Affect and emotion

This chapter will explore Chaucer's writing from the perspective of affect theory and emotion studies, considering how the recent critical approaches of emotion and affect theory can unlock his texts and their underlying emotive scripts and consider what these scripts may reveal about his works and their implicit affective configurations. Finally, the aim is to situate Chaucer's texts within a more globally oriented history of emotions through a case study of one of his major works, Troilus and Criseyde. Ultimately the case study is intended to reveal how affect and/or emotion theory can lay bare some of the key configurations underlying the literary, aesthetic, and affective impact of Chaucer's works.