CHAUCER'S T-ROILUS AND CRISEYDE

A DRAMATIC INTERPRETATION OF THE "DOUBLE TRUTH" THEORY

FRANCIS CUTHBERT PARKINSON

B.A., University of British Columbia, I960

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ABSTRACT

The contention of the thesis is that Chaucer's approach to the story of Troilus and Criseyde was deter• mined by a wish to examine pragmatically the essential value of courtly love as a way of life and that he used the Troilus as a poetic vehicle for this examination. Furthermore it is maintained that his view of courtly love would be conditioned by the current philosophical theory of the "double truth"—that a thing may be true according to reason but false according to religion. The code of courtly love had been condemned by the Church as being opposed to Christian morality, but extolled by many writers, especially Andreas Capellanus, as being not only in harmony with natural morality but even the summum bonum of life. In Troilus and Criseyde Chaucer is speculating on the validity of the latter position, which constituted a commonly recognized example of one aspect of a double truth.

If this hypothesis can be substantiated it is reasonable to hope that it may shed light on the major critical problems of the Troilus, specifically the rele• vancy of Troilus's speech on free will, the apparent inconsistency in Criseyde's actions and the artistic iv value of the epilogue. To establish the hypothesis the thesis presents evidence of the prevalence of the Averroistic system of thought from which sprang the theory of the two truths and of Chaucer's undoubted awareness of this philosophical position. Textual evidence is then introduced to show that Chaucer intended to deal specifically with courtly love as a rational and complete way of life and examine its conse• quences in the dramatic unfolding of the story. He deve• loped courtly love into a way of life by making it a quasi-religion. From this arises the relevancy of Troilus's speech on free will: it is a commentary on the determinism implicit in this religion.

The major characters in the poem are then considered. Taken together the dramatic roles of the male protagonists are seen to exemplify a comprehensive, tri-partite view of courtly love—idealistic, sensual and light-hearted—none of which proves eventually productive of lasting happiness. Criseyde*s character, flawed by her fear of scandal, is a crux in the tragedy. Her insistence that the courtly commandment of secrecy be kept is responsible for the lovers' separation. Hence the demands of the code of love are responsible for the tragedy, and Criseyde's betrayal is consistent with the timidity of character she continually displays.

Finally the epilogue is seen as a summary of the V findings of Chaucer's philosophical experiment in fiction.

Troilus's final enlightenment expresses the conclusion of the author: that courtly love is a false happiness not only on religious grounds hut also on rational and prag• matic ones. The theory of double truth has thus been dramatically shown to be inapplicable to the defense of courtly love as a way of life. ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introductory: The Scope of the Thesis 1

II. The Philosophical Problem: The Doctrine

of the "Double Truth"

a. Its Currency 11

b. Its Influence on Chaucer 15

III. The Poem as a Philosophical Quest

a. Chaucer Expresses his Intentions 25

b. Courtly Love as One Side of a "Double Truth" 30 c. Courtly Love as a Rational Way of Life 37 d. Philosophic and Poetic Aspects of Troilus's Free Will Speech 52

IV. The Dramatic Representation of Courtly Love

as a Rational Way of Life

a. Troilus, Diomede and Pandarus Personify Three Complementary Aspects of Courtly Love 58

b. Criseyde Personifies the Rational Approach to Courtly Love 71

c. Criseyde's Actions Reflect a Consistent Approach to Courtly Love 74-

V. The Epilogue, The Conclusion of the Quest:

The Repudiation of the Truth of Courtly Love 92 I

INTRODUCTORY: THE SCOPE OF THE THESIS

"That thow be understonde, God I bisechei" Chaucer's plea at the close of his "litel tragedye" seems to have gone largely unheard. Of all his works Troilus and Criseyde seems to be the one which calls forth the greatest diversity of opinion. This thesis is an attempt to resolve some of the major differences in inter• pretation by examining the text in the light of the philo• sophical problems which we may reasonably assume Chaucer was concerned with.

Some defence must be given for this approach, for there seem to be two conflicting opinions as to its validity. Paul Baum, for instance, considers that the search for "profound, latent philosophical meanings"^ is a critical aberration, that the critic should confine himself to a detailed examination and exposition of the text. While this limitation of criticism may perhaps appear desirably scientific in that it provides a salutary check on the imagination, it also has the drawback that to ignore

Chaucer: A Critical Appreciation (Durham, N. C: Duke University Press, 1958), p. viii. 2 the "latent philosophical meanings" of a piece of literature is to run, if that piece has such meanings, a grave risk of misunderstanding its essential message. To give but one example, it would in many works totally destroy our appreci• ation of their very raison d'etre, since without any speculation based on evidence outside of the text we would have to interpret them on the simplest factual level. Thus

Gulliver's Travels would be merely an interesting and ingenious fantasy instead of the bitter commentary on society that Swift intended it to be.

In apparent opposition to this strictly textual approach is one advocated by Professor Patch:

Surely it is a safe principle in criticizing a great work of art to assume that the interpretation in harmony with all the parts of the poem is the one nearest to the intention of the author. . . . Another good principle to assume is that a great artist knows what he is about, and that he has a right to be understood on his own terms.2

This Occam's Razor of literary criticism is the underlying assumption of this paper and its justification, for if we accept the fact, nowhere stated by Chaucer, that he was aware of and concerned with the philosophical theory of the "double truth," the major critical problems created by the Troilus may have a new light shed upon them.

These problems may be appropriately mentioned here.

First, as regards the epilogue, is it artistically relevant

"Troilus on Determinism," Speculum. VI (1931), 225-43. 3 or intellectually sincere? Is it "a clashing discord"^ which "does not illumine or modify" hut contradicts?^ Is it true to say that it is the "grossest instance of the failure on the part of Chaucer to comply with the require• ments of his art", that it "utterly interferes with the movement of the story" that it is "tacked to it "by the flimsiest of fastenings"?- Or is Kittredge correct when he says, "At the end of the poem the great sympathetic ironist drops his mask and we find that he has once more heen studying human life from the point of view of a ruling passion and that he has no solution except to repudiate the unmoral and unsocial system which he has pretended to up- hold."? Or, as is quite possible, is neither view either wholly or partially correct? The second major area of disagreement is Troilus's speech on the existence of free choice (IV, 958-1078). At a moment highly charged with the anguish and fear of the impending separation of the lovers Troilus gives a long, intellectual and tightly organized speech on predetermination.

PJ. S. P. Tatlock, "The People in Chaucer's Troilus." PMLA. LVI (194-1), p. 86. 4J. S. P. Tatlock, "The Epilogue of Chaucer's Troilus." MP, 18 (1921), p. 146. ^T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer (3 vols.; New York: Harper, 1892), Vol. 3, p. W. G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), P» 14-3• 4

Representing probably the majority opinion, Baum thinks it 7 is "artistically a blemish,"' while Patch defends it on the grounds that it is a perfectly normal emotional outburst from a young man who feels that fate has conspired to rob him of his beloved and in circumstances in which he feels 8 powerless to act. Is there a third interpretation that may resolve these contradictory solutions:

A third problem is whether Chaucer intended

Criseyde*s character to be static or developing, whether the tragedy is due in large part to her character or whether the author had to change her character to make it consonant with the tragedy. C. S. Lewis sees her character as consis• tent, maintaining that the dominant and subsisting quality in Criseyde's make-up is fear, and that it is fear of loneliness which leads first of all to her loving Troilus Q and then to her rejecting him for Diomede. Whatever evidence Lewis can find for this solution is not apparent to many other critics. Among these, the judgment of T. A. Kirby is typical: The amazing thing about Criseyde is not only her inconstancy but the fact that with her intelligence, graciousness and general superiority, she should

'OP. cit.. p. 148.

80p. cit.. p. 226 ff. ^The Allegory of Love (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 186. 5 yield to the addresses of such a person as Diomede; but chacun a son gout. Yet it is difficult not to regard this as an artistic flaw in her portrayal.10

A somewhat vaguer but no less important area of disagreement lies in the nature of the love about which

Chaucer was writing. Was he dealing with romantic love in the sense in which the modern world understands it or was he, on the contrary, primarily concerned with the medieval phenomenon of courtly love? This question is not a mere quibble: the way in which one answers it will determine

j very largely the judgments one makes on the three previous problems. If the tragedy is basically a romantic love story and only incidentally a courtly love story, then it will be hardly possible to reconcile the epilogue, or Troilus's speech on free choice or Criseyde's character with the view that the poem is an artistic success. If the opposite is true, then such a reconciliation may possibly be achieved. Courtly love was both a code of behaviour and basically an anti-Christian one, and therefore in a medieval, Christian society the author would be justified in adding to his tale of "solaas" an epilogue of "sentence". He might also be justified in having his hero give an explanatory dis• course on a fate or destiny which had no meaning in a Christian cosmology. Lastly the tragedy could possibly be

Chaucer's "Troilus": A Study in Courtly Love (Louisiana University Press, 1?A0), p. 232. 6 attributed not to a tragic flaw in Criseyde but to the implications of the code itself.

This is not to cut the triple Gordian knot that

Chaucer has left us but only to show that a solution seems more probable if courtly love is a basic theme of the poem.

That it is most modern critics seem to agree on, two notable exceptions being Tatlock and Lewis. The former states flatly that the theme of the poem is "not what is called amour courtois. 'courtly love', in any sense which gives that phrase value."** Lewis says that "Chaucer has brought the old romance of adultery to the very frontiers of the 12 modern (or should I say late?) romance of marriage." Courtly, chivalrous and romantic love are frequently used interchangeably and with no great discrimination, for they have a common element of idealization of woman, but for the purposes of this paper courtly love will refer specifically to the code as set forth by Andreas Capellanus

(or Andre le Chapelain) in his Handbook of Courtly Love, the De Amore. That Chaucer understood it in the same sense will be dealt with later. Assuming this for the moment and returning to the major points of discord outlined above, it need not be

The Mind and Art of Chaucer (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1950), p. 39.

120n. cit.. p. 197. 7 stressed that they are so fundamental that one may, depen•

ding on one's bias or a priori estimate of the author's

intentions, arrive at two totally different interpretations

of the poem in attempting to resolve the discord: it may

be, to express these interpretations in their most extreme

form, either a pagan love song or a thinly disguised

morality tale. If the first view is taken, the epilogue

seems like a sop to religious convention, Troilus's free

will speech is out of place, and Criseyde is acting out of

character in betraying Troilus. This is a consistent

resolution, but hardly a satisfactory one for it confronts

us with the unacceptable fact that Chaucer was, to put it

in its strongest terms, religiously hypocritical and

artistically incompetent. This is incompatible with the principle of criticism set out above (footnote 2). We may

grant that Chaucer, as any artist, is not infallible nor wholly consistent, but not to this extent.

If, on the other hand, we attempt to unify the poem by justifying the epilogue as necessary to state a moral

already exemplified in the tragedy, we are faced with a

similar difficulty, namely that Chaucer has failed artis• tically, since the reader's sympathy is with the sinners

rather than with the judge's decision. Five verses of palinode are scarcely sufficient to counterbalance the

false morality, if such it be, of five books. Even the medieval taste for "doctryne" or "sentence" would hardly 8 account for this abrupt volte face* Insisting then on the critical tenet that Chaucer

"knows what he is about and that he has a right to be

understood on his own terms", it is necessary to find an

"interpretation that is in harmony with all parts of the poem." This, we may reasonably expect, will be "the one nearest to the intentions of the author." It is the

contention of this paper that Chaucer's motivation in writing Troilus and Criseyde was to examine pragmatically the theory of double truth in that field in which he was most interested—human love. If there is sufficient textual and circumstantial evidence to justify this hypo• thesis it may be proved by applying it to the problems dealt with above.

The theory of the double truth was an attempt to reconcile purely philosophical findings with religious dogmas by maintaining that what was true in philosophy was not necessarily true in theology, and vice versa. The origins, pervasiveness and implications of this theory and its influence on Chaucer will be dealt with in detail in the following chapter. Its possible connection with the

Troilus stems from the fact that the code of courtly love was in conflict with the Church's teaching on marriage.

Whereas the Church de-emphasised the physical side of 9

love, ^ the code exalted it and provided a rationale that

made extra-marital sex relations, under certain conditions,

respectable. It presented through the ennoblement of the

lover by his love and its demands upon his finer instincts

a strong argument in its own defence, for the love which it

advocated produced, if we are to believe the De Amore. nothing but good. Reason thus indicated that courtly love

was a good and desirable thing, theology damned it as

sinful. Which view was correct? If Chaucer was writing primarily of courtly love in the Troilus we must have been 14

aware of the clash between it and Christian teaching.

What more natural than that he should see the classical

tale as a dramatic example of one side of an apparent

PG£. Augustine: In marriage, intercourse for the purpose of generation has no fault attached to it, but for the purpose of satisfying concupiscence • . . it is a venial sin. And: Marriage also has this good, that carnal or youthful incontinence, even if it is bad, is turned to the honorable task of begetting children, so that marital intercourse makes something good out of the evil of lust. Treatises on Marriage and other Subjects. translated by Charles T. Wilcox et al. (New York: Fathers of the Cnurch Inc., 1955), PP. 17 and 13.

Aquinas is not so harsh: Although the marriage act is void of sin, nevertheless since it oppresses the reason on account of the carnal pleasure, it renders man unfit for spiritual things. SUPP. Q. 64. Art. 7.

l;*He certainly shows an awareness of it in The Nun's 10 double truth. Religiously speaking, courtly love was bad; would the story, or could it possibly, illustrate the opposite argument: that on a natural plane, without reference to Christian theology, it was essentially good?

