Chaucer's Works, Volume 2 — Boethius and Troilus

This volume presents Chaucer at the height of his powers: a philosopher-translator and a poet of devastating emotional precision. The Consolation of Philosophy is Chaucer's rendering of Boethius's medieval classic, written in a prison cell while awaiting execution. Lady Philosophy descends to comfort the condemned statesman, and their dialogue becomes a profound meditation on fortune, happiness, and the nature of true worth. It is simultaneously a political tract, a spiritual exercise, and one of the most influential texts in Western thought. Against this stands Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer's masterwork of romantic tragedy. Set during the Trojan War, it follows the doomed affair between the young prince Troilos and the widow Criseyde, whose shift of allegiance to the Greek camp and subsequent infidelity shatter her lover entirely. Chaucer tells this tale with extraordinary psychological nuance, making Criseyde's betrayal not a simple moral failure but a devastating act of human weakness under impossible pressure. The poem influenced Shakespeare centuries later when he transformed it into Troilus and Cressida. Together, these works showcase a writer grappling with fortune's cruelty, love's fragility, and the ancient question of what endures when everything is lost.