This book offers a compelling portrayal of two contrasting figures who bring couples together for romantic love or sex: elegant aristocrats who serve idealized consensual lovers, and ancient crones who capture women for a price. Via a sweeping tour of 45 medieval works from three centuries—Latin comedies, fabliaux, romances, the Roman de la rose, the Book of Good Love, and many others—Mieszkowski reveals a previously unsuspected dimension of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. An idealized go-between in every outward respect, Pandarus nevertheless acts the part of a go-between for sexual conquest, trapping the woman for the man. Through Pandarus' simultaneous identification with the go-between tradition's contradictory ideologies of desire, Chaucer suspends Troilus and Criseyde's story irreconcilably between lust and idealized romantic love.