Priest's Tale. Chaunticleer served Venus "moore for delit than world to multiplye." (1. 334-5) II

THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM: THE DOCTRINE

OP THE "DOUBLE TRUTH"

a* Its Currency

An understanding of the philosophical background of

Chaucer's time is essential to an appreciation of the

importance of the "double truth" theory. In the first

place there was no necessary dichotomy, as there often is

today between religion and philosophy. Knowledge was

regarded as a unity, and the word scientia meant no more

than intellectual knowledge in general. In European

thought, from Augustine on, philosophy had always been

regarded, whether explicitly or not, as the handmaid of

theology, for truth attained through the human intellect

was regarded as being ipso facto of a lower kind than

divine revealed truth. The aim of most philosophers was

ultimately to reconcile these two kinds of truth. The vision of a God-guaranteed truth was as fundamental to

medieval epistemology as is the mathematics-guaranteed

truth to twentieth century science. It is a truism to call

the Middle Ages the Age of Paith, or say that men saw the

world sub specie aeternitatis. but this cannot be stressed

too strongly, precisely because such a world view is quite foreign to our own age. This Age of Faith was the intel•

lectual milieu of Chaucer.

One of the philosophical schools with which Chaucer must have come into contact was Latin Averroism, and an understanding of its basic tenets will go far towards

explaining how common in intellectual circles was the idea of a double truth and why it must have influenced Chaucer.

Averroes, the most prominent of the Arabic philosophers of the twelfth century, had tried to overcome certain dif• ferences between Aristotelian philosophy and orthodox

Islamic theology by proposing two kinds of knowledge— rational and religious. This way of reconciling apparent discrepancies between reason and religion was later adopted by some Christian thinkers, and the philosophy of Latin

Averroism, as it came to be known, gained a good deal of ground in the universities of Europe. Its leader was

Siger of Brabant, a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas and fellow teacher at the University of Paris.

Siger maintained that philosophical findings that were not in accordance with Christian teaching were not necessarily to be rejected, for what was true philosophi• cally might be false theologically or vice versa. Such a solution could be, and was, applied to many problems. One such problem was whether man had free will or not. In his most important work, De Necessitate et Contingentia Causarum.

Siger reached the position that free will could not be proved by reason and that, on the contrary, reason demanded

that man had no free will. It was impossible for Siger as

a Christian to be a determinist for the whole of Christian morality is based on the premise that man is responsible

for his choice of right or wrong. It may readily be seen then why Siger tried to take refuge in the theory of two truths propounded by Averroes. By this means he could hope to salve his conscience and obviate a charge of heresy by saying that his philosophical determinism did not con• flict with his Christian belief in free will. They were, so to speak, two different truths in two self-contained, non-interacting systems of thought. However, this neat dichotomy of truth was not acceptable to the Church authorities and in 1220 his philosophy of the double aspect of all truths was condemned. In 1227 Siger was again con• demned by Stephen Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, and the 15 theory of the double truth was declared a heresy. y This tribunal of Tempier was "one of the greatest events in the 16 history of medieval philosophy." It must have had far- reaching repercussions in the intellectual circles of

•'Maurice De Wulf, A History of Medieval Philosophy, trans. P. Coffey (2nd. ed., London: Longmans, 1909), pp. 443-5. And Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy vols., Westminster, Md. Newman Press, 1950), Vol. II, pp. 195-9. 16 Alexander Denomy, "The Two Moralities in Troilus and Criseyde." Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Sec. 2, XLIV (1950), p. 38. Europe, and even a century later Chaucer must surely have

been aware of its significance.

Siger wrote no more, but Latin Averroism by no

means died out. Although refuted by Aquinas and condemned

by the Church it was still a very live issue in Chaucer's

time and long afterwards. As De Wulf says:

From the middle of the fourteenth century down even to the seventeenth, the north of Italy and especially the University of Padua remained a hotbed of Averroism. ... As time went on, the Averroists showed themselves less and less concerned to preserve even the semblance of an agreement between philosophy and theology. And finally when the Renaissance came it made Averroism,„ openly and avowedly independent of Christian dogma. '

There is no reason to think that the English intel•

lectual climate was so secularized as the Italian, but it

is very probable that those philosophical ideas which were 18 not accepted were at least known and discussed. No doubt there was speculation on many problems in the light of the double truth of Averroism. It must have provided a tempting opportunity for any thinker to examine disputed questions from a purely rational standpoint and compare his findings with religious teachings.

Andreas in the De Amore had approached courtly love

x'0p. cit.. p. 444. 18 Chaucer, for instance mentions in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales that Averroes was one of the writers familiar to the Doctor of Physic. (1. 433) !t seems likely then that Chaucer himself was aware of Averroes and, by implication of the Arabian thinker's significance. in the accepted Averroistic way, as will be shown in the

following chapter. His Handbook was devoted first to a

rational defence of courtly love and then to a rejection

of it on religious grounds. It is at least conceivable

that Chaucer saw the code of love in the same light, as a possible example of a double truth—reprehensible by

Christian moral standards but a praiseworthy and self-

sufficient way of life when examined from a purely rational viewpoint. b. The Influence of Averroism on Chaucer

The foregoing preamble is necessary to support the thesis that the two questions of determinism and the double truth were of very vital interest in the fourteenth century.

How far Chaucer was influenced by them must be shown by secondary evidence. It is not by any means impossible that he knew Siger in the original, but since there is no direct evidence for this it may not be assumed. The argument pre• sented in this chapter will be that Chaucer was well acquainted with three writers who in turn show the influ• ence of Averroism.

These are not necessarily the only sources that influenced Chaucer, and in fact may well be minor ones, but they are the most obvious ones. The double truth and its concomitant determinism were no doubt discussed in any educated circle, for, needless to say, philosophy was not the esoteric study it later became: it was merely knowledge. 16

The influence of philosophy is seen in all forms of art, and it can he pointed out readily how the literature of the period is permeated with it

how the Roman de la Rose read in the feudal castles; how the great didactic poems such as the Bataille des Sept Arts of Henri d'Andeli, the Renart Contreffait. the Mariage des Sept Arts et des Sept Yertus: how Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls or his Canterbury Tales are filled with philosophical theses borrowed from Alan of Lille, Avicenna. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Bradwardine and others.™

Beyond this quotation no more need be said about the inter- penetration of philosophy and literature, but the influence of Bradwardine mentioned above is of importance. Chaucer mentions him specifically in The Nun's Priest's Tale in a mock-heroic reference to Chauntecleer's impending fate:

But what that God forwoot moot nedes bee,

That in scole is greet altercacioun In this matere, and greet disputisoun And hath been of an hundred thousand men. But I ne kan nat bulte it to the bren As kan the hooly doctour Augustyn, Or Boece, or the Bisshop Bradwardyn.

(11. 3234-42)

It is significant that Bradwardine is ranked as an authority comparable with and familiar as Augustine and

Boethius on the question of free will. Bradwardine's small claim to fame today is his book De Causa Dei, written about

1340. Chaucer, as Lounsbury points out, must have known

x*De Wulf, Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages (New York: Dover Publications, 1953), P« 174. 17 20

what it waa about. It was basically a refutation of the psychological determinism of the Latin Averroists, but

apparently not a very successful one, for Lounsbury sees it 21

as a "defence of predestination," while De Wulf says it

was qualified with subtle restrictions "which really

eliminate genuine human freedom and with it the whole scho•

lastic system of ethics [and] lead by another way to the 22

Averroistic view which he wished to avoid," That this

question of Averroism was a burning issue of the day is

attested in the Introduction to the De Causa Dei, in which

Bradwardine says, "Sciens in flammam terribilem manum mitto"2^—"I am aware that I am putting my hand into a

terrible flame." It would seem that Bradwardine was forced into the mental contortions of "a sort of theistic deter- 24 minism" precisely because he could not take the easy way-

out offered by the exponents of the double truth: that man's will is free according to faith but not free according to reason. Chaucer must have been well aware of the learned bishop's predicament.

A more general but probably more significant

2Q0p. cit.. p. 386.

21Ibid.

22Historv. p. 447.

23 Ibid;. t p. 445.

24Ibid. 18 influence on Chaucer's philosophical thought was that of

Dante, for it is clear that Chaucer had the greatest admir• ation for the Italian. The doxology that ends the Troilus is an almost literal translation of lines 28-30 of Canto 14 of the Paradiso. And the monk in The Canterbury Tales praises Dante in terms which reflect Chaucer's feelings:

Redeth the grete poete of Ytaille That highte Dant, for he Kan al devyse

Pro point to point, nat o word wol he faille.

(Monks Tale. 11. 3650-52)

These citations are sufficient to show directly and by the strongest implication that Chaucer had a very high estimate of Dante, and it is only natural that this respect would include philosophic opinion as well as poetic genius.

Dante himself had the greatest respect for the Averroist thinkers, a fact which, considering his complete orthodoxy, has puzzled many critics. In the Divine Comedy, although

Mohamed is placed in hell, Averroes and Avicenna are in limbo. Siger of Brabant is not only placed in heaven but is given the highest of praise from St. Thomas Aquihus , his one time adversary in the schools:

It is the light eternal of Siger, Who, when he lectured in the Street of Straw, Could syllogize unpalatable truths.25 Copleston's solution to the puzzle of Dante's anomalous

^The Divine Comedy, translated by Lawrence Grant White (New York: Pantheon Books, 1948), Paradiso. X, 140-42. 19

elevation of the two Arabians and the Christian Averroist

seems to be a reasonable one:

Obviously Dante was treating these men as philosophers, and it was because of this fact that he placed the Islamic thinkers as high in the scale as he could: as they were not Christians he did not consider that he could release them from Inferno. and so he placed them in Limbo. Siger, on the other hand, was a Christian, and so Dante placed him in heaven. That he made St. Thomas speak his praises ... is explicable if we remember that the Thomist system presupposes a philosophy which is built up by natural reason alone and that to build up a philosophy by reason alone was precisely what Siger of Brabant professed to do: it is not necessary to suppose that Dante approved of all Siger's notions; but he takes him as the symbol of "pure philosophy."26

Copleston goes on to point out that "Dante owed to the

systems of Alfarabi, Avicenna, Algazel and Averroes impor•

tant points in his philosophy." This is not at all sur•

prising considering the intellectual climate of Italy,

which was a hundred years closer to the Renaissance than

the rest of Europe, and thus further from the Age of Eaith.

The double truth fulcrum on which Averroism had to balance

was in secular circles a firmly entrenched opinion, for it

"expressed with precision the stage of scepticism toward

the religious system, of antisupernaturalism rather than

of positive naturalism and humanism, which had reached the northern Italian cities in the fourteenth century. It

attempted a rational defence of the attitude so well

expressed in Boccaccio and so horrifying ... to

istory. p. 200. Petrarca." '

Chaucer must have spent at least eleven months in

Italy between 1372 and 1376, part of this time with Bamabo

Visconti, Lord of Milan. It would be indeed surprising if he had not come into contact with the prevailing religious scepticism of the upper class Italian and with the philo• sophical basis of this scepticism. That Dante came down firmly on the side of religion, while Boccaccio, his contemporary, tended, at least in his earlier works, towards scepticism must have left an academic problem, if nothing more, in Chaucer's mind as to what rational grounds each had. The Averroism which influenced both is the divisive intellectual factor. It is the root of this that Chaucer may well be examining in the Troilus—and in his own prag• matic fashion.

The third and probably most important influence on

Chaucer, as far as his motives for writing the Troilus are concerned, may have been the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus.

Alexander Denomy has argued very cogently in The Heresy of

Courtly Love that the De Amore was an attempt to set out the code of courtly love first as a rational system and then in the De Reprobatione to give the Christian estimate of this kind of love. It is this book more than any other which

'Ernst Cassirer et al.. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 11. gave the Western world the concept of courtly love, for it codified the amour courtois of the troubadurs and treated it as a quasi-religion. Of this religion of love Andreas was no advocate, as can be seen not only in the De

Reprobatione. the third part of the work, in which he totally rejects his earlier arguments, but also in the pre• face in which he says it is not fitting "for any prudent man to engage in this kind of hunting." The question then may well be asked why he compromises his religion by treating love in this fashion. Denomy maintains that Andreas was deliberately dividing his view of truth in the accepted

Averroistic way:

In the De Amore we are exclusively on the level of reason and human nature; in the De Reprobatione. on that of faith and grace. ... What Andreas teaches to be true according to nature and reason

he teaches to be false according to grace and 2g divine doctrine of the so-called "double truth."

Andreas' sincerity as a Christian is not called into question:

As a good Christian he wished to put himself on the side of orthodoxy. There is no more reason to sus• pect his sincerity, or even his orthodoxy, than there is to suspect those of Siger. The De Reprobatione is, as it were, Andreas's profession of faith in the face of a heresy to which the necessary conclusion of reason had led him.29

This intellectual schizophrenia was not acceptable to the Church authorities, and the De Amore was condemned

280p. cit.. p. 39.

29Ibid.. p. 52. by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris on March 7th. 1277.

This was on the same date and by the same man as the con• demnation of Siger of Brabant's teaching, and the reason for both was the same: the philosophical theory of the double truth that underlay them both.

It is highly unlikely that Chaucer was unaware of the condemnation of the De Amore and equally unlikely that he did not speculate on the rational grounds for the decision.

That courtly love as codified by Andreas was anti-

Christian need hardly be stressed. It is essentially adulterous. "What is love," says Andreas, "but an inordi• nate desire to receive passionately a furtive and hidden embrace?"^ and later: "love can have no place between husband and wife."^** To account therefore for the accep• tance of this doctrine in medieval society one must look to the effects which love produces, and which closely approxi• mate to the Christian virtues:

Now it is the effect of love that a true lover cannot be degraded with avarice. Love . • . can endow a man even of the humblest birth with nobility of character; it blesses the proud with humility; and the man in love becomes accustomed to performing many services gracefully for everyone. 0 what a wonderful thing

^Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John J. Parry; ed. by P. W. Locke (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1957), P- 17.

51Ibid. 23 is love, which makes a man to shine with so many- virtue si"

Further to compound this confusion of pagan and Christian

is the rule that a courtly lover must be a Christian, for

"love comes to an end if one of the lovers ... is found

to go astray from the Catholic religion."^

There seems so much good in courtly love and yet it

is based solidly and incontestably on a type of love which

Christianity classed as illicit and pernicious. Under the code this love is not only laudable but becomes the summum bonum of man's existence. The De Amore refers continually to courtly love as the source of all virtue and good and the dominating centre of man's life.

