Shakespeare’s character Criseyde is infamously known as a symbol of female mutability, seduceability, and caballing phoniness. The English language knows the term »as false as Cressid«, and most texts and poems dealing with this fictitious character primarily depict her neagative aspects instead of her love to Troilus, the male hero of Troilus and Criseyde.rnrn

rnrnIn » ›As false as Cressid‹: Virtue Trouble from Chaucer to Shakespeare« Holly Crocker discusses different approaches to the vagueness of Criseyde’s moral values and describes Criseyde as an exemplary figure of idealized femininity having trouble to deal with expectations of feminine virtue. Crocker analyses this perspective especially referring to the moral demands and virtues women were pressed to meet in premodern England. rnrn

Holly Crocker is professor of English literature at the University of South Carolina and has been a guest at the Institute for Advanced Studies from May to December 2011, with her larger project »The Reformation of Feminine Virtue from Chaucer to Shakespeare«.rnrn

To the whole essay on the homepage of the Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies