Troilus and Criseyde: Suffering a Sea-Change

Chaucer’s own attitude toward love has been described by many modern critics as ‘mocking’ or ‘ironic.’ Even in the Cliffs Notes and York Notes aimed at high school students, the summaries describe Chaucer’s views as being ironic and detached. However, while it is true that Chaucer constantly pokes fun at courtly love, this seems to me to be an outgrowth of a constantly bubbling sense of humour. The wellspring never dries up. He makes fun of everything. That he had respect for the emotions (and practice) of courtly love is apparent in his early poem, ‘The Book of the Duchess,’ but it is even more apparent in Troilus and Criseyde, where Chaucer’s view of love manages to show itself through the various and contradictory attitudes of the characters.

Troilus, being the central character, ought to be dealt with first. Surprisingly, his character seems to be the least fleshed out. It is C. S. Lewis’ view that Troilus’ scantier characterization is due to his being a stock character as the doughty knight and noble lover, he is expected and assumed to have certain qualities. He is brave, loyal, skilled at arms, noble of sentiment as well as high in rank, and handsome. All knightly protagonists of his time are. The writer need not insult the reader’s intelligence by spelling this out. I would build on this by adding that Troilus’ scantier descriptive characterization allows Chaucer to insert more actual characterization in the form of soul-searching and questioning. Troilus is, at heart, a philosopher, although he does not know it.

His initial attitude toward love is derisory, mocking, skeptical:

This Troilus, as he was wont to gyde
His yonge Knightes, ladde hem up and doun
In thilke large temple on every syde
Biholding ay the ladyes of the toun…
For thy ensample taken of this man
Ye wyse, proude, and worthy folks alle
To scornen Love, which that so sone can
The freedom of your hertes to him thralle
For ever it was, and ever it shall bifalle
That Love is he that alle thing may binde
For may no man for-do the law of kinde… (I 27 34)

Troilus, too proud to love, has tempted fate, and so he must be shot by one of Cupid’s arrows. This prompts him to question his fate, to question the very natures of love (I, 36 37) and as he does so, he suffers all the classic symptoms of melancholic love-sickness until he is granted his heart’s desire. Although Chaucer makes fun of Troilus’ excesses from time to time (as in the scene where he kneels at Criseyde’s side to plead his case, prompting Pandarus to run and fetch a pillow for him to kneel on) his authorial detachment does not seem to be derisory. If anything, Chaucer is full of respect. Troilus receives naught but a sympathetic treatment.

Criseyde, too, is treated respectfully, which speaks a good deal for Chaucer’s restraint as well as his attitude toward courtly love. Chaucer could very easily have railed against Criseyde. The rules of courtly love demand that unless a knight breaks faith with her or otherwise does her love grievous damage (such as through extreme cowardice or churlishness), a lady must be faithful to her accepted lover, especially when that love is put to the test. Criseyde, of course, is completely faithless. Furthermore, the previous treatment of the story (Boccacio’s ‘Il Filostrato,’ which Chaucer had been familiar with) denounces Criseyde, indeed, all womankind, and all of love’s delights. Chaucer could have chosen to translate ‘Il Filostrato’ word for word. Lesser poets would have done so. However, Boccacio’s attitudes about women and love are not Chaucer’s own, and so the character of Criseyde undergoes a sea-change. She is not faithless, merely fearful. It has been argues that Criseyde is in fact a classical tragic figure, that fear is her tragic flaw, and that her downfall results from her unusual circumstances. Under ordinary circumstances she would have been completely faithful to Troilus; her separation from Troilus is what actually causes the desperation that leaves her open to the advances of Diomede. Diomede, to Criseyde, represents not so much a suitor (by this argument) as he does safety. How much more shocking when she presents him with Troilus’ brooch! How sad is her eventual ending! It is amazing that Chaucer is able to transform this shameless woman of circumstance, this prostitute in a noblewoman’s clothing, into a gentle, loving, sympathetic character, whose capacity for love and deep attachment is her undoing…By the time Chaucer is done with Criseyde, it is impossible to the reader to condemn her.

Perhaps most amazing of all (and most tempting for those critics to seize upon who wish to read sardonicism into Chaucer’s outlook) is the character of Pandarus. Pandarus is a pedant. He philosophizes ad nauseam on the nature of love, and his words mean nothing. He is also the sort of loyal friend who will do anything to help his companion find relief, up to deceiving (pandering) Criseyde, and letting Troilus into her presence unbeknownst to her during a dinner party that he throws specifically for the purpose of bringing them together. He is a hopelessly comic character, both in his outlook on life and in his own personal qualities. Still, it is tempting to see Pandarus not as pure comic relief or as a piece of satiric buffoonery, but as an aspect of Chaucer himself. Like Chaucer, Pandarus is a courtier well connected, politic, polite, willing and able to bend over backwards to do his friends favours. Like Chaucer, Pandarus is a scholar. Also like Chaucer, Pandarus is possessed of a keen, irrepressible sense of humour. It is not impossible to laugh at a subject that one takes very seriously; devout Catholics have laughed at jokes told about Jesus and his dad playing golf with Moses, and nearly everyone (cynical and romantic alike) has laughed at a romantic comedy. Laughter is often the best defense against a force that is otherwise so powerful that it threatens to blot out perspective altogether.