Andreas, as we have seen, attempted a reconciliation through applying the double truth theory. Chaucer in

Troilus and Criseyde carried this one step further. Fully aware of the overpowering nature of love and the good effects it produces he took the proposition that this way of life

(for it is nothing less) is both praiseworthy and practical on a purely natural level and proceeded to isolate it from a Christian context and examine it under purely natural conditions uncomplicated by any clash with Christian prin• ciples. The story presented him, so to speak, with labor• atory conditions for the examination of this proposition;

52Ibid., p. 4.

33Ibid., p. 29. all he had to do was let things take their course and ob• serve the result. It may be objected that he already knew what the result would be, but this is not to the point: what Chaucer does is to show that the result was inevitable despite the strongest case he could make for the system.

Hence Chaucer's fears that he would be misunderstood, for he was running a great risk that his artistic and intel• lectual detachedness, his unwillingness not only to judge but even admit the guilt of the lovers would be wrongly construed as sympathy with the code. Ill

THE POEM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL QUEST a. Chaucer Expresses his Intentions

Chaucer goes out of his way at many points to make clear his position as a narrator and the approach to the poem he would wish his readers to take. In the opening stanzas he associates himself with the religion of love and attempts to show first that he is not dealing with his theme as a Christian and secondly that he is not speaking from experience:

For I, that God of Loves servantz serve, He dar to Love, for myn unliklyness. . . .

(I, 15-16)

In other words he is treating of love as if he were an impartial writer in a pagan (that is, "extra-Christian") milieu.

His invocation in the poem is to Tisiphone, "Thow cruwel Furie, sorwynge ever in peyne." From this point we are drawn into a classical, pre-Christian atmosphere and our interest is aroused as to why one of the goddesses of vengeance is invoked and why from the start the element of suffering should be associated with love. The more so are we inclined to wonder at this as the tale progresses and the happiness of the lovers seems almost to illuminate 26 the story.

The significance of Chaucer* s calling himself the servant of the servants of Love is worth nothing for the effect it would have had on the medieval reader. This title of apparent humility is of course a parody of the traditional papal title, Servus Servorum Dei. Now since

Chaucer could hardly be setting himself up as the head of some sort of romantic hierarchy the implication of this expression is brought into question. The most likely inter• pretation is that it is used in comic irony—but to what end? The end, it would seem, of creating a pseudo-religious leitmotiv, for a few lines later the author calls on the sympathy of his readers asking them to intercede with the

God Love

And preieth for hem that ben in the cas Of Troilus, as ye may after here,

That Love hem brynge in hevene to solas.

(I, 29-32)

Evoking this sympathetic spirit seems to be Chaucer's first concern, for he spends the succeeding three stanzas in the same vein, finally embarking on the story proper with:

Now herkneth with a good entencioun. (I, 5D

The word "entencioun" denotes both understanding and attention. When it is coupled with his wish for his

"litel bok" in the envoi—"That thow be understonde, God,

I bisechel"—it indicates very markedly a meaning in the poem which the superficial reader may very well miss. Why should Chaucer have enclosed his story between these two requests that it be understood?

A clue to the answer lies, I think, in the proem to Book II. The invocation this time is to Cleo, the Muse of History; which would occasion no comment except that

Chaucer proceeds to absolve himself again from any sus• picion that he might be advocating the code of love he has been describing in Book I. "Of no sentement I this endite," he says. His only responsibility is to translate the story from the original Latin, and thus his author is to blame for anything that gives offence. And besides, he himself cannot speak of love, for "A blynde man kan not juggen wel in hewis" (II, 21). These disclaimers cannot go unnoticed;

Chaucer is protesting too much.

Their significance and that of Cleo becomes apparent in the next four verses, where Chaucer expresses outright the attitude he wishes his readers to take: he tells them to put the story in its historical perspective. He argues by analogy:

Ye knowe ek that in forme of speche is chaunge Withinne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so, And spedde as wel in love as men now do; Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages, In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.

(II, 21-28)

Just as speech has changed, so too have fashions in love; 28

and we cannot judge a pagan love affair by our own stan•

dards. Chaucer does not say by our moral standards and

apparently does not intend us to take this interpretation,

for he continues:

Ek in som lond were all the game shent If that they ferde in love as men don here, As thus, in opyn doyng or in chere, In visityng in forme, or seyde hire sawes; Forthi men seyn, ecch contree hath his lawes.

(II, 38-42)

The distinction in standards which he makes here is between loving openly and in secrecy.

It is hardly easier for the twentieth century man to see more clearly than the fourteenth why a normal love affair should be secret, but this secrecy is of the essence of courtly love. Where secrecy had been a necessity in any illicit union, the code had made of it a virtue as well.

Andreas insists that love "comes to an end after it has been openly revealed."^ Chaucer is thus transferring the courtly love convention to Troy, and the sine qua non by which he indicates that it is courtly love is secrecy. Why else would he emphasize that the love of Troilus and

Criseyde was not "in opyn doyng or in chere"? He was under no compulsion to make their relationship a courtly romance, and that his readers did not expect it to be such is at• tested by the fact that he deliberately directs their

'De Amore. p. 29. attention to the element of secrecy.

The reasons why Chaucer did so may well be the cardinal point on which hinges the interpretation of the poem that Chaucer wished his readers to take. From the , text one must admit that he was thinking of something over and above purely physical love, for such a basic human relationship is surely common to all ages in history. And yet if we assume that Chaucer thought of all aristocratic love as being of the courtly type we meet another problem, for courtly love as described by Andreas is definitely a phenomenon of the Christian era. This is made clear at several places in the De Amore, for instance:

Other things which weaken love are blasphemy against God and his saints [and] mockery of the ceremonies of the Church. . . .55 and:

We see that love comes to an end if one of the lovers ... is found to go astray from the Catholic religion.36

Bearing in mind these facts, a hypothesis may be made that Chaucer's motive was to put his classical lovers in a courtly love framework but in a society where there were no moral values which conflicted with the code. In this way the intrinsic value of the code could be estimated.

Andreas had emphasized in the De Reprobation© that courtly

55Ibid., p. 28.

56Ibid»» P« 29. 30

love was morally bad and led to unhappiness because it

conflicted with the supernatural law. An obvious specu•

lative extension of this would be an examination of courtly

love in a morally neutral environment when there was no

conflict with the supernatural. Troilus and Criseyde is in

fact just such an examination in fictional form. It may be

that Chaucer's motivation thus to study courtly love prag• matically was not conscious, that in fact it was a secondary

or even fortuitous result of his treatment of the old story.

To determine whether it is consciously directed or not one

can only ask: What would Chaucer have done if he had

intended to treat of courtly love so clinically?;

He would have had to make clear his position as an impartial narrator, unbiased by any attachment to the code and devoid of any authority or even wish to judge. Secondly, he would have had to make it clear that the love affair being narrated was essentially one of courtly rather than romantic love. Finally he would have had to accentuate the historical perspective of the story to eliminate dis• traction from any irrelevant moral issues. As has been seen above, Chaucer makes it a prime concern to offer these qualifications• b. Courtly Love as One Side of a "Double Truth"

If this hypothesis is correct we may expect to find, as well as secrecy, many of the other characteristics of courtly love in the relationship between Troilus and

Criseyde. There are several phenomena in a courtly love

affair which are found in other love literature. Ovid,

for instance, in his Ars Amatoria postulates a God of Love,

and indeed very probably bequeathed this concept to later

European literature. The Greeks tended sometimes to look

upon love as a sickness, a disordering of the rational

faculty. The fears of the lover, his exaltation and

feelings of inferiority to his beloved are universally known symptoms of love. What then identifies love as being specifically courtly?

Two of the basic concepts that characterize courtly

love are secrecy and the notion of love as being the source

of all good. Arising from these are other necessary condi• tions: the ennobling force of love, the elevation of the beloved to a place above the lover, the idea of service, the acceptance of love as being a normal condition and jealousy as being a necessary part of it. Andreas outlines all of these conditions and Chaucer faithfully illustrates them in the poem.

In the De Amore love is called "the thing from which the highest good in this life takes its origins."^ Thus is it treated in the Troilus. The tragedy of Troy forms but a backdrop to the love of Troilus and Criseyde. This in

Ibid.. p. 20. 32 itself is worth note, for the original story of Benoit de

Ste. Maure deals with the Troilus affair only as a romantic

relief to the siege of Troy, while Chaucer follows Boccaccio

in making the love theme central. That he made his choice

consciously, not through slavish imitation of Boccaccio,

may he inferred from his apology for having to give a sad

ending to the story:

And if I hadde ytaken for to write The armes of this ilke worthi man, Than wolde ich of his hatailles endite; But for that I to writen first bigan Of his love, I have seyd as I kan. (V, 1765-9)

Are not the last two lines an admission of Chaucer's definite

intention to write of love and a statement of the inevit•

ability of the outcome, a rather reluctant admission that

although he would have liked a happier ending he cannot

evade the logical consequence of making love the fons et

origo boni?.

That Chaucer did adhere to Andreas's stipulation that love must be the all important factor in life is patent from the very beginning of the poem, but it is left

to Troilus to state it explicitly and in the strongest and most emotional terms at the very climax of the romance:

Benigne Love, thow holy bond of thynges, Whoso wol grace, and list the nought honouren, Lo his desir wol fie withouten wynges. That serven best and most alwey labouren, Yet were al lost, that dar I wel seyn certes, But if thi grace passed oure desertes.

(Ill, 1261-7) Here love is praised as the cohesive force in the universe

without which all is lost, and apotheosized to an even

greater extent than "by Andreas.

The impact of this idea on the reader cannot he

escaped; it is a climactic truth revealed in a moment of

ecstasy. It's force can be realized the more clearly if

one tries to imagine this idea occurring in a modern

romance. It just would not fit, because the modern reader's

concern is with the lovers rather than with love in itself

as an abstract power. Chaucer has indicated unmistakeably

that in the Troilus the reverse is true for him, for he has focussed attention at this most unlikely moment not on

the lovers but on the "holy bond of thynges" which is

ruling their destiny.

Of the other characteristics of courtly love its 38

ennobling effect on the lover is an essential one. The

conventional ennoblement of Troilus begins when he experi•

ences the first joy of love, that is when Pandarus has

assured him of help in gaining Criseyde. The "fierse proude knyght" (I, 225) is no more: Dedewere his japes and his cruelte, His heigh port and his manere estraunge And ecch of tho gan for a vertu chaunge. (I, 1085-5)

Cf. De Amore. Rule X. "Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice." And Chap. Ill: "[Love] blesses, the proud with humility, and the man in love becomes 34

Now Troilus becomes:

. . . the friendlieste wight The gentilest, and ek the mooste fre, The thriftiest and oon the beste knyght That in his tyme was or myghte be.

(I, 1079-82)

And along with these gentler virtues he acquires a new valour:

And in the feld he pleyde the leoun;

Wo was that Grek that with hym mette a-dayl

(I, 1073-4)

These quotations are from the last three verses of

Book I and have a special significance for our purpose in

that they represent additions by Chaucer to the Boccaccio

story. Perhaps the strongest evidence of Chaucer's inten•

tions lies in how he used his sources. Additions, deletions

and changes in his source material should, if there is a

consistent approach to the narrative, all manifest the nature

of that approach. What in effect these alterations indicate

is that Chaucer is not only specifying courtly love as the dynamic behind the tragedy but is making the strongest case

in defence of it as a way of life.

Thus the above additions to the story as told in

II Filostrato stress the transformation that love effects

in the lover, and this is further reinforced in Book III

after the love has been consummated:

accustomed to performing many services gracefully for everyone." (p. 4.) 35 And though that he be come of blood roial, Hym liste of pride at no wight for to chace; Benigne he was to ech in general, For which he gat hym thank in every place. Thus wold Love, yheried be his grace, That Pride, Envye, and Ire and Avarice He gan to fie, and everich other vice.

(Ill, 1800-06)

The encomium here is almost a literal translation from

II Pilostrato (III, 93), but it is apparent that Chaucer

sees the ennobling power as a more important aspect of

courtly love, first of all because he has already mentioned

it (as Boccaccio has not) in Book I and secondly because he finishes Book III with a definite statement that this is whatheis purposely explaining:

... have I seyd fully in my song Th' effect and joie of Troilus servise. . . •

(III, 1814-15)

There is no parallel to this in II Filostrato. Boccaccio is well aware of "th* effect" of love but is more concerned with the "joie", whereas Chaucer, by no means unaware of the physical delight,sees equal significance in the fact that love engenders man desirable virtues. It would seem that he has established at this point that Andreas's claims for courtly love are valid. So far the case for the code seems sound.

Little more need be said here to show that Chaucer was deliberately following the code in developing the love story. A comparison between the De Amore and the Troilus 36 will provide ample illustration that the lovers are engaged

in a specifically courtly love affair^ in all respects

except two. First, they are not required to he Christians,

for obvious reasons; secondly, they reject the jealousy

which Andreas insists is an essential in courtly love. The

significance of this latter deviation will become clear

later.

An interesting textual confirmation that Chaucer was following the rules as codified by Andreas is, however, worthy of mention. Andreas says that all classes of people may theoretically engage in courtly love, even priests.

The only exception he makes is nuns. Criseyde seems to have this sole disqualification in mind when she is deciding whether or not she should commit herself to an affair with

Troilus, for she soliloquizes:

Shal I nat love, in cas if that me leste? What, par dieux. I am naught religious. (II, 759-60)

This little anachronism is in itself almost sufficient to demonstrate that both Chaucer and his audience were well acquainted with the De Amore and at this point in the narrative were well aware that Criseyde was not trying

^^Evidence for this has been fully dealt with by many scholars, notably T. A. Kirby in Chaucer's Troilus: A Study in Courtly Love and W. G. Dodd, Courtly Love in Chaucft-p artd Gower (Boston: Ginn. 1913). 40 De Amore. p. 25. merely to decide whether to fall in love hut was pondering

a decision to engage specifically in courtly love.

c. Courtly Love as a Rational Way of Life

Chaucer's two lovers then are living in and condi•

tioned "by the explicitly stated tenets of courtly love.

