Abstract
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his passionate romantic tragedy Troilus and Criseyde, uses the Middle English word herte (heart) strikingly often, yet only thrice in its literal usage as an organ. Instead, Chaucer always uses “heart” metaphorically, similarly to common usage in Modern English. Each metaphor originates from an understanding of the heart in relation to those distinct properties it embodied to English people because of cultural origins. Examining these origins reveals the respective presuppositions that this culture, that of our forefathers, associated with the heart. Furthermore, these same metaphors Chaucer wrote have remained in our cultural memory and are still spoken today, speaking to their anciency. This paper organizes all of Chaucer’s uses of herte in Troilus into eight distinct types, each with their own semantic origin; Only five of these definitions are presented in the Middle English Dictionary, and so this paper serves to fill in those missing gaps.
Medieval English Metaphors of the Heart in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his passionate romantic tragedy Troilus and Criseyde, uses the Middle English word herte (heart) strikingly often, yet only thrice in its literal usage as an organ. Instead, Chaucer always uses “heart” metaphorically, similarly to common usage in Modern English. Each metaphor originates from an understanding of the heart in relation to those distinct properties it embodied to English people because of cultural origins. Examining these origins reveals the respective presuppositions that this culture, that of our forefathers, associated with the heart. Furthermore, these same metaphors Chaucer wrote have remained in our cultural memory and are still spoken today, speaking to their anciency. This paper organizes all of Chaucer’s uses of herte in Troilus into eight distinct types, each with their own semantic origin; Only five of these definitions are presented in the Middle English Dictionary, and so this paper serves to fill in those missing gaps.
