Poynte in Troilus and CriseydePoynte Book III of Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer features a careful description of Trolius and Criseyde's first clandestine meeting at Trolius's bedside. The narrator spares the audience few details in the portrait, recounting extensive dialogue and even the physical mannerisms of the two characters. Chaucer's carefully chosen language and integration of literary vocabulary "echo the medieval author's concern to craft his text through the use of the trappings of rhetoric" (Burnley, 162). Chaucer's remarkable descriptive technique is defined by the literary term "indicate" (Burrow, 70) which means "to describe in detail" (Davis, 111). The word "poynte" is often classified among other words, such as "devise, color, peynte, and elumine", which share the definition of "poyntes". Synonymous words are considered "figuratively related to those devices known to rhetoricians as the flowers or colors of rhetoric, by which a work received stylistic embellishment" (Burnley, 240). Chaucer is thought to have derived the use of the word "poynte" from Brunetto Latini who often used the word "devise" in his works. Devise has “strong associations of graphic visualization, unexpressed in the imagination, or expressed in circumstantial description or narrative” (Burnley, 240). The term "poynte" is a verb that "appears to be an Eastern French variant of the more common form peynte." Poynte is also a “familiar Latin metaphor, referring to the elaboration of a speech by painting it in the colors of rhetoric” (Burnley, 174). Chaucer institutes the technique of "pointing" to vividly set the scenes between Pandarus and Criseyde in Book II and also... in the middle of the folio... in a literary sense. Oxford English Dictionary (OED) definition. of the word "varnish" is more easily applicable to the meaning of "poynte" in Troilus and Criseyde. According to the Oxford English Dictionary paint means: to represent or describe in words; expose as in a picture; to present vividly to the mind's eye, recall an image of. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde embodies the idea of ​​a visual narrative, and Chaucer's use of the duality of the word "poynte" only serves to illuminate his audience's view of Troilus and Criseyde. Works CitedBurnley, David. A Guide to the Language of Chaucer. Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1983.Burrow, J. A. Ricardian Poetry. New Haven: Yale UP, 1971. Davis, Norman, ed. A Glossary of Chaucer. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979. Elliot, the English of Ralph WV Chaucer. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1974.