Narrative Frames and Interpretive Models in Troilus and...

Narrative Frames and Interpretive Models in Troilus and Criseyde Interpretive certainty is purposely elusive in Geoffrey Chaucers Troilus and Criseyde. Meaning within the text is convoluted and continually renegotiated. Any attempt to design a singular coherent stable source of meaning is problematic at best. Throughout the work, narrative frames are broken and reordered and the validity of any fixed interpretive model is challenged. Virtually every broad thematic discussion developed is potentially qualified or compromised by the presence of a key figure, the narrator of the poem. As an ever-present observer, the narrator is both author and audience to a sequence of events he essentially helps to create. He is†¦show more content†¦The personality of the narrator is foregrounded and exists as a character engaged in an open dialogue with the reader. The narrator is thoroughly unreliable in his ability to serve as the sole source of information and insight, a figure possessing absolute control of the text. The authority of the narrator is p aradoxically undermined and underscored by admission of his own inadequacies in shaping the text. Whether from mythological beings, ancient writers, a fictitious mentor, or the actual reader of the poem, the narrator claims to need support from outside sources in order to effectively tell the tale. The narrator portrays himself alternately as reluctant, ignorant, or simply incapable of fulfilling his duties. He invokes the powers of the Furies, Cleo, Venus, and the Fates at the beginning of each book to inspire and enhance his narrative skills. The invocations not only serve as symbolic bridges to the actions that follow in each book, but also allow the possibility of distance to develop between the narrator and his creative responsibility to the work. By invoking the gods, the narrator could be seen as an intermediary, a conduit, a pawn, rather than an active participant. The narrator does not, however, wish to completely shirk his creative contribution to the text. Instead, he attempts to qualify it. He likens his skill