Origins and Originality
What does it mean to be happy? For poets, medieval and modern, joy comes in many forms.
In Chaucer’s great Trojan romance Troilus and Criseyde, there is a poignant moment when the hero, separated from his beloved by the misfortunes of war in a besieged city, tries to comfort himself by imagining how glad he will be when he can see her again. ‘Was there never fowl so fain of May’, he says, ‘as I shall be, when that she cometh in Troy.’
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