They are not engaged in a romance in the modern sense or a

social pastime hut are dedicated to a definite way of life,

the religion of love, and ultimately the tragedy will

develop "from the fact that they do not see beyond love.

For them it is an absolute thing, like God, to be betrayed, 4-1

evaded, ignored, or devoutly worshipped. ..." Chaucer has taken pains to make clear the quasi-religious nature

of the love theme. In effect he is presenting the strongest possible case for courtly love, not only by examining it in

a morally neutral environment but by putting it in a morally favourable one. The Trojan setting lent itself to the former; Chaucer creates the second in two ways: by purging the code of all charge of grossness or immorality and then by developing it as a self-contained religion

analogous in many ways to Christianity.

In the first place, although he follows Andreas's

De Amore very closely he deviates in two ways. He

John Bayley, The Characters of Love: A Study in the Literature of Personality (London: Constable, I960), p. 72. deliberately omits the element of jealousy which was an

integral part of the code. "Real jealousy*" says Andreas,

"always increases the feeling of love," and "Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his 42 beloved." Boccaccio accepted this rule and his Cressida enunciated it. She says to Troilo, "Soul of mine, I heard in conversation some time ago, if I remember correctly, that Love is a jealous spirit, and when he seizeth aught, he holdeth it so firmly bound and pressed in his claws that to free it, advice is given in vain. He hath gripped me in such wise for thee. ..." (Ill, 48-49). Chaucer rejects outright this linking of love with jealousy.

Criseyde in fact preaches the contrary. She rebukes Troilus for his jealousy, so slyly engendered by Pandarus: My goode myn, noot I for-why ne how That jalousie, alias! that wicked wyvere Thus causeless is cropen into yow, The harm of which I wolde fayn delyvere.

(Ill, 1009-12) and then goes on to contradict in the most forceful terms the rule of love which would seem to sanction it: Ek al my wo is this, that folk now usen To seyn right thus, "Ye jalousie is love!" And wolde a busshel venym al excusen, For that o greyn of love is on it shove.

(Ill, 1023-26)

The image of jealousy that Criseyde presents is of poison

Op. cit.. p. 43. as insidious and deadly as that of a snake. In condemning

it she shows a much more spiritualized conception of love,

and there is significance in the fact that she will fly in

the face of convention to speak so dogmatically. Jealousy,

she says, is not love hut hate:

But that woot heighe God that sit above, If it he likkere love, or hate, or grame: And after that, it oughte here his name. (Ill, 1027-9)

What in essence she is saying is that if love is divine then jealousy can "be no part of it. Her womanly logic has clearly seen this vicious aspect of the code.

And yet she and Troilus are living within the code and loving in secrecy even though there is only one reason why they should not, namely that this would have involved marriage—which of course is the antithesis of courtly love. It is remarkable how in the De Amore this idea of secrecy is not merely a necessary caution which must be exercised but an essential quality in love, which is, as noted above, "a desire to receive passionately a furtive and hidden embrace." Boccaccio's Cressida is well aware of this and fully appreciates the amatory titillation of a secret love. When she is considering taking Troilo as a lover it is one of her first considerations:

Water acquired by stealth is sweeter far than wine had in abundance. So the joy of love, when hidden, ever surpasseth that of the husband held perpetually in arms.

(II, 74) 40

This attitude is much closer to the spirit of the code

than Criseyde's. Chaucer's poem is full of the need for

secrecy hut not to enhance sensual delight, and Criseyde never makes the thrill of surreptitious embraces a con•

sideration in accepting Troilus. On the contrary, she

specifies at first to Pandarus that there were to be no

embraces surreptitious or otherwise. She will, she says,

"plese him fro day to day," and this only to stop him from perishing from his love sickness. "But," she continues:

here I make a protestacioun that in this proces if ye depper go, That certaynly, for no savacioun Of yow, though that ye sterve both two Though al the world on o day be my fo, Ne shal I never on him han other routhe.

(II, 484-9)

Certainly she demands secrecy—her insistence on it is the very mainspring of the tragedy—but only on account of her reputation, not to increase the furtive pleasure of an affair. Hence her relationship with Troilus begins on a much higher spiritual plane than does that of the Cressida of II Pilostrato. and since Chaucer is deviating so markedly from Boccaccio on this point we cannot escape the fact that he is doing so intentionally.

The whole love affair is treated in a very delicate way. Never is there any suggestion that it should be looked upon as an adulterous liaison. "The loves of Troilus and

Criseyde," says C. S. Lewis, "are so nobly conceived that 41 they are divided only "by the thinnest partition from the lawful loves of Dorigen and her husband. It seems almost

an accident [italics mine] that the third book celebrates

adultery instead of marriage." y But surely this is no

accident, for Chaucer never makes any reference elsewhere

in the poem to moral guilt. In The Franklin's Tale

Dorigen's submission to Aurelius would have been sinful

precisely because the story is set in a Christian framework

and her actions must be judged by Christian standards. In

Troilus and Criseyde there is no sin because the morality

is in a different framework.

Chaucer insisted on this and it may well be the

specific point that he wanted to be "understonde". Once understood, the only moral question of the story concerns

the violation of one of the two primal commandments of the

code. The dramatic tension arises from the two questions,

"Will Troilus make the affair public?" and, later, "Will

Criseyde betray him to keep it secret?" This point is

stressed by John Livingston Lowes:

The drift of the action can be understood—and this is fundamental—only if we remember that in it Chaucer is following an accepted literary convention: to wit, the code of courtly or chivalrous love. And under that code, until Criseyde "falsed" Troilus, no moral issue whatsoever was involved. Judged by its tenets Criseyde, in giving herself to Troilus, was wholly innocent of wrong, and first sinned when she was false to him. The two inflexible

The Allegory of Love, p. 197. 42

requirements of the courtly code—a code under which love and wedlock were looked upon as incompatible— were secrecy and fidelity.44

It is interesting to compare this with the under• standing of another eminent Chaucerian, J. S. P. Tatlock:

It is fundamental to understand that the moral standard accepted by Chaucer in the Troilus ... is that assumed in much modern literature, not some bygone esoteric standard; the assumption is that sincere and intense physical passion, if managed with good taste, is honorable to both parties.^5

Surely the courtly love convention in just exactly a "bygone esoteric standard", and surely Chaucer has made it abun• dantly clear that this is the standard that is to be accepted—"In sondry londes sondry ben usages." Certainly he regards physical passion as being honourable, but is he not dealing with passion as qualified by the conditions of secrecy and fidelity, elevated into a way of life and an absolute value, and—more important—is he not examining its value in terms of lasting happiness rather than its morality?.

Once again Chaucer's deviation from II Pilostrato reinforces this interpretation, for Boccaccio's tale, though more worldly in spirit, does convey a sense of moral guilt attached to the grande passion of the lovers. Pandar is much closer to the type of person to which he has given his name. He is aware of his guilt as well as his cousin's,

Geoffrey Chaucer and the Development of His Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. 76.

^The Mind and Art of Chaucer, p. 40. and openly admits it to Troilo:

I have for thy sake become a go-between; for thy sake have I cast mine honor to the ground; for thy sake have I corrupted the wholesome breast of my sister. . . .

(Ill, 6)

Chaucer takes the same scene but changes the whole tone.

Pandarus says nothing about corrupting his niece or losing his honour, and although he admits he is technically a go- between—"betwixen game and eraest" (III, 254)—he absolves himself from any impure motives:

But God, that al woot, take I to witnesse, That never I this for coveitise wroughte But only for t' abregge that distresse For which wel neigh thow deidest. . . .

(Ill, 260-63)

He has earlier in more forceful terms told Criseyde he does not regard himself in any way as a pimp:

Me were 1evere thow and I and he

Were hanged, than I sholde ben his baude.

(II, 353-4)

It is significant that Boccaccio's Pandaro does consider he is playing the role of procurer, which Pandarus does not.

It suggests a totally different approach to courtly love.

Pandarus, humorous and bawdy as he is, seems to recognize that for Troilus it was of the nature of a religion, whereas for Pandaro and Troilo it is a much less spiritual thing. Even the fact that Troilo is obviously exalted and ennobled by his love and imbued with many new 44

virtues cannot disguise "the predatory pattern of two com- 46 rades in a mutual enterprise." This is certainly not

true of Chaucer's Troilus, who displays a hesitancy and

humility to the point of weakness. It is characteristic

of him that before the consummation of his love he

approaches Criseyde's bed in an attitude of worship, and

indeed would have stayed on his knees had not Pandarus

unceremoniously bundled him into bed. Pandarus tends to make fun of Troilus's devout awe, but in doing so he throws

it very strongly into relief. There is no mistaking the implication of his action in running to fetch a cushion for Troilus to kneel on: it emphasizes his humorous

impatience with Troilus's devotion, and also a certain lack

of understanding, for he is too direct and earthy to appre• ciate it.

There is an almost sacramental quality in the union of the two lovers. It is created and endures despite the intrusion of Pandarus. They are, it is plain to see, in a world apart from him and his rude humour does not penetrate the sanctity and preciousness of the occasion. Before their love is consummated they exchange vows in a manner befitting a Christian marriage, "doth what yow list," says Troilus, "I am al in youre grace." (Ill, 1176) And soon after Criseyde reveals her surrender to him:

Bayley, on. cit.. p. 84. 45

"Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte deere, / Ben yold, ywis,

I were now nought heerei" (III, 1210-11) The totality of

this surrender of body and soul is the last thing she

expresses before the final act of love: "Welcome, my knyght,

my pees, my suffisauncei" (III, 1309) Troilus is now to

her what she has been all along for him—her all in all,

her fulfilment. In recognition of their mutual surrender

they "entrechaungeden hire rynges," thus giving a final sacra•

mental touch to the scene.

Over and above this spiritualization of love there

seems to be a conscious attempt by Chaucer to emphasize the

religious nature of the love he is describing by a process

of constructing a theology of love in familiar terms. Thus,

far from incurring moral guilt, the lovers are behaving

completely in accord with the tenets of the religion of the

God of Love as Chaucer creates it. At first blush there

seems to the modern reader a rather naive mingling of pagan

with medieval Christian. Along with classical deities go references to orthodox Christian beliefs: grace (II, 24-3),

repentance (I, 933), conversion (I, 999), the priesthood

(III, 292), canonical hours (II, 1095) and many other medieval religious practices. This is not such a pastiche

as it might at first seem, for if Chaucer is deliberately

creating a pre-Christian milieu for his tragedy and ele•

vating courtly love to a pseudo-religion he would have to work in terms of classical and medieval. Certainly there is ample evidence that Chaucer deliberately tried to set a

Trojan stage for the story. "Its ancient coloring," says

Professor Tatlock, "proves much careful reading and wariness in composing. It is certain that Chaucer took pains to avoid such an excess of contemporary medieval color as would have marred the remote romantic background which gave dig• nity to the emotional romance. The penetrating modem is surprised at the small number of anachronisms. Of course we find God and the devil often mentioned and occasionally other Christian theology but without question Chaucer avoided it.^7 But if Chaucer were talking about religion he could hardly avoid it altogether. He would have had to use terms familiar to himself and to his readers. We may smile when he talks about the "bishop" Amphiorax (II, 104) in the story of Thebes, but we ourselves would have to use the word "priest", which is no less an anachronism—but one that is much more familiar, and therefore acceptable, today.

So, although Chaucer is forced to use a medieval

Christian terminology it does not follow that he is in any way confused. Quite the contrary; he may very well be consciously attempting to give to courtly love in Troy some of the force of Christianity in fourteenth century England.

A strange little aside of Pandarus is an indication that

"The Epilogue of Chaucer's Troilus," p. 128 this is so. When Criseyde first embraces Troilus, Pandarus

falls on his knees

. . . and up his eyen To heven threw, and held his hondes highe, "Immortal god," quod he, "that mayst nought deyen, Cupid I mene, of this mayst glorifie;

(III, 183-6)

Pandarus is here specifying in this rather awkward way that

the god of this religion is Cupid, not the immortal god the

reader would immediately think of. Thus he is demonstrating

that the deity of love had an importance in Troy similar

to that of the Christian God in Chaucer's England.

The God of Love, for instance, was supreme, omni• potent and omniscient. Chaucer states this early in the

first book:

For evere it was, and evere it shall byfalle, That Love is he that alle thing may bynde, For may no man fordon the lawe of kynde.

(I, 236-8)

It would seem from this that love is a personal god and the apotheosis of a universal human instinct. How close this is to the Christian conception of God may be seen by comparing it with St. John's first epistle:

Love is from God; and every one who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love knows not God; for God is love.

(4. 7-9)48

This and other scriptural references are from F. A. Spencer's translation (New York: MacMillan, 1951) 48 As with Christianity the approach to Love is through faith. "Bileve it, an she shal han on the routhe," says

Pandarus to the despairing Troilus, "Thow shalt he saved by thi feyth." (II, 1503-4) The Christian overtones of this are unmistakeable: faith is the one thing demanded in the gospels before Christ granted his favours.

How far Troilus acquires this faith is seen in his pitiful prayer to the God of Love when hope is all but gone. He has by now committed himself heart and soul to the religion of love and there is nothing else in life.

His whole existence, he admits, is dependent on Love.

Soliloquizing to the "blisful lord Cupide" he says:

What nede is the to seke on me victorie Syn I am thyn, and holly at thi wille? (V, 586-7) and repeats this last sentiment in the next verse:

Thi grace moost of alle lustes leeve, And lyve and dye I wol in thy byleve; (V, 592-3)

Chaucer could hardly have stated more strongly Troilus's total abandonment to the religion of love. What Pandarus had ironically advised—"Now bet thi brest, and sey to God of Love, / Thy grace, Lord, for now I me repente." (I,

932-3)—Troilus has carried to a literal extreme, and a tragic one.

