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Barry Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde
Date:
• probably composed during early and middle 1380s, finished by early 1387
• Thomas Usk, executed for treason March 1388, prose work The Testament of Love showed close familiarity w Troilus but date of composition unknown — makes the allegorical figure of love refer to Chaucer as
‘the noble philosophical poete in Englissh’ because of the ‘tretis that he made of my servant Troilus’
• Ch’s Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, c
...
171-2)
— allusion to fact that Queen of England (Anne of Bohemia, married Richard II Jan 1382) had initial A
hence dating to early-mid 1380s
• state of heavens at crucial point in poem coincides with point in 1380s — on night T+C consummate their
love there is said to be a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and the crescent moon in Cancer (iii
...
A great upheaval of realms followed this…’
• Ch keen interest in astrology and so would have known the conjunction was going to happen
• 17 Feb 1385: Ch given permission to perform his duties as controller of customs through permanent
deputy, which released him from demands of job and increased free time
• political crisis of 1386, by end of year had lost his position
• parliament of Oct/Nov 1386 attended by Ch as knight of the shire, saw ascendancy of Thomas of Woodstock and downfall of number of Ch’s friends/associates — petition presented called for removal of all
controllers of customs with life terms

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• has been suggested representation of the parliamentary proceedings in Book IV reflects Ch’s view —
‘What is undeniably true is that Chaucer has created a real sense of parliament, and makes the exchange of
Criseyde for Antenor depend on its deliberations, in a way that has no parallel in any of his sources’
• dramatises parliamentary assembly headed by a president (iv
...
183-96) represented by a prince of the blood (iv
...
184) has been taken as passing allusion to
figure of Jack Straw and Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
• long tradition linking Troy with London — held that Britain founded after the sack of Troy by Brutus, who
gave land its name — Geoffrey of Monmouth told how Brutus chose to build his capital on the banks of
the Thames: ‘There then he built his city and called it Troia Nova
...
83-4, Pandarus finds Criseyde sitting in her parlour with two other ladies who ‘Herden a mayden reden
hem the geste / Of the siege of Thebes, while hem leste’ — scene likely to represent way Troilus encountered in its own time
• ‘Any English group having Troilus read to them would thus listen to a scene in which a group of Trojans
are listening to a text being read to them, and this sense of audiences within audiences is typical of a reflexive quality in Troilus about its nature as a text’
• frontispiece of the Corpus manuscript: two component parts — lower presents public recital in open air,
upper half an encounter between two retinues in procession
...
1410-80), duchess of Buckingham, granddaughter of John of Gaunt
— without precedent in English work
• ‘Distinctions are to be made between Ch’s audience(s): fictional, implied, intended, actual; and distinctions
may also be made to avoid confusions of “voice” with “presence”, so that the speaking persona is regarded
not literally as an individual “character” behind the text but as an impersonation or a kind of personification’
• ‘In the Troilus picture we look through and past the framing scene of narration into a scene which probably
represents the core narrative image of the traditional Criseyde story — her departure from Troy — and this
can aptly stand to represent the distancing of the narrative by a foregrounding of the relationship of poet
and audience in Ch’s poem’

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• poem presents itself both as written pages of book in process of composition and the script of a performance in process of being presented — double sense of text as product of scholar and entertainer — ‘combination of painstaking, deeply pondered, bookish form with its conversational immediacy and ease, casual
informality and open-endedness’
• first addresses an imagined reader in the last book — ‘at any reading in solitude the text creates for its
reader a sense of being party to an occasion on which the poem is being recited’ ‘the text fictionalises an
audience with special expertise in the poem’s subject of love, to whom the poet can refer his compositional
concerns’ ‘Ch goes on to pick out imagined individuals in this audience of lovers, addressing each in the
second person singular (‘For to thi purpos this may liken the, / And the right nought’ ii
...
491)
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531-2
• quality of text deteriorates in the MS due to recopying that ‘miswrites and mismetres with cliched rephrasing, omission, and substitution’
• MS three groups — question is whether certain differences stem from scribes or poet or both — Cp+, Ph+,
R+
• in MS culture conditions of ‘publication’ different — authors at any time can circulate altered form, keep
text in progress — incorporating further thoughts, updating in response to events, responding to criticism
or plagiarism
• principal differences 2 categories: 1
...
1744-71, predestination soliloquy iv
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1807-27; variants in some MS closer to parallel
Italian in Il Filostrato while other MS have apparently authentic versions of same lines; other variations
between MS groupings over several possibly authentic versions of same lines
• some MS in same group (Ph+) contain readings closer to Italian and omit philosophical passages (although
not all consistently) — has been interpreted as evidence poem was rewritten from earlier text (extension,
variation between Cp+ and R+ groupings has been taken to represent further authorial revision) — endows
status of afterthought to some parts of poem which have challenged modern tastes
• three philosophical passages are extracts closely translated from sources other than Il Fil and incorporated
where IF followed closely

!5
• T’s song not in all but at iii
...
1086-9 much greater urgency seems provoked in response — P’s response present in all
MS but without presence of soliloquy nothing to explain P’s outburst
• MS R is only manuscript that contains only extant text of ‘To Rosemounde’ and contains a stanza between
ii
...
e
...
ii
...
g
...
699-700,
1196, 1325, 1817 and when Ch text begins to overlap with traditional accounts of story (Book V) and references to sources become more frequent

!6
• Joseph of Exeter’s Ilias v
...
1037, 1044, 1051 and return of Troilus to role in events of the war v
...
g
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132-3, invents irretrievable omission by source which
Fil nowhere claims to have made e
...
iii
...
561-81 adapted from Fil v
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239-41,
imitates Boccaccio imitating Dante imitating Virgil
• possible use of Boccaccio’s Il Filocolo, treatment of romance of Floris and Blanchefleur — both the romances of learned poets who ‘approach their stories with comparable erudition, and yet also with comparable sensibility and delicacy in treating the emotions’ — resemblance between allusion to classical poets
at the end of Troilus and Boccaccio’s ‘closing injunction to his “little book” Filocolo not to presume to be
where Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Ovid, or Dante are read’ — romance used to explore interplay between pagan
and Christian in exploration of love