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Chaucer's Troilus of Book IV

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Siegfried Wenzel
Siegfried Wenzel*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Extract

For any just appraisal of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde it is essential to understand correctly the character of its hero. The whole meaning of the poem will change accordingly if one sees Troilus as either an ideal knight or a neurotic weakling, as a noble courtly lover or as Everyman painfully caught in the snares of Satan. Adherence to either one of these contrasting views has frequently led critics to neglect aspects and entire portions of the poem which would not agree with their adopted view of the hero: the poem is obviously full of ambiguities in characterization as well as in its very plot. In the following I wish to suggest that Chaucer presents (and indirectly evaluates) Troilus simultaneously on two different levels, from which the hero emerges as both strong and weak. This suggestion is based on an analysis of a seemingly insignificant commonplace Chaucer uses at least three times in Book iv: the conflict between reason and desire.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 1964 , pp. 542 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1907

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References

1 Chaucer's poetry is quoted according to the second edition by F. N. Robinson (Boston, 1957).

2 Boccaccio, Il Filostrato, ed. Vincenzo Pernicone, “Scrittori d'Italia” (Bari, 1937). For this study I have also consulted the French Roman de Troilus, which has been suggested as a source of Chaucer's poem, in the edition by L. Moland and C. d'Héricault (Paris, 1858). In the passages under consideration the French Roman shows an almost complete agreement in substance with Boccaccio's work.

3 Notice that Chaucer changed the order of Troilus' arguments; they are: (a) concern for public welfare; (b) unwillingness to ask his father for a favor that would run against the “parlement's” decision; and (c) consideration for Criseyde's honor (iv.540–573). The arrangement in Il Filostrato is (a), (c), (b); the same in Roman.

4 A fourth passage of similar import, though less explicit in stating the motif, is Criseyde's line, “And forthi sle with resoun al this hete!” (iv.1583). The corresponding stanzas in Boccaccio (iv.clii and cliii) use the fire image in exactly the opposite sense: Criseida argues that absence is desirable because it will keep the glowing torch of Troilo's love afire!

5 Bruce Dickins, ed., The Conflict of Wit and Will, Leeds School of English Language, Texts and Monographs, No. iv (Leeds, 1937), pp. 8–14. It should be added that, among Chaucer's contemporaries, Langland used the same terms witte and wille (Piers Plowman B.xi.43–44), while Gower preferred reason and will (e.g., Confessio Amantis viii.2135–36).

6 In the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 3219–3304 and 4615 ff.—Chrétien de Troyes, Launcelot, ed. W. Foerster (Halle, 1899), ll. 369 ff. Cf. l. 369: “Mes reisons qui d'amors se part.” Like so many other commonplaces of courtly-love poetry, the motif has, at least, an important model in Ovid: Metamorphoses vii.10–11 and ff. (Medea's love for Jason).

7 Ed. A. van Hasselt (Brussels, 1865–66), ii, 165 ff. Notice that the term for offending the lady (courroucier) is used in the French Roman de Troilus in the correspondent to the first passage analyzed above (ed. Moland, p. 203). Boccaccio's term corrucciosa is cognate (Filostrato iv.xvi).

8 Cf. Moralium Dogma Philosophorum, ed. Holmberg (Uppsala, 1929), p. 41, ll. 10–12: “Temperantia est dominium rationis in libidinem et alios motus inportunos.” Moderation (the French mesure and the German mâze) is, of course, a chief virtue in courtly literature. See the collection of pertinent passages by Jessie Crosland, “The Conception of mesure in Some Mediaeval Poets,” MLR, xxi (1926), 380–384; and the penetrating study by Jacques Wettstein, “Mezura.” L'idéal des troubadours; son essence et ses aspects (Zurich, 1945).

