Reading Chaucer's Calkas: Prophecy and Authority in Troilus and Criseyde

Abstract

This article examines the role of calkas in troilus and criseyde, paying particular attention to his influence on the exchange in book iv and his importance for diomede in book v. by comparing troilus with its vernacular and latin precedents, we show that chaucer makes calkas both the voice of historical determinism and a locus of individual agency, both a knowing authority and an untrustworthy schemer. chaucer's troilus questions the certainty and inevitability of calkas' prophecy, a skepticism that also affects the narrator's posture of self-representation, diomede's appropriation of the past, and the poem's conception of “gret auctorite.”