{"collection":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect51_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect51_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_neu_eng_mect_mect51_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/neu/eng/mect/mect51.htm","summary":"\"Anelida and Arcite\" is an unfinished narrative poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, written in Middle English in the 14th century, blending the courtly love tradition with classical epic conventions. The poem follows Queen Anelida of Armenia, who falls completely and devotedly in love with the Theban knight Arcite, only to be callously abandoned when he tires of her loyalty and pursues a new, prouder woman. The first half narrates this betrayal in third-person, emphasizing Anelida's total self-abnegation and Arcite's calculated manipulation, including feigned jealousy used to control her; the second half shifts to a formal verse \"complaint\" written in Anelida's own voice, lamenting her suffering in elaborately structured stanzas. A distinctively cynical perspective runs throughout: Chaucer frames male faithlessness as practically a law of nature (\"the kynde of mannes herte is to delyte / In thing that straunge is\"), and the poem implicitly warns women that meekness and transparency in love invite exploitation rather than reward. The work is notable for its ambitious metrical experiment \u2014 the complaint section uses an intricately rhymed, near-palindromic stanza form \u2014 and for drawing on Statius's *Thebaid* and possibly a lost work attributed to \"Corynne,\" though the narrative breaks off before reaching any resolution.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"The Canterbury Tales and Other Works of Chaucer (Middle E...","tradition":"Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas","translated_text":null,"word_count":2840}