«Professor Andretta's prose is exceptionally graceful on the usually ungraceful topics of scholastic epistemology and ontology, topics that can, at times, ruin the best of stylists. Also, her scholarly apparatus, her notes and bibliography, are generally quite inclusive and will provide an excellent entre for a student interested in moving beyond to the deeper quagmires of scholarly opinion on nominalism...This book is most welcome as an important part of the growing scholarly conversation about the relationship between Chaucer and the philosophy of nominalism.» (John Michael Crafton, Prolepsis)
From the Publisher
Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde invites philosophical speculation because of its Boethian and nominalist elements. This study comprehensively reviews Ockhamism and its possible influence on Chaucer in his version of the Troy story. A close analysis of the anachronistic characterizations of Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus and of the images, words and discourse of the poem leads to the conclusion that Chaucer was a traditional scholastic thinker, thereby making the poem an artistic negative response to the skeptical philosophy of his time.