1. For a discussion of the various usages of gentilesse in medieval literature,
including Chaucer's Troilus, see Burnley 151-70. For a discussion which focuses on
Chaucer's use of the term in the Troilus, see Gaylord 19-34.
2. See De Consolatione Philosophiae, 3. Prosa 6. In Chaucer's translation,
Chaucer refers to the concept of noble birth as gentilesse. Boece, 3. Prose 6.32-54.
3. Russell Peck comments that Genius in Book 4 is primarily concerned with generation:
"Here more than elsewhere his [Genius'] perspective is defined by one aspect of 'kynde', that is, by
Natura's desire and need to keep herself regenerate and plenitudinous. Sloth is especially odious
to Genius since, when provoked by Sloth, he would have all creatures bending their steady backs
in love. This particular aspect of his character, an aspect which Gower takes from the Roman
de la Rose, accounts not only for his moralizing but also for his selection of tales." (83)
Genius' concern with generative love owes much not only to his character in the Roman
but also to his earlier character in Alain de Lille's De Planctu Naturae. For a thorough
discussion of the "law of nature" as the animal urge to procreation, see Olsson 230-34.
4. For a discussion of courtly lyric poetry that deals with both the character of the lover
and the context of the court see Goldin.
5. Cf. Peck 82.
6. For this insight into the personification
page 129
Daungier in the Roman, I am grateful to Winthrop Wetherbee, seminar
lecture.
7. Although Amans refers here only to reading and hearing of "Troilus" and not more
specifically to Chaucer's version of the Troilus story, I believe both thematic and poetic
references in Amans' vignette of his heart can point only to Chaucer's Troilus, as I hope to
demonstrate in detail below.
8. It is instructive to notice, for example, how in Book 2 of the Troilus, Criseyde
hears a real nightingale outside her window before she is taken by the "dede slep" (TC 2.924) and
has the dream of the eagle removing her heart and replacing it with his own.
9. I would further suggest that the passage in the Troilus is itself influenced by the
Roman.
10. Compare Gaylord 31.
