Chaucer’s 14th century tale of ‘double sorrow’, Troilus and Criseyde, set during the siege of Troy, is the subject of Irina and Mary’s ninth episode of Medieval Beginnings. Based largely on Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, Chaucer’s novelistic long poem displays a psychological realism that would make Henry James envious, and, with the matchmaker-uncle Pandarus, introduces a character of startling and often perplexing opacity.

Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen in full and to our other Close Readings series, sign up here:

Directly in Apple Podcasts at the top of this feed, or here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq

In other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadings

Further reading in the LRB:

Barbara Newman: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v41/n22/barbara-newman/kek-kek!-kokkow!-quek-quek!

Irina Dumitrescu: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n17/irina-dumitrescu/how-to-read-aloud

Mary Wellesley: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n11/mary-wellesley/on-the-nightingale

Irina Dumitrescu is Professor of English Medieval Studies at the University of Bonn and Mary Wellesley as a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and their Makers.

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