Troilus and Criseyde (Folio Society Limited Edition)

A$500 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

Limited edition

CHAUCER, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. London: The Folio Society, 2011. 2 vols. Folio. Main volume bound in full black goatskin. Cover illustration blocked in 22-carat gold, designed by Neil Gower. Spine lettered in gilt. All edges gilt. Contents printed on Rigoletto Panna felt-marked paper. 5 full-page illustrations. 328 pp. Commentary volume bound in quarter black buckram and blue boards, cover titling on white panel. 48 pp. Housed in black buckram solander case lettered in gilt. First Folio Society edition. Limited to 1,250 numbered copies, this being number 83. Troilus and Criseyde is among the greatest long poems in the English language, and the work in which Chaucer's powers are most fully and consistently sustained. Written in the 1380s in the rime royal stanza of seven pentameter lines, it tells the story of the Trojan warrior Troilus — youngest son of King Priam — who falls desperately in love with the widow Criseyde, is aided in his pursuit by her uncle Pandarus, achieves happiness, and then loses everything when Criseyde is exchanged in a prisoner swap to the Greek camp and there, under pressure of circumstance, takes a new lover. The Trojan War provides the doomed backdrop; the poem's subject is the nature of love, fortune, and human freedom in a world governed by forces beyond individual control. Chaucer drew on Boccaccio's Il Filostrato but transformed his source utterly. Where Boccaccio's poem is relatively direct in its psychological movement, Chaucer's is d

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.