Fame and Authorship in Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida

Abstract

This article examines the concept of authorship through the narrative transmission of the story of Troilus and his lover, from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. As Criseyde or Cressida’s name has circulated throughout literary history as a symbol of female inconstancy and infamy, her case offers a lens through which to explore how authors participate in constructing narratives in a tradition marked by competing versions rather than a single authoritative account. Focusing first on Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, the discussion analyzes how the narrator positions himself as an author while expressing reservations about poetic fame, which rests on the arbitrary nature of fama and offers no stable ground for authorial authority. This skepticism intensifies in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, which denies any stable authorial control, defers meaning to the judgment of spectators, and highlights distrust in the efficacy of words. The article further considers how the transmission of these texts through different media reflects and reinforces this instability. Chaucer’s reliance on manuscript culture and scribal mediation underscores his ambivalence toward the stability of textual meaning. This concern continues and is transformed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century print culture, where editorial and publishing practices, particularly in anthologies of Chaucer and Shakespeare, further shape and participate in the construction of authorship.