Similar to Chaucer's Knight's Tale, his Troilus and Criseyde lacks lengthy romance costume passages for his major characters. However this omission may have disappointed his contemporary audience's expectations, his costume signs, metaphors, and allusions in this work comprise a more substantive list than has previously been analyzed. This list includes widow's weeds with appropriate headdress, armor, weapons, coat armor, two rings, one or two brooches, hoods, shirts, furred cloak, pilgrim's weeds, a sleeve, and a glove. Further, Chaucer's methodology in deploying a number of significant costume images and his skill in doing so have been generally overlooked by critics. Pregnant with literary as well as contemporary social and moral significance and regardless that they are dispersed throughout the tale rather than being gathered within a typical romance descriptio, these costume images function as sartorial metaphors which highlight the plot structure while they explicate and elucidate characterization. In addition, an assessment of Chaucer's sartorial images in Troilus and Criseyde offers insight into his poetic technique of employing costume rhetoric.

Signature Costumes

A signature costume or garment marks each of the major characters at significant points in the plot. Chaucer plays these costume images against each other in a rhetorical technique best described as “interlacing”; consequently, we shall consider each signature costume in conjunction with those of other characters as they intersect.