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GRETCHEN MIESZKOWSKI, Medieval Go-Betweens and Chaucer's Pandarus. New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Pp. x, 218. isbn: 1-403906341-x. $69.95.
In this lucid study, Gretchen Mieszkowski traces the literary traditions of the gobetween that influence Chaucer's representation of Pandarus in Troilus and Criseyde. By drawing upon a variety of sources, from Latin comedy, to chivalric romance, to Old French fabliau, Mieszkowski amply demonstrates the deep literary roots of the tradition Chaucer engages with his go-between. From the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, Mieszkowski finds two distinct forms of go-between stories: that which furthers idealized love, and that which represents sex as conquest. As she maintains, Chaucer draws from both branches of the go-between form, thereby complicating his own poem's affiliation beyond classification. If readers have puzzled over Pandarus's disturbing agency in this doomed love affair, Mieszkowski concludes that lack of critical closure arises from the poem's engagement with the dual tradition of the literary go-between.
Although this book is motivated by critical questions about Troilus and Criseyde, its bulk is occupied with a thoroughgoing account of the different stories that constitute the two go-between threads Mieszkowski identifies in English and continental sources. Mieszkowski invites readers...