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Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. Edited by James M. Dean and Harriet Spiegel. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2016. Pp. lxviii, 391. ISBN: 978-155481-005-5. $19.95 (paperback); $13.95 (ebook).
When I first started teaching medieval literature at the university level, there were no adequate teaching editions of Chaucer's great, yet difficult poem Troilus and Criseyde. It is experientially hard for the 'yonge, fresshe folks, he or she' addressed in the poem's envoi to gain access to it except through feats of the sympathetic imagination. Before we even get there, though, both the poem's language and its imbrication in an increasingly inaccessible literary tradition daunt the fresh young contemporary readers of Middle English. Unlike the Canterbury Tales, for the Troilus there has been little in the way of pedagogical materials that would help bridge the gap between the poem's demands and the skills and experience of its new readers.
We are now gifted with two excellent teaching editions of the Troilus: alongside the Norton, edited by Stephen A. Barney and using the same critical text as the standard Riverside Chaucer, Broadview now offers this new edition, whose different textual basis and supplementary choices make it a worthy alternative more suitable in many pedagogical situations. Its text is based on a single manuscript, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, Manuscript 61...