Odd Bits of Troilus and Criseyde and the Rights of Chaucer's Early Readers

Abstract Some sixteen so-called “fragments” of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde still survive in addition to its major (though sometimes incomplete) textual witnesses. These fragments have, not without cause, been largely ignored as valueless. Yet, actual perusal of these odd bits as physical evidence of the poem's circulation discloses a variety of interpretive protocols practiced by Chaucer's earliest readers.