Troilus's conversion, like that of Saul in its initial blinding, has resulted in a similar all-consuming concern with love. He could say with Paul, "Love bears

everything, hopes everything, endures everything. Love

never fails. "^ But with this significant difference that

whereas Paul is talking of caritas. love of God, Troilus's

love is directed not to a god but to a human being—however

divine he may try to make her.

The apogee of this attempt is seen in Troilus's hymn to love in Book III. Three things in this are worth

noting because they reinforce the argument that Chaucer is

trying to present the idea of courtly love as a religious

concept. First, the hymn itself is taken from II Paradiso

(33, 13-18) where it is a hymn to the Virgin Mary. Techni•

cally then this is in Chaucer's hands distinctly blas• phemous. Are we to conclude that he meant it so? Paul

Baum expresses this view succinctly: "So much for the mingling of heavenly and earthly love; it is rich in comic overtones."^ It could be, however, rather rich in tragic

overtones. Chaucer's humour is not of the kind that has to utilize blasphemy. Shocking no doubt this profane use of Dante's hymn would be to Chaucer's audience, not because

Chaucer was trying to be funny but because he had made them

suddenly aware (at least those who caught the allusion) of the absoluteness of the religion Troilus was preaching.

I Cor. 13, 7-8.

Chaucer: A Critical Appreciation, p. 14-6. 50

For those whom the allusion escapes there is another

pointer. In the first line Troilus sings, "0 Love, 0

Chariteei" Charity for the medieval had a very definite

denotation. It meant strictly the theological virtue, love 51

of God or love of neighbour for His sake. Consequently

the identification by Troilus of Love and Charity is an

explicit statement that Cupid was being accorded the theo•

logical status of the Christian God and an implicit sug•

gestion that Venus, the female principle of love, had the

relative rank, the same scale of value, of the Virgin Mary.

The third significant point is an example of the

same aside that we have earlier noticed Pandarus using,

an aside where it seems Chaucer is deliberately directing

the attention of the reader to his meaning. "0 Love, 0

Chariteei" sings Troilus, Thi moder ek, Citherea the swete, After thiself next heried be she, Venus mene I. . . . (Ill, 1254-6)

J Cf. Augustine: Love is either of the creature or of the Creator, that is, either of mutable nature or of immutable truth; therefore we must love not by desire but by charity. Not that the creature ought not to be loved; but if that love is referred to the Creator it will not be desire but charity. For it is desire when the creature is loved for it• self; and it does not help the man who indulges in it but corrupts him in the enjoyment of it. De Trinitate. IX, vii, 13. From The Basic Writings of St. Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates, 2 vol. (New York: Random House, 1948), Vol. II, p. 792. 51

There can hardly he an explanation for Troilus's saying,

"I am referring to Venus," except that it is an artistic

device to prevent the reader making a mistake about the

object of the hymn. When we consider that this is the

emotional and spiritual climax of the poem, the impact of

this clarifying phrase is more marked. Since a person in

such a moment of ecstasy does not make precise qualifi•

cations of this kind, it is hard not to admit this paren•

thetical explanation as an artistic defect. It obtrudes so much that it seems as though Chaucer were trying to say,

"Pay attention to the deities Troilus is addressing."

One final point may be used to illustrate the strong pseudo-theological basis that Chaucer gives to courtly love

in the Troilus: the constant reference to grace. It is mentioned in all fifty-seven times in the poem. The con• nection of grace and courtly love is not of course peculiarly

Chaucerian, for the courtly lover was conventionally depen• dent on the grace or favour of his lady. Chaucer does, however, add an element that is missing in Andreas, namely the dependence of the lover on the grace of the God of Love.

Perhaps he did this to give a vague correspondence with

orthodox Christian theology.^2 At any rate he seems to

Cf. Thomas Aquinas: Man's ultimate happiness consists not in the knowledge of any separate substances, but in the knowledge of God, Who is seen only by grace. The knowledge of other separate sub• stances, if perfectly understood, gives great introduce the concept of grace not only as the favour of

the beloved but also as a divine gift and as a divine-human

medium of interaction. Pandarus expresses this concisely

to Troilus when he informs him that love does not occur by

chance but is a direct intervention and gift of God:

The oughte nat to clepe it hap, but grace.

(I, 896)

And Troilus accepts it as grace. His hymn to lOve in Book

III is essentially one of thanksgiving for this gift, and

while love endures this sense of gratitude pervades the narrative.

When, however, love is threatened by Criseyde's

departure Troilus's feelings take on a different complexion.

If the joy of love had been an unsolicited gift from the

God of Love, then the grief of separation must logically have seemed to him equally gratuitous. Hence Troilus's normal reaction would be to wonder bitterly if he were merely the plaything of the God of Love. d. Philosophic and Poetic Aspects of Troilus's Pree-Will

Speech

Prom Troilus's bewilderment would spring his speech

happiness—not final and ultimate happiness. Summa Theologica. literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), I. 1, Q.89, Art. 2, Ad 3. on free will. Professor Patch has made a sound defence of 53 the appropriateness of this speech*^ on the grounds that it

is a normal emotional outburst from a young man crossed in love. And yet the very fact that such a defence is neces•

sary tends to increase our uneasiness. No one, for in•

stance, questions the appropriateness of Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy. The difficulty with Troilus lies perhaps in the fact that his outburst is cerebral rather than emotionalr—which seems a contradiction in terms.

The resolution may lie in looking back again to

Chaucer's motives. Since this speech was apparently added 54- after the author had completed the poem,-^ it would appear that he had a particular objective in mind. The revisions in the Troilus, Root maintains, "enhance very appreciably the serious and philosophic tone with which Chaucer has overcast his story. Presumably that was the effect he desired to attain."^ No doubt that was the effect that

Chaucer would have had on the medieval reader.

It has already been noted that the question of determinism was one of the most discussed intellectual topics of the day. Considering also the interpenetration

55"Troilus on Determinism," p. 225 ff.

"^*This is Root's conclusion based on the fact that the earliest MSS of the Troilus do not contain it. The Textual Tradition of Chaucer's "Troilus" (Chaucer Society, 1916*, p. 218.

55Ibid., p. 261. of philosophy and literature, what more natural than an

examination of this problem of determinism in terms of the

religion which Troilus has accepted? Or to look at it in

another way: Chaucer and his contemporaries as Christians

had to accept the existence of free will even though philo•

sophically they might speculate on it, but Troilus was

living and thinking in a frame of reference quite outside

Christianity. Within this factitious theology created by

Chaucer how would the question of free choice be solved?

The answer is simple: Since love is not "hap but

grace", a divine intervention is implied and hence an over• riding of the human will, for one is powerless to resist the darts of Cupid. As long as the lover is happy it is unlikely that he would complain about this abrogation of his freedom, but as soon as difficulty appears, and with it pain, then the lover would tend to question God's unsoli• cited action. Troilus has all the more reason to question it because he has committed himself so unreservedly to love that God* s taking away the object of his love seems nothing less than a betrayal. Troilus feels helpless, at the mercy of Cupid's whims. He tries to rationalize his way out of this feeling of helplessness but all his arguments lead to one conclusion:

And this suffiseth right ynough certeyn For to destruye oure fre chois every del.

(IV, 1058-9) 55 The arguments he follows are taken from the De

Consolatione Philosophiae (V, 2-3) hut he arrives at a

different conclusion from Boethius, because he does not

present Boethius's final argument. Herein lies some signi•

ficance, for this final argument is in essence an appeal

to Christian hope:

Than nis ther no resoun to han hope in God, ne for to preien to God. For what scholde any wyght hopen to God, or why scholde he preien to God, syn that the ordenaunce of destyne the whiche that mai not ben enclyned, knytteth and streyneth alle thingis that men mai desiren? Thanne scholde ther be do awey thilke oonly alliaunce bytwixen God and men, that is to seyn, to hopen and to preien.

(Book V, Metrum 2, 11, 182-93)

What this amounts to is that if free will is disallowed

then the virtue of hope must be rejected along with it,

since there is no reason to have hope. The idea of hope makes no sense if everything is fore-ordained. Now Troilus could not utilize this argument because he was not a

Christian. The Christian trusts in the ultimate attainment of union with God no matter what might transpire on earth, a prospect that held no relief for Troilus. He had there• fore to rely on the purely philosophical part of Boethius's reasoning, which, as he so clearly points out, leads inevitably to determinism.

Taking in conjunction these facts, that Troilus's

speech on free will is disproportionately lengthy (seven• teen verses), that it is a deliberate addition to the story, that it omits the purely theological argument of

Boethius and in so doing refutes his conclusion, the evi-

dance points to the fact that Chaucer was concerned with

making a philosophical point. It is in effect a side

observation which seems to add little or nothing to the

tragic power of the poem, but which does reinforce the

conclusion that Chaucer had earlier arrived at.

He had written of the tragic effects of love ele• vated to a way of life and an absolute value. To make it

an absolute and thus avoid any conflict with Christian morality he had presented it as a pagan religion in its

own right. Troilus*s speech is essentially a philosophical

corollary to this religion in exactly the same way that

Bradwardine's De Causa Dei was to Christianity a reasoned examination of the deterministic consequences of belief in an omnipotent God. The love element in the Troilus is dependent first on a capricious god and secondly on a continuation of favourable circumstances. Under these cir• cumstances Troilus is led to ask himself how far his god controlled these circumstances. The depressing conclusion was that since God was omniscient and had foreknowledge of them they must be inevitable. Therefore no matter what

Troilus did he was powerless to alter them, powerless to keep his love alive. He had in fact no free will.

If we assume that Chaucer is putting into Troilus's mouth the strongest arguments he himself could offer for 57 both sides of the case, then Troilus's conclusion would seem to be Chaucer's own. And the conclusion, stated in relation to the thesis, is that as regards the problem of free will the theory of the double truth seems to hold. In a non-

Christian frame of reference such as Chaucer has been dealing with in the poem the answer to the vexing question of free will seems to be this: on a purely philosophic level, without recourse to theology, the evidence points to the fact that man has no free will. IV

THE DRAMATIC REPRESENTATION OP COURTLY LOVE AS A

RATIONAL WAY OP LIPE a, Troilus, Diomede and Pandarus Personify Three

Complementary Aspects of Courtly Love

An examination of the major male characters in the

Troilus will show the courtly lover in three different aspects. Troilus, Pandarus and Diomede, each in his own way, exemplify an interpretation of the code. Taken together they reveal the completeness of Chaucer's exami• nation of courtly love. Isolating Troilus from the other two throws into clear relief the absolute nature of his love and the lack of this concept of absoluteness in the other two. The tragedy springs from Troilus's complete dedication and this in turn is an almost inevitable conse• quence of his natural nobility of character.

The transformation of his character under the influ• ence of love has been dealt with above. Chaucer makes equally evident that fact that there was a basic and innate tendency to virtue which could be, and was, developed by love. The seeds of truth, wisdom, courtesy, generosity and unselfishness are in a sense dormant in Troilus until they are fertilized and brought to flower by his love for 59

Criseyde. Boccaccio's Troilo has little of the inborn

fineness of Chaucer's hero. He is, for instance, well

experience in love and has apparently had at least one

previous affair:

I once [gia] experienced by my own great folly what is this accursed fire. And if I said that love did not show me courtesy and give me gladness and joy, I should certainly lie; but all this pleasure that I took was as little or nothing compared to my sufferings, since love I would ....

(I, 23)

Troilus, on the other hand, is not portrayed as being

experienced with women: Criseyde is his first love. It

is interesting to speculate why Chaucer should prefer an

inexperienced hero. The opinion has been expressed that

Chaucer decided upon Troilus's innocence to enhance

Criseyde's character, that it is "perhaps from a desire to

magnify her attractive qualities that he makes Troilus's

affair with her the first love experience of the hero."

Surely a more obvious reason would be that Chaucer is magnifying Troilus's qualities and that he is obviating any

charge of lechery being levelled at Troilus and ipso facto

at the idea of courtly love that is being examined in the poem.

Courtly love as Chaucer is exemplifying it involves

man's finest instincts and Troilus is developed as its

perfect protagonist. The objection that Troilus's vacil•

lation and inaction do not bear out this theory will be 60 disposed of later; sufficient to note at the present that it does not detract from the purity of his motives.

Troilus's speech and behaviour in the poem reinforce the concept of courtly love as a rational and spiritual way of life. He is both the philosopher of its rationale and a martyr to his faith in it.

His most valuable character reference is supplied by Criseyde, who tells him that the quality which drew her to him and without which she would never have consented to have been his mistress was "moral vertu, grounded upon trouthe" (IV, 1671). The passage in which she makes this statement is of great significance. In the first place

Chaucer is deviating again from II Filostrato. Secondly,

Criseyde spends an inordinate length of time—two stanzas— making her point. Her detailed amplification of the reasons why she fell in love with Troilus seems somewhat out of place in the circumstances—the final moments of their last meeting—for it has little connection with Troilus's pre• vious words of undying loyalty. Where we might expect a similar protestation of her loyalty she gives instead a list of those characteristics of Troilus which, though admirable in themselves, were not sufficient to cause her to commit herself to his love, and weighs them against the one virtue that did win her over:

For trusteth wel, that youre estat roial Ne veyn delit, nor only worthiness© Of yow in werre or torney marcial, Ne pompe, array, nobleye, or ek richesse Ne made me to rewe on youre destresse But moral vertu, grounded upon trouthe, That was the cause I first hadde on yow routhel

Eke gentil herte and manhood that ye hadde, And that ye hadde, as me thoughte, in despit Every thyng that souned into badde, As rudeness and poeplissh appetit, And that youre resoun bridlede youre delit; This made, aboven every creature, That I was youre, and shal while I may dure.

