Introduction: Touching Troy

Abstract This introduction aims to briefly sketch the theoretical framework for the articles assembled in this special issue on touch within the transmission of the Troy story in western Europe. Starting with the analysis of an important scene involving reading and manuscript culture in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde , this introduction provides a context for medieval instances of touching within contemporary thinking about materiality and relationality and within the transmission of the Troy story in late medieval and early modern Europe.