Another aspect that needs to be looked at in Troilus and Criseyde is the role of Fate. Fate is an overwhelming and inescapable force in this poem. Troilus’ doomed love for Criseyde takes place against the backdrop of a city that is about to fall to the Greeks; it is impossible to forget the omnipresent war. As in ‘Casablanca,’ Criseyde’s affair with Troilus is an escape from these dire conditions indeed, Chaucer’s conclusion to the poem wherein Troilus, in Heaven, laughs sadly at those who would mourn for his death, certainly has a ring of O. K. Rick saying ‘the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world; here’s looking at you, kid.’ Still, there is another dimension yet, beyond the constant sense of impending doom. That is the Boethian view of fate. Chaucer wrote Troilus and Criseyde on the very heels of a translation of Boethius’ The Consolations Of Philosophy, and a Boethian view of fate pervades the entire manuscript.

According to Boethius, who if not necessarily a Christian was certainly a deist rather than a pantheist, fate is brought about by the will of God. God creates a divine emanation called Providence, which can best be described as divine will personified; however, since Providence is concerned with generalities rather than specifics, specifics are delegated to blind Destiny, which encompasses everything from spirits, angels and demons to anima mundi (a sort of synchronicity, to put it into Jungian terms, of human will and universal pattern) and the interaction of the heavenly spheres with world affairs. Chaucer seems to put the emphasis on the latter two forces, anima mundi and astrological happenings. Troilus, Criseyde, and Pandarus all act in such a way that the consummation of the affair and its miserable end are both inevitable; their actions synchronize with the movement of the spheres. Both Chriseyde’s father Calchas and her uncle Pandarus are seers and astrologers. Astrological jargon is rife throughout the text, especially Book III. Finally, in a peculiar twist employed only by the perfect proto-Renaissance interpreter of courtly love, Providence is equated with the God of Love; Providence has made Troilus fall in love, as Troilus, suffering, cries aloud, ‘O God, who at thy disposition leadest the end of every man, by just Providence, accept my confession and send to me such penance as seems good.’ (II, 326 330) Troilus has put himself not just into the hands of God but literally into the hands of Fate; and, in his characterization of Troilus and Criseyde as well as through his thematic treatment of their plight, Chaucer seems to demonstrate a belief that love is fate, a very Boethian point of view.

One more aspect of Boethian philosophy supports this conclusion. Part of Fate’s pre-ordained function is its vicissitude. Fortuna, lady of fortune, has a wheel that spins constantly; those who are at the bottom of it may spin to the top of the world, and vice versa. After the third book, wherein Troilus and Criseyde reach the apogee of their good fortune, their fortunes must turn. The reversal in fortune must occur not just for literary reasons (technically, a tragedy must contain this reversal) but also for philosophical reasons. Thus Criseyde is removed from Troy for political reasons and the terrible tragedy ensues. This fits in neatly with the Boethian view of Fortune’s wheel (a view that nearly all people in the Middle Ages were familiar with) and supports Chaucer’s claim that love is Fate embodied.

Still, while Chaucer clearly believed in the reality of courtly love and its place in the grand scheme of the universe, and gives courtly love sympathetic treatment in Troilus and Criseyde, one must not forget his detachment. His gift of insight into human character stems from an ability to step back and look objectively at his world. His detachment also manifests in another way in Troilus and Criseyde: an ability to put courtly love in perspective. James Lyndon Shanley has suggested that the conclusion to this poem, wherein Chaucer states,

O yonge, fresshe folks, he or she
In which that love up groweth with youre age
Repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte
And of youre herte upcasteth the visage
To thilke God that after his ymage
You made…

is not anticlimax, but rather has much to do with the theme of the poem: 'The ultimate reason for Troilus’ woe was not that he trusted in a woman but that of his own free will he placed his hope for perfect happiness in that which by its very nature was temporary, imperfect, and inevitably insufficient.’ In short, Chaucer is telling us that when human love is Fate, and is in the hands of ever-turning Fortune, only love of God can be counted on as a permanent thing. Troilus’ mistake (and Criseyde’s weakness) is that they have given up their claim to a permanent, everlasting love by putting themselves in Fate’s hands. This should not be taken as evidence that Chaucer distanced himself completely from romantic love, any more than his humour should be misinterpreted as derision. Perspective is not rejection. Chaucer, by his sympathetic treatment of the lovers (he does, after all, place Troilus in Heaven) demonstrates an approval of courtly love, perhaps even a romantic sensibility. He is simply able to take that view of courtly love and put it in its place. As modern readers, exposed to the sensibilities of the Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorian re-interpreters of the medieval world, we expect courtly love to always be over the top; as absolute as a troubadour lyric; extreme. If it does not obliterate the world and end in tears or in death, it must not be courtly love. Chaucer’s treatment of the phenomenon, if it is allowed to stand on its own, says that the issue is a little more complicated.

copyright 1995 by Sarah L. M. Dorrance