(IV, 1667-80)

Why does she emphasize so much that Troilus's greatest

virtue is that his reason bridled his passion? Why too

does Chaucer increase this emphasis by having her make

this speech at the end of Book IV, where the reader cannot

fail to sense its importance* It is the last thing that is

said before they are separated.

The reason is probably threefold. First, and most

obviously, Troilus is being shown as a high principled young man. Secondly his devotion to Love is given the nature of a rational and conscious quest for truth and beauty rather than the chance effect of body chemistry.

Thirdly, the juxtaposition of "resoun" and "delit" must have carried for the medieval reader the strongest over• tones of Christianity. What Criseyde is in effect saying is that Troilus*s natural virtue has brought their relation• ship to a state comparable to Christian marriage, thus purging it of any suspicion of adultery. Chaucer is even at this late stage of the poem insisting that the love element in the poem be interpreted as a naturally good 62 thing, so good indeed that it approaches the supernaturally good. The tragedy which is to follow cannot therefore he interpreted as the inevitable consequence of sin.

To substantiate this contention and obviate the charge of reading too much into Chaucer's motives with too little evidence, cognizance must be taken of the place that reason held in the thought of the time, especially in

Thomism, which was rapidly achieving eminence. Aquinas's philosophy is based on the referral of all questions to reason. For him "human", "rational" and "moral" are con• vertible terms. "Happiness," he says, "consists in the perfect operation of the intellect."^

Specifically, his teaching on the good of sex will illustrate this and show why Criseyde's praise of Troilus is so important as a statement of the essential goodness of their relationship. On the question of marriage Aquinas says:

There was need for a special sacrament to be applied as a remedy against venereal concupiscence: first because by this concupiscence not only the person but the nature is defiled: secondly by reason of its vehemence whereby it clouds the reason.57

It is interesting to note also Aquinas's views on the relationship of reason and innocence:

^Summa Contra Gentiles, literally translated by the English Dominican Fathers from the latest Leonine edition (London: Burns Oates, 1924), I, 102.

^Summa Theologica. Ill, 65, Art. 1, Ad 5« 63 Beasts are without reason. In this way man becomes, as it were, like them in coition, because he cannot moderate concupiscence. In the state of innocence nothing of this kind would have happened that was not regulated by reason, not because delight of sense was less (rather indeed would delight have been greater in proportion to the greater purity of nature and the greater sensibility of the body) but because the force of concupiscence would not have so inordinately thrown itself into such pleasure being curbed by reason, [italics mine] whose place is not to lessen sexual pleasure, but to prevent the force of concupiscence cleaving to it immoderately.58

If then the desirability of sexual love is propor• tionate to the control reason has over passion, we may infer that Chaucer intended to show the essential goodness of love as practised by Troilus, when "resoun bridlede delit."

Troilus is the perfect exemplar and, in a sense, the saint of courtly love. For him it is not a knightly pastime but the very end of his existence; but to say, as does D. W. Robertson, that "Troilus has made the pleasure he finds in Criseyde's bed the center of the universe," is surely to do less than justice both to Troilus and Chaucer, for Troilus's first concern is not his own pleasure but

Criseyde's welfare. His unselfishness is made pitifully evident in his letter to Criseyde in the Greek camp:

But wheither that ye do me lyve or deye, Yet praye I God, so yeve yow right good day!

(V, 1410-11)

8 5 snTrnnfl Theologica. I, 1, 94, Art. 2. Even in his torment he thinks first of the happiness of his mistress.

To Troilus, the saint of love, Pandarus plays the part of tempter, and is valiantly rebuffed. When the news of Criseyde's departure becomes known, Pandarus with no hesitation tries to induce Troilus to change his allegiance and take another mistress:

This town is ful of ladys al aboute; And, to my doom, fairer than swiche twelve As evere she was, shal I fynde in som route, Yee, on or two, withouten any doute. Porthi be glad, myn owen deere brother! If she be lost, we shal recovere an other.

(IV, 401-6)

So he goes on for four stanzas in his attempt to seduce the steadfast devotee of Love, but little does he understand the heroic nature of Troilus's devotion. Later, when

Troilus is trying to plan some course of action and is forced to reject the idea of eloping for fear of compro• mising Criseyde*s reputation Pandarus again tries to per• suade him to betray his principles:

... hadde ich it so hoote, And thyn estat, she sholde go with me, Though al this town cride on this thyng by note. (IV, 583-5) But Troilus is unassailable: to take Criseyde away would be to make known the affair and this would be "disclaundre to hire name." This is unthinkable to Troilus, who protests 65 And me were levere ded than hire diffame, As nolde God hut if I sholde have Hire honour levere than my lif to save. (IV, 565-7)

The reactions of Pandarus are totally in keeping with his character. Not so sensitive or high-minded as his young friend he cannot appreciate this loyalty. To him love is merely a "joly wo", a sport in which the humour of the game is always bubbling below the surface, the out• ward appearance of things. His ribald humour throws into relief the seriousness of his two young proteges, and creates, as the plot develops, a completely different approach to courtly love. The essence of this approach is lightheartedness and humour. Above all Pandarus presents courtly love as harmless. In the beginning he assures

Criseyde that it is no very serious thing by joking about his own encounters with it:

"By God," quod he, "I hoppe alwey behynde." And she to laughe, it thoughte heire herte breste. Quod Pandarus, "Loke alwey that ye fynde

Game in myn hoode. . . . (II, 1107-10)

Not that Criseyde is fooled for a moment into accepting her uncle's philosophy of love. She has the woman's instinctive perception of the seriousness of any love worthy of the name. Pandarus continues alone to present love as of little real consequence, and his flippant, ribald attitude is always the backdrop against which the hero and heroine 66 display their idealism. He even intrudes into the delicacy of the bedroom scene, in a manner that would be nothing less than salacious were it not for the good hearted humour he generates. What for Troilus are the laws of the religion of Love are to him the rules of the game which add to its enjoyment.

A third attitude to courtly love is exemplified by

Diomede. For him it is nothing more than a socially accep• table means of seduction. He is quite cool, logical and hardheaded about the business. It is as serious to him as it is to Troilus but for entirely different reasons. He is in fact as a lover the very antithesis of Troilus— determined, self-reliant, sensual, indeed almost predatory, for he stalks Criseyde with the cool skill of an experienced hunter. If Troilus represents the code at its most spiritual, Diomede shows what it becomes when man's purely physical nature is predominant.

Troilus's dream is an artistic masterstroke in revealing Diomede's nature, and before Cassandra explains it, indeed before Troilus even has the dream, Chaucer prepares the reader for its interpretation. Pandarus gives quite a lengthy speech on dreams, ridiculing the opinion that they have any significance and trying to raise Troilus from his morbid fantasies, "for they procede of thi melancolie." But all the diverse opinions which he puts forward as evidence that no one really knows what dreams 67 mean combine to make Troilus, and the reader, more appre• hensive. They are, Pandarus says, variously interpreted as "the revelacions of goddes," the result of man's

"compleccioun" and "kynde," or auguries as worthless as those of fowls. (V, 360-85)

When later Troilus dreams of the "bor with tuskes grete" and "fast in his armes folde, kissyng ay, his lady bryght, Criseyde," (V, 1238-41) there is little doubt whom the boar represents. Cassandra identifies it as Diomede, and the full revelation of the tragedy becomes painfully apparent. Criseyde has exchanged the noble love of Troilus for the mere desire of Diomede. The "compleccioun" and 59 "kynde" of her new lover is that of an animal. 7

^Needless to say, in terms of modern psychology Troilus*s dream has even more impact. The sexual symbolism is unmistakeable. Chaucer seems to have had in many ways an intuitive awareness of dream significance which fore• shadows later, more scientific, findings. It is inter• esting also to compare his theory of dreams in the Parliament of Powls. that what men dream of is what they are immediately concerned with:

The wery huntere, slepynge in his bed, To wode ayeyn his mynde goth anon; The juge dremeth how his plees been sped; The cartere dremeth how his cartes gon; The riche, of gold; the knyght fyght with his fon; The syke met he drynketh of the tonne; The lovere met he hath his lady wonne. (11. 99-105) What more natural then that Troilus dream he has lost his lady, for this was what was preying on his mind. The logical extension to this simple and direct interpretation is that she has been lost to an animal to which she has now trans• ferred her affection. In contrast, Criseyde dreams of Troilus as an "egle, fethered whit as bon" (II, 926), symbolic of his nobility and purity. 68

As to the way in which such a man would utilize

the code Chaucer could hardly he more explicit. Diomede

parodies the convention of love so outrageously that it

becomes almost ludicrous, and in so doing heaps the final

disgrace on Criseyde. The way in which he makes his pro•

testations of love is almost an insult. Conventionally the

lover changed colour, stammered, was speechless and humble

in the presence of his beloved. Diomede goes through all

the motions in rapid and routine order:

And with that word he gan to waxen red, And in his speche a litel wight he quok, And caste asyde a litel wight his hed, And stynte a while; and afterward he wok And sobreliche on hire he threw his lok, And seyde, "I am, al be it you no joie, As gentil man as any wight in Troie."

(V, 925-31)

The "and" that begins each line leaves no doubt as to his

facile insincerity: the courtly approach was for him merely the most convenient way to attain his desire.

Diomede is usually, and for obvious reasons, seen

as complementary to Troilus. "He is," says T. A. Kirby,

'the very antithesis of Troilus, and I have no doubt that

Chaucer consciously or unconsciously tried to emphasize

this distinction. . . . This careful balancing of Diomede

against Troilus I consider one of the finest additions to

60 the English poem." This balance can hardly be denied

ouChaucer's "Troilus": A Study in Courtly Love, pp. 244-5. but perhaps the balance is more complex than this.

To return to the role of Pandarus: His humorous, earthy approach to love provides another balance to the seriousness and high-mindedness of Troilus but for less obvious reasons. His presence often seems to cheapen the passion of the lovers, and this has provided difficulty for some critics. Legouis, for instance, can only see him as a pander pure and simple, and is disappointed that Chaucer has let Pandarus's earthiness intrude so much in the poem.

Pandarus is, says Legouis, "the chief agent in preparing the trap into which the chaste Criseyde falls, and Chaucer 61 seems to commend him for having devised it so cleverly."

Other critics have seen Pandarus as a spokesman for Chaucer's own ironic viewpoint on love, despite the fact that Chaucer's sympathy for the lovers is made so apparent.

Karl Young, while rejecting this view, is also of the opinion that the poem as a romance is vitiated by Pandarus 62 and can find no way to excuse this flaw.

This is no small difficulty, for Pandarus plays such an integral part in the story that if he detracts from the romance he must detract from the poem as a whole, and if this is allowed we must concede that Chaucer made a 61 Emile Legouis, Geoffrey Chaucer, trans. L. Lailavoix (London: Dent, 1913), p. 130. "Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde as Romance," PMLA. 53 (1938), p. 60. serious mistake in portraying Pandarus as he did. Now by the terms of this thesis Chaucer's competence must he granted; therefore an alternative hypothesis must he con• sidered.

The resolution may be found if we reject the premise that Chaucer intended to write a romance pure and simple and return to the contention of this thesis that he was making an evaluation in fiction of the feasibility of courtly love.

Looked at from this standpoint the relationship of Troilus to Diomede and Pandarus becomes clear: together they pro• vide a complete view of courtly love—idealistic, selfish and insouciant. Troilus's idealism is doomed to end in tragedy, as will be amplified later; Diomede's sensualism, divorced from idealism, is nothing more or less than lust in cheap chivalric trappings; Pandarus's light-heartedness , may seem harmless, nothing more than a game; but the story disproves it in so far as the game he initiates turns to tragedy when it is played by the serious and sensitive

Troilus. Chaucer has thus encompassed in these three expon-

63 ents of love all possible interpretations of the code ^ and

^Except the amor purus of Andreas in which the lovers have some physical contact but not ultimate union. (De Amore, p. 20.) Although the omission of this may seem to invalidate the hypothesis, a closer examination shows that this is not so, for there is a basic unreality, not to mention perversion, inherent in such a concept of love, which Chaucer, realist that he was, must surely have recognized. It is neither Platonic nor physical but an 71 eliminated them all as potential means to lasting happiness.

He is thus in effect not only balancing Diomede and Pandarus with Troilus but also demonstrating that their versions of love are not worth serious consideration as codes of life. b. Criseyde Personifies the Rational Approach to Courtly Love

It is in an examination of the character of Criseyde that Chaucer's intentions are seen most clearly. Andreas had put forward courtly love as, philosophically speaking, a reason for existence in itself. Criseyde is the one who considers this proposition coolly and rationally. Troilus, once smitten by love, never questions that it is the be all and end all of his existence; but Criseyde knowingly and willingly enters into the courtly love relationship with an almost intellectual curiosity as to whether love is every• thing its exponents make it out to be, and she has a good deal of scepticism as to whether it is.

At first, aware of the inherent dangers of accepting

unhealthy attempt to reconcile both. Etienne Gilson expresses very lucidly its unreality; A "pure carnal love" is a manifest absurdity for anyone who considers the exclusion of the carnal element in love as the first condition of its purity. Grant to le Chapelain that in his awkward position he does what he can, the heart of the difficulty is none the less that the two systems are necessarily "non-communicating," hermetically sealed against each other, because they make use of the same word "love" in opposite senses. The Mystical Theology of St. Bernard, trans. A. H. C. Downes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), p. 191. The love that Chaucer is examining is fundamentally venereal: its goddess is Venus. 72

Troilus as a lover, she will not commit herself. The pity

that "renneth sone in gentil herte" prevents her, as

Pandarus had so confidently predicted, from rejecting

Troilus's plea, hut she makes clear in her first letter to him that she will give no more than sisterly friendship to relieve his distress:

She nolde nought ne make hireselven honde In love; hut as his suster, hym to plese She wolde ay fayn, to doon his herte an ese. (II, 1223-5)

And this, significantly, after the reader has seen her apparently smitten by love herself in the memorable scene where she exclaims on seeing Troilus ride by, "Who yaf me drynke?" This attraction notwithstanding, she is determined not to take on the responsibilities of a courtly love affair.

