus is portrayed as an unloving man, who, after being struck by the curse of love, has loved Criseyde. Criseyde, on the other hand, is portrayed as a playful woman, going out with other men despite Troilus' devotion to her. The story ends with Troilus' tragic end, leading him to conclude that all women are like Criseyde, who are portrayed as "evil" or "playful" and only causes conflict among men (similar to Helen of Troy's case that brought about the Trojan War). Shakespeare's version of the play, meanwhile, portrays a more romantic and equal characterization of Troilus and Cressida. Troilus is characterized as a sensitive man who falls in love with Cressida, while Cressida is an intelligent and tempered woman who does not display any kind of flamboyance among men, just like what Chaucer had portrayed Criseyde in his work. Although both Chaucer and Shakespeare's versions of the story happened in the midst of the Trojan War, Shakespeare's version is more tragic, since he concludes the story with the separation of the lovers (with Troilus fighting the war and Cressida being given as an 'exchange' to Agamemnon). Shakespeare's interpretation of Troilus and Cressida provides an in-depth and humanistic look at the Trojan War as depicted in the epic of Homer and a 'modernized' version of Chaucer's conservative portrayal of the lovers' story, Troilus and Criseyde (or Cressida).
Chaucer Both Shakespeare's Hamlet and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales do offer universal truths. As Volve states about Chaucer's work in particular: "The tale is firmly anchored in one specific period of history…but it seeks as well to represent other periods and other lives," (300-301). Likewise, Shakespeare's plays like Hamlet have endured precisely because there are few cultural, geographic, or temporal barriers that would prevent universal understanding and interpretation. Texts like these
Shakespeare Never Read Aristotle? Or, the dynamic forms of catharsis and tragic flaws in Shakespeare's plays Shakespeare's most beloved plays are his tragedies. If one were to list his best and most popular plays: Othello, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, King Lear, and so forth, one would find the list comprised almost entirely of tragedies. So it would not be amiss to say that much of the modern literary conception of theatrical
Pearl-Poet Indeed, few figures are more dominant in any era of literature in any language or cultural tradition, than both Chaucer and the Pearl-Poet are in the way that they tower over the rest of Middle English literature in terms of having crated the most imposing, lasting, and resounding works of literature associated with that time period and that stage of the development of the English language. Indeed, both Chaucer's and
For the poet, Christianity must be devoid of the cultures of corruption and hypocrisy that prevailed during his time. Ideally, a religion, in order to be respected and followed by the people, must maintain a clean image -- that is, an image that reflects the truth of its teachings, wherein its religious principles are embodied by the people who make up the Church. It is also through "Canterbury" that Chaucer
Thus, the notion of ruler ship in marriage is actually an orchestrated ideological shift in the hands of Chaucer the writer, as notions of marriage and change from the point-of-view of the miller, the Wife of Bath, to the Franklin. Even in the more singular voice of Marlowe, the poet acts an intrusive rather an impartial narrator of the tale of "Hero and Leander," as he utilizes a number of
language of Geoffrey Chaucer and its relationship to the development of English In both literature and language, Geoffrey Chaucer made an important contribution to the development of English. In terms of the development of the English language his works and their popularity are related to the importance of the Midland dialect. This dialect formed part of the Mercian dialect of Old English, which was to assume significance due to the