9 Ll. 340–346, in Froissart, Œuvres, ed. A. Scheler, i (Brussels, 1870).—The harmony of reason and courtly love in Chaucer was pointed out many years ago by R. C. Goffin, “Chaucer and ‘Reason’,” MLR, xxi (1926), 13–18. Although Goffin noticed the motif of reason-vs.-desire (pp. 17–18, n. 1), he did not use it for a more comprehensive interpretation of the poem. On the position of reason in courtly love see also C. B. West, Courtoisie in Anglo-Norman Literature (Blackwell, 1938), pp. 5–6 and passim; and especially C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), passim.

10 See Dorothea Siegmund-Schultze, “The Idea of ‘Reason’ in Fourteenth-Century English Literature,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, Gesellschafts- u.Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe, viii (1959), 757–762.

11 Such a view does not, of course, entail that Chaucer himself clung to the chivalric ethos as the ideal of life par excellence, or that Troilus and Criseyde was meant to be a Fürstenspiegel. I believe that, although the poet's sympathies were with the aristocracy, he always remained detached enough to be critical and ironic of, or simply superior to, the limited ideals and preferences of a single class.

12 This view agrees basically with the current trend to rehabilitate the character of Chaucer's Troilus as evident, for example, in Alfred David, “The Hero of the Troilus,” Speculum, xxxvii (1962), 566–581; T. P. Dunning, “God and Man in Troilus and Criseyde,” in English and Mediaeval Studies presented to J. R. R. Tolkien ..., eds. Norman Davis and C. L. Wrenn (London, 1962), pp. 164–182; and Robert P. ap Roberts, “The Central Episode in Chaucer's Troilus,” PMLA, lxxvii (Sept. 1962), 383–385.

13 Anselm of Canterbury developed his explanation of free will in similar terms; see De liberiate arbitrii, ed. F. S. Schmitt, Opera omnia (Edinburgh, 1946), i, 201–226. The argument is restated in shorter form in De concordantia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio, i, 7; ed. Schmitt, ii, 257.

14 H. R. Patch, “Troilus on Determinism,” Speculum, vi (1931), 234–235.

15 Boethius' arguments against free will: Consolation, v, pr. 3. Lady Philosophy's counterarguments: v, pr. 4 to pr. 6.

16 It is quite possible that this structure is based on, or was suggested to Chaucer by, the scholastic distinction between sensualitas, ratio inferior, and ratio superior. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, sensualitas is the perception of sensible goods (goods of the body) and the attraction of the will to them. The two parts of ratio are distinguished from each other by differing principles which the intellect understands and considers in making a choice: “Ratio inferior, in making a choice, takes counsel from a consideration of temporal things, whether something is superfluous or needed, useful or honorable, and so on with regard to the other qualities of which the moral philosopher [i.e., Aristotle in his ethics] treats; [ratio] superior, however, takes counsel from a consideration of eternal and divine things, whether something is against God's command, or causes Him offense, and so on. ... For ratio superior is constituted by wisdom, but inferior by knowledge.” The interrelation of the three powers constitutes man's moral life, and true “moral” behavior consists in the right order among them: ratio inferior rules (“regulat”) sensualitas, ratio superior rules the other two (St. Thomas, Sent., ii, d. 24, qu. 2, art. 2, solutio; qu. 3, a. 1, ad quintum; and D. W. Robertson, Jr., “Chaucerian Tragedy,” ELH, xix, 1952, 10–11, with further references). Notice that each of the three faculties—or rather, levels of psychic reality (because each includes cognition and volition)—is geared to a corresponding realm of “objective” values: bodily, worldly (comprising the utile and the honestum), and divine.

17 I owe this reference to Fr. J. A. Devereux, S. J.

18 For a similar view on these two “levels” and Chaucer's technique of welding them into a complex view of reality, in the “Epilogue” to the poem, see E. T. Donaldson's excellent contribution (“The Ending of Chaucer's Troilus”) to Early English and Norse Studies presented to Hugh Smith (London, 1963), pp. 26–45.