The reasons why she altered that decision are of the utmost importance in analysis of her character and of

Chaucer's motives in so creating it. It has already been remarked how she stresses the fact that her decision to love

Troilus was due to his "moral vertu grounded upon trouthe" and because his "resoun bridlede his delyt". To appreciate fully her conscious and rational motives this must be examined in conjunction with her long soliloquy in Book II.

In it she considers every possible advantage and disadvan• tage of taking Troilus as a lover. On the debit side she can envision the loss of her freedom, the possible loss of her reputation, the danger that Troilus will eventually 73 lose interest in her, and the patent emotional stress involved in accepting the code—"for love is yet the mooste stormy lyf." (II, 778) On the credit side there are only two considerations: first that Troilus would make the perfect lover, "For out and out he is the worthiest / Save only Ector"; secondly, that love would at least provide an end in life, which she is at the time lacking. "To what fyn lyve I thus?" she asks herself, and it is the chance that love will provide an end in life that is the most compelling reason for her change of heart—or, to he more accurate, her change of mind, for her intellect is definitely in control of her emotions at this point.

The question most prominent in her mind is whether love can provide a suitable end in life, and this she cannot decide: "To what fyn is swich love I kan nat see," (II,

794) is the expression of her doubt. Since she cannot resolve this doubt she decides to find out by trial, and in a spirit of experiment she makes her decision, for "he which that nothing undertaketh, / Nothyng n'acheveth." (II, 806-7)

Here in this speech we have Criseyde with all the care of a philosopher weighing every aspect of courtly love in order to determine whether it can be in itself a suf• ficient end for existence. The only way she can find out is by trying it, but she would not have committed herself to this course unless her lover had offered every chance of success "because of the nobility of his character. It remained for her to find out the result of her experiment.

Her experiment is Chaucer's experiment also. Since she is a necessary factor in the situation he has set up, it was necessary, if the conclusion was to be valid, that he make her as perfect a protagonist as Troilus has been shown to be: a watertight case could only be made for the code if there were no latent flaws or weaknesses in the other experimental factors—in the environment or the two persons involved. Chaucer had taken pains, as we have seen, to avoid any conflicting moral issue by isolating the story in an ethically neutral milieu. He had also given Troilus the maximum of constancy and integrity.

Criseyde seems by her very falsing of Troilus the weak link in the argument. c. Criseyde's Actions Reflect a Consistent Approach to

Courtly Love

We have one extremely strong clue, however, that

Chaucer did not intend her to be so, that in fact her infidelity rather than being the cause of the tragedy was the result of an inevitable tragic necessity of the whole dramatic situation. The clue lies in the way he altered the ending of II ffilostrato. Boccaccio had with the greatest of bitterness blamed Cressida for the calamity that befell his hero and warned his readers that all women are untrustworthy:

Such was the end that came to the ill- conceived love of Troilus for Cressida. . . . such was the end of the vain hopes of Troilus in base Cressida. ... A young woman is fickle and desirous of many lovers. . . . She hath no feeling for virtue or reason, inconstant ever as leaf in the wind.

(VII, 28-30)

Chaucer, on the contrary, blames not woman but love for the tragedy and warns his readers not to put their trust in worldly love:

0 yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she, In which that love up groweth with youre age, Eepeyreth horn fro worldly vanyte, And of youre herte up casteth the visage To thilke God that after his ymage

Yow made. ...

(V, 1835-40)

Considering that the god who has dominated the poem is Love

(variously personified as Venus or Cupid) there is an unmistakeable contrast in this passage with "thilke God that after his ymage yow made." By obvious inference

Chaucer is condemning courtly love with its false god to which the lover gives worship. Moreover Chaucer speci• fically absolves women from the blame that Boccaccio has heaped on them. Men, he says, are just as often to blame for fickleness as women; and he warns "every gentil woman":

Beth war of men, and herkneth what I seyei (V, 1785)

Chaucer goes out of his way to try and minimize the guilt Criseyde has incurred in betraying Troilus, and in this he contrasts sharply with the tolerant and level• headed Pandarus, her own uncle, who exclaims, "I hate, ywys,

Cryseyde; / And, God woot, I wol hate hire evermore."

(V, 1732-3) It is sometimes assumed that Chaueer plays down her guilt because he had grown to love the character he had created. Since he is, for all his human sympathy, an artist of superb control and detachment, such an assump• tion seems questionable. What else would account for his minimizing of her guilt? Why should he say, for instance, of her relationship with Diomede:

Men seyn - I not - that she yaf hym hire herte.

(V, 1450)

Why should he so obviously exculpate her:

Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde Porther than the storye wol devyse.

(V, 1093-4) and

Iwis, I wolde excuse hire yet for routhe.

(V, 1099)

The answer may become clearer when one considers why any person excuses another. The obvious reasons are out of love for the defaulter or out of appreciation of the circumstances in which he acted. The latter is surely the reason why Chaucer sympathized with his heroine and why

Pandarus did not, for Pandarus could not clearly see how the rules of the code, specifically the secrecy demanded by it, determined Criseyde's actions. His advice to Troilus to elope "though al this town cride on this thyng" is evidence enough to substantiate his lack of appreciation.

And it is precisely this same lack of understanding to which the reader is prone. We tend to think that because the poem is a romance it is merely a romance, whereas

Chaucer has made abundantly clear that it is a romance based on and circumscribed by the tenets of the code. The cryptic plea of Chaucer, "that thow be understonde" begins to make sense if the tragedy is viewed in this light. If not, the cause of the tragedy must be understood not prim• arily as the code but as Criseyde's weakness of character or possibly as the weakness of women in general, and this

Chaucer has steadfastly refused to concede. Inevitably if we do not appreciate Chaucer's intentions we are forced eventually to face the apparent ambivalence of Criseyde's character: matching Troilus in nobility of soul she seems to act completely inconsistently in betraying him. "It is impossible," says Arthur Mizener, "to show in detail . . . that her betrayal of Troilus is a natural consequence of her character." To determine whether or not it is a consequence of the code Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde must be examined in some detail.

"Character and Action in the Case of Criseyde," PMLA. 54 (1939), P. 66. 78

There is at this point one obvious difficulty to be dealt with, namely that Criseyde does seem to have an incipient flaw: "she was the ferfulleste wight that might be" (II, 450). Apart from this she is described as a non• pareil among women. Chaucer again uses an artistic device we have already noticed*^ to make this point clear: he introduces her as such and then reinforces his description later in the poem almost as if he were afraid the reader would overlook it. His first reference to her draws attention to her beauty and graciousness:

Nas non so fair, for passynge every wight So aungelik was hir natif beaute, That lik a thing inmortal seemed she, As doth an hevenyssh perfit creature, That down were sent in scornynge of nature.

(I, 101-5)

Pandarus a little further adds to this encomium with a cata• logue of superlatives:

Ne I nevere saugh a more bountevous Of hire estat, n' a gladder, ne of speche

A frendlyer, n'a more gracious

A kynges herte semeth by hyrs a wrecche.

(I, 885-9) l

Having established Criseyde's "aungelik" nature Chaucer says nothing more about it directly until—of all places—the middle of the final book, when she is about to betray Troilus: ^1 refer to the reiteration of Troilus's nobility at the end of Book III and Book IV, and of Chaucer's wish to be understood, early in Book I and just before the epilogue. 79

. . . Paradis stood formed in hire yen And with hire riche beaute evere more Strof love in hire ay, which of hem was more.

She sobre was, ek symple, and wys withal, The best ynorisshed ek that myght be, And goodly of hire speche in general, Charitable, estatlich, lusty and fre; Ne nevere mo ne lakked hire pite;

(V, 816-23)

Surely there must be a very cogent reason for the author to halt the narrative to confirm the beauty of the heroin's character. It seems as though Chaucer were saying, "Before we proceed with the story let us be quite sure about

Criseyde's sterling character." Lest this be regarded as too hypothetical, the preceding three and following two verses will bear it out. They constitute a startling recapitulation of the characteristics of the three con• testants in the love triangle. Startling because of the 66 curious, itemized way in which it is done and because it seems so superfluous: we already know all the relevant facts and to reproduce them at this point seems to achieve nothing except to halt the flow of the narrative. It is reasonable then to suppose that Chaucer's aim was to ensure that the reader was quite certain of the nature of the actors who were about to play out the last act in the drama.

Diomede is "in his nedes prest and corageous," "hardy, testif, strong and chivalrous of dedes," "of tonge large." Troilus is "Yonge, fresshe, strong, and hardy as lyoun, / Trewe as stiel." (V, 800-31) 80

That Chaucer wanted to create Criseyde free of any taint of wantonness may be appreciated by comparing her with Boccaccio's heroine. How painstakingly Chaucer has developed the image of Criseyde's modesty and delicacyl

It needed the wiliest of Pandarus's artifices to dispose of her resolution to love Troilus as a sister. If he had not tricked the pair into the same room and helped Troilus into bed one wonders if their love would ever have been consummated. Criseida, on the other hand, has almost from the start an unabashed physical desire for Troilo. No sooner are they friends than she is sighing to herself,

"Would that I were now in his sweet arms, pressed face to face with him." (II, 117) In the bedroom scene she dis• plays a passion that is far removed from the tenderness and delicacy of Criseyde. In short, the total ennobling in Chaucer's hands of the heroine is so pronounced as hardly to need emphasis. She is, whether by design or accident, the antithesis of all the female vices mentioned by Andreas in the De Reprobatione. the vices which he gives as reasons for not centering one's life and love on a woman.

Since Chaucer's studious elimination of any tendency to dalliance as the reason for Criseyde's fall is so apparent, we must now deal with her timidity as being responsible for the tragedy and reconcile this with the quiet strength of character she shows in other ways. Soon after his first description of her, Chaucer remarks that she stood in the temple "debonaire of chere, / With ful assured lokyng and manere." (I, 181-2) But against this self-confidence must be weighed abundant textual evidence that she lacked a certain fortitude of spirit. The first line that introduces her is: "For of hire lif she was ful sore in drede," (I, 95) and the second last line of her final description contains the much-quoted phrase, "slydynge of corage." Her first consideration when Pandarus puts

Troilus's case before her is fear of what people would think if her name were to be connected with the possible suicide of this unknown suitor:

And if this man sie here hymself, aliasI In my presence, it wol be no solas.

What men wolde of hit deme I kan not seye:

(II, 459-61)

So apparent is her timidity that C. S. Lewis sees it as the mainspring of her behaviour, maintaining that she was motivated by fear "of loneliness, of old age, of death, of love and of hostility; of everything indeed that can be feared."^ One does not have to hold such an extreme view to realize that Chaucer, while ennobling the heroine as he found her in II Filostrato. has deliberately introduced into her make-up this one fatal weakness.

Par from being an artistic inconsistency this weak• ness is (if the drama is viewed within the frame of the

The Allegory of Love, p. 185 82 courtly love code) the factor which resolves the apparent problem of the inconsistency of her actions. It enables her to act consistently in betraying Troilus and in fact

makes it inevitable that she will do so. It providesAthe surest clue to the author's tragic plan.

First of all it must be admitted that a certain timidity is not incompatible with sensitivity and gracious- ness. Granted this, more light may be thrown on the problem by supposing that Chaucer had created his heroine with great courage and strength of character. The poem would in such a case never have become a tragedy, for the affection of the lovers would have endured. Criseyde would either have acceded to Troilus's plan to "stele awey bitwixe us tweye"

(IV, 1503) or she would have made some attempt to leave the Greek camp. It is significant that Chaucer never says that there was any obstacle in the way of her leaving or any attempt or serious intention on her part to do so. If

Criseyde had been courageous such a lack of action would have been totally out of keeping with her character. Since she is not, it is quite consistent with it.

Looked at from a different aspect, if Troilus had asked Hector for permission to have Criseyde stay or if they had eloped or if she had eventually returned their relationship would have become one not of courtly love but something akin to marriage. The criterion par excellence of courtly love which the author, Pandarus, Troilus and 83 Criseyde insist on is secrecy. Chaucer has drawn the attention of the reader to it. (II, 40) Pandarus enjoins it upon Troilus in an extremely long, detailed and serious passage. (Ill, 254-329) Troilus "were levere ded than hire diffame" by allowing "disclaundre to hire name."

(IV, 564-5) And Criseyde explicitly states before com• mitting herself to the affair that being found out could be the worst misfortune that could conceivably happen:

Now sette a caas: the hardest is ywys, Men myghten demen that he loveth me. What dishonour were it unto me, this?

(II, 729-31)

This being so, it is unquestionable that the breaking of the courtly love commandment of secrecy would mean the end of the affair as Chaucer had planned it. The decision whether or not to break it is, as John Bayley remarks, "the moral climax and pivot of the tale, far more than Criseyde's subsequent infidelity. Keeping to the rules virtually kills Troilus, but he does keep to them; while the heat of the crisis engenders a moral collapse 68 in Criseyde from which she never recovers." She cannot envisage their relationship outside of the code and the pathetic list of excuses she gives to Troilus, especially her letter from the Greek camp, is in effect a series of rationalizations by which she may evade this fact. She is

The Characters of Love, p. 82. torn between her love for Troilus and her dependence on the code, and the latter is the stronger motivation—and, dramatically speaking, must be, for the simple reason, already outlined, that if she chooses the former she has chosen marriage, or at least a quasi-marital relationship, in preference to the code; and the two are antithetical, mutually exclusive.

