Free Will and Predestination

Whether or not people can change the outcome of their final destiny is a recurring theme throughout Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer address it both directly in his asides to the reader and indirectly using the narrative action of the story.

Troilus, during a long speech in Book IV, laments that he has no chance of changing his own destiny, which seems to be to lose Criseyde and grieve for her forever. Chaucer has him reason out the matter based on the assumption that an all-powerful God knows the ultimate destiny of every person. It cannot be that God only sees what will happen and has no control over future events, because that would place God under the control of the things he has created, which is a paradox. Therefore God controls our destinies. People are sometimes given foreknowledge of their destinies, by prophets and by...