SOURCE: "Troilus and Criseide," in Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader, Scott, Foresman and Company, 1975, pp. 1129-44.

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1958. Donaldson presents the theme of Troilus and Criseyde as a paradoxical statement in which Chaucer asserts both the importance and the transitory nature of human values.

Chaucer's longest single poem is his greatest artistic achievement and one of the greatest in English literature. It possesses to the highest degree that quality, which characterizes most great poetry, of being always open to reinterpretation, of yielding different meanings to different generations and kinds of readers, who, no matter how they may disagree with one another on even its most important points, nevertheless agree in sharing the profoundly moving experience the poem offers them. Its highly elusive quality, which not only permits but encourages a multiplicity of interpretations, is in no way...