To illustrate this point comparison may be made between the Troilus and Chaucer's other long chivalric romance, The Knight's Tale. The latter approximates more closely to a modern love story in so far as secrecy is not made a sine qua non and marriage is seen as the ulti• mate goal. Compare the alacrity with which Palamon tells

Arcite of the love by which he has been smitten and the length of time it takes Pandarus to worm Troilus's secret from him. Even when the dual love affair becomes known to

Theseus and his whole court there is no alteration in the nature of the romance. The romantic element of the story is not dependent on secrecy and it finds its culmination in marriage•

The Knight's little epithalamion not only makes this clear but throws into contrast Criseyde's views on the undesirability of marriage (II, 750 ff.), which are so essential to an understanding of the nature of the love exemplified in the Troilus: { 85

Betwixen hem was maad anon the bond That highte matrimoigne or mariage By al the conseil and the baronage, And thus with alle blisse and melodye Hath Palamon ywedded Emelye. And God, that al this wyde world hath wroght, Send hym his love that hath it deere aboght;

(Knight's Tale. 11. 30?A-3100)

These sentiments are totally removed from the code of courtly love that Criseyde is following, in which love and marriage are completely incompatible. The Seventh

Dialogue in the De Amore is the debate between a man of the higher nobility and a woman of the simple nobility as to whether true love is possible in marriage. The man has the last word on the matter:

I am greatly surprised that you wish to apply the term "love to that marital affection which husband and wife are expected to feel for each other after marriage, since everybody knows that love can have no place between husband and wife. They may be bound to each other by a great and immoderate affection but their feeling cannot take the place of love, because it cannot fit under the true definition of love.6-9

This is the opinion expressed by Criseyde in her soliloquy on the benefits to be gained by taking a lover. Specifi• cally she rejects the idea of love within marriage because she would lose her independence:

I am myn owene womman, wel at ese, I thank it God, as after myn estat, Right yong, and stonde unteyd in lusty lese, Withouten jalousie or swich debat: Shal noon housbonde seyn to me "Chek mat!"

Op. cit.. p. 17 For either they ben ful of jalousie, Or maisterfull, or loven novelrie.

(II, 750-6)

She finally decides on a courtly love affair with Troilus because she feels she can trust him not to dominate her, whereas if she were to marry him he would have, so to speak, the legal right to do this. Within the protection of the code she can have love with independence and the service of her lover as well, and if Troilus should turn out to be "maisterfull" she would be justified under the rules of the code in terminating their relationship. She never for a moment considers entering into the "bond that highte matrimoigne or mariage", because it had nothing to offer her to compare with these advantages. Emily and

Palamon are blessed by the "God that al this wyde world hath wroght," she, by contrast, relies on the blessings of

"blisful Venus".

The exigencies of the story that Chaucer borrowed from Boccaccio prohibit marriage, it is true; but the new heroine that Chaucer moulded sets marriage forth as an alternative even though she turns it down. She deliber• ately seeks refuge in courtly love from the responsibilities and hazards of marriage. In a very real sense her decision is not to love Troilus but to accept the code; and much as her love for him grows it is not enough to prevent her making the same decision when she takes Diomede for a lover.

It is the code as much as Troilus that is to her "a wal of stiel / and she Id from every displesance." (III, 74-9-50)

Diomede is another, though less worthy, wall to protect her, and in accepting him she is acting inexorably and concistently with the character she has already displayed.

Her fears, especially of slander, and her dependence on the code combine to produce the inevitable tragedy.

Troilus knows this even though, because of his love for Criseyde, he tries to evade the fact and put the blame on fate. Before he has time to rationalize the situation in his speech on free choice his real feelings are seen in his initial emotional reaction to the news of Criseyde's enforced departure:

Thus am I lost, for aught that I kan see. For certeyn is, syn that I am hire knyght, I moste hire honour levere han than me In every cas, as lovere ought of right. Thus am I with desir and reson twight:. Desir for to destourben hire me redeth, And reson nyl nat, so myn herte dredeth.

(IV, 568-74)

And well might his heart be full of dread, for unless

Criseyde will consent to dispense with the code he knows they can never be together again.

Chaucer himself has a little earlier made the same point::

Love hym made al prest to don hire byde, And rather dyen than she sholde go; But resoun seyde hym on that other syde, (IV, 162-4) Pandaxus also sees this clash between love and reason, for he chides Troilus for holding so adamantly to the path of reason and the code:

Devyne not in resoun ay so depe Ne corteisly. . . .

(IV, 589-90)

It is clear from this that the code is seen as a course of action based on reason, and thus we are faced with the fact that this course, voluntarily chosen, is the cause of the tragedy. Of all the people in the story only

Criseyde had considered that the code might lead to woe; but she had taken a gamble on it, a gamble which seemed likely to pay off only because of Troilus's sterling character. She knew she was banking against heavy odds on the permanence of their relationship and of the happiness it promised, and she was well aware that a strong body of opinion, perhaps the generally accepted one, would have considered her gamble a mistake. At the first sign of trouble in her affair with Troilus, when Pandarus has tricked her into believing Troilus was jealous of Horaste, she recalls that opinion:

"0 God!" quod she, "so worldly selynesse, Which clerkes callen fals felicitee, Imedled is with many a bitternessei Pul angwissous than is, God woot,"_quod she, "Condicioun of veyn prosperitee;

0 brotel wele of marines joie unstable!"

(Ill, 814-20) Once the cloud has passed, however, she continues

her pursuit of false felicity which offers such glowing promise. When their love is consummated the promise seems

to he fulfilled: the ecstasy seems absolute and indestruc•

tible.

This is the point at which Chaucer as narratow steps

in to emphasize that physical love is indeed a very convin•

cing felicity. He makes the strongest case for natural love as opposed to supernatural:

This is no litel thyng of for to seye; This passeth every wit for to devyse; For ech of hem gan otheres lust obeye. Felicite, which that thise clerkes wise Comenden so, ne may nought here suffise; This joie may nought writen be with inke; This passeth al that herte may bythynke.

(Ill, 1688-94)

One of the wise clerks to whom he makes reference could be

St. Paul, for there is a possible echo of a passage in the

First Epistle to the Corinthians:

Eye has not seen nor ear heard, Nor has it entered into the human heart,

What God has prepared for those who love him.

(I. Cor. 2, 9-)

The code of love apparently offers a bliss as ineffable as that of the beatific vision. Chaucer has stated in the plainest terms that there is nothing illusory about the lovers' ecstasy; the illusion yet to be demonstrated is that the code can ensure the continuance of such ecstasy. As the story progresses the course of "resoun" to which the lovers are hound proves to he self-destructive. The love which has grown within the shelter of the code cannot survive outside it; the promised happiness turns to tragedy.

The crux of the tragedy is, as has been seen that the lovers have made of courtly love their one end of existence. Criseyde has always been conscious that it may not be so, naturally enough since she knows that as the object of Troilus's worship she has limitations which

Troilus, blinded by love, cannot see. He has made her of all his "wele or wo / The well and roote," (III, 1472-3) but she is after all only a human being, a fallible imper• fect woman. The dull pain of this truth comes to Troilus only after Criseyde's letter from the Greek camp. Only then he

. . . understod that she Nas nought so kynde as that hire oughte be. And finally he woot now out of doute, That al is lost that he hath ben aboute. (V, 1641-5)

This is the final dismissal of the code and the characters who lived within its frame. We care no more for

Criseyde, and Troilus's death has no significance. The drama is over. Courtly love has been revealed as an insuf• ficient end in life, and Criseyde's forebodings have all too tragically been fulfilled. The conclusion to be drawn from the poem, a foreshadowing of the epilogue, is expressed in a nutshell by Criseyde when she hears the news of her 91 exchange for Antenor. Though she later tries to rationalize it away her hitter exclamation expresses the certainty of her womanly intuition that this development means the end of the affair:

Endeth thanne love in wo? Ye or men liethi And alle worldly blisse as thynketh me.

(IV, 384-5) V

THE EPILOGUE, THE CONCLUSION OP THE QUEST:

THE REPUDIATION OP THE TRUTH OP COURTLY LOVE

In the epilogue the stage shifts from classical Troy

to the fourteenth century. It is an abrupt change, one

that demands a sharp re-adjustment of our vision. The

author, who up till now has been playing the part of an impartial narrator, now changes his role to that of com• mentator and presents us with the findings of the experiment in love that he has set up and observed.

Pirst he abstracts Troilus from the tragic scene and takes him up to the eighth sphere, where he can look down with all the detachment of Chaucer himself and put the whole drama into the perspective Chaucer would want his readers to have. Troilus is, in effect, given the benefit of a

Christian viewpoint:.

And down from thennes faste he gan avyse This litle spot of erthe, that with the se Embraced is, and fully gan despise This wrecched world, and held al vanite To respect of the pleyn felicite That is in hevene above. . . .

(V, 1814-19)

Now Troilus can see life sub specie aeternitatis. and the false felicity of the code of courtly love is made apparent when he sees the "pleyn felicite" of heaven. This is what he has learned from all his experience; this too is the conclusion that Chaucer has drawn from the tragedy.

The modern reader experiences some difficulty in accepting such a simple finding. It seems hardly an ade• quate artistic balance to the great joy of the lovers and the death of Troilus. But perhaps the difficulty and sense of dissatisfaction may be lessened if note is taken of the medieval idea of tragedy. The supreme misfortune for the

Christian was to lose God in the next life and this could not come about by chance: it could not happen unless he willed it by sin. Consequently the medieval had no con• cept of tragedy in the Greek sense of an inescapable fate or in the modern sense of disaster following from an incipient flaw in the personality which is turned by cir• cumstance into a disintegrating factor. Tragedy was for

Chaucer and his contemporaries "a ditee of prosperitee for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchedness.11 (Boece, Book II, prosa 2, 1.70.) There was no ultimate tragedy on earth for the medieval because God for him was all (in theory at least) and could be lost only by free will. Troilus's tragedy is that he has made Criseyde his all and lost her through no fault of his. The greatest consolation he could have is the realization that he has not lost everything, that after all his sorrow there is the prospect of eternal happiness. This realization Chaucer has contrived to give to him. 94

Since Troilus was not a Christian he had not "been

guilty of any moral fault in centering his life on Criseyde*

Courtly love was not sinful per se. as Andreas had main• tained in his De Reprobatione. Chaucer had shown that the code was opposed to reason not because it was intrinsically wrong, not because it idolized woman, but because it led eventually to grief.

There are no personal recriminations in the epilogue, because the cause of the tragedy lies not with the lovers but with the demands of the code. The condemnation of the

"blynde lust, the which that may not laste" (V, 1824) is therefore not due to over-piety on Chaucer's part but to the artistic requirements of the poem as he has constructed it, for it is Troilus's blindly following the code that has led to all his grief. We may be sure he would not have followed it if he had earlier had the enlightenment Chaucer granted him in the epilogue.

A further indication that Chaucer sees the code as the cause of the tragedy lies in the perfunctory way he dismisses the lovers after we are sure they are parted for ever. If the poem had been purely a romance surely Chaucer would not have left Criseyde in the unsatisfactory limbo that he does: after her last letter to Troilus she just disappears from view. Nor would he have given. Troilus's fate on earth such a brief treatment. Chaucer mentions rather vaguely that he sought for Diomede in battle— "And ofte tyme I fynde that they mette"—and then dismisses the hero in one brief line: "Despitously hym slough the fierse Achille." (V, 1806) This six word coda would be ridiculously insufficient to close the story had it been merely a romance. There would in effect be no solution at all.

Nor would the three stanzas describing Troilus in the eighth sphere be any more satisfactory. It is small comfort, if we have identified ourselves with the hero, to learn that he is now laughing at those very woes that have elicited our sympathy. It is, to say the least, fru• strating to find that the love and sorrow that have been to us so real and so moving are summarily dismissed as being of no real consequence.

One modern critic has blamed Chaucer for not seeing that Henryson's was the only "true solution, which produces a real—one might say the real—catharsis. For Henryson had the last and right word."^0 But if, as this thesis maintains, the poem is not just a love story but a philo• sophic quest in fictional form, then there is no necessity for a catharsis. The logical ending of the poem is a state• ment of the result of the quest.

And just as soon as Troilus, as a reward for his virtue and constancy, has had his eyes opened Chaucer

Paul Baum, OT>. cit.. p. 164 96 proceeds to state the results of his observation, and, short of numbering them, he could hardly have stated them in a more obvious and emphatic fashion:

Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for lovel Swich fyn hath al his grete worthynessel Swich fyn hath his estat real above, Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse! Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnessei

Lo here, or payens corsed olde rites, Lo here, what alle hire goddes may availle; Lo here, this wrecched worldes appetites;

(V, 1828-51)

This is the result of courtly love; this is what a naturalistic, pagan philosophy, even in its most idealistic form, comes to. Troilus's love, nobility and virtue have been wasted on the finite object on which he has lavished them.

We are faced therefore with the conclusion that if the code will not work with two protagonists perfectly equipped by nature and environment to make it an ultimate felicity it cannot ever provide an absolute end in life.

And if this is true in a pagan milieu where there is no moral conflict involved, a fortiori it must be true in a

Christian one.

Chaucer has taken the double truth expounded in the

De Amore and tested the philosophical part of it, namely that courtly love is "the thing from which the highest good in this life takes its origin" (p. 20.). Andreas in the

De Reprobatione had appealed only to religion to refute this finding of natural reason and presented no rational

arguments. Chaucer, without appealing to religion, has

demonstrated pragmatically the fallacy in this opinion. He has let the story develop the truth, and the truth is tragi•

cally demonstrated. For a time Troilus and Criseyde do

find within the code a happiness so supreme that it is

impossible to describe, but the courtly love which has fostered it proves ultimately to be the origin also of

grief, infidelity and death: the amour courtois of the code, for all the good it may produce, has proved to be a

"fals felicitee".

The double truth theory has thus in the specific instance of courtly love been tried and found wanting; not through a formally reasoned argument but from the practical example of the code in action. The conclusion that must be drawn from the tragedy is that there is only one truth about courtly love—the Christian one. Those who would argue that such love is philosophically defensible as a way of life have been proved wrong. Eeason (in the form of empirical observation) and religion both give the same verdict: philosophy and theology lead to the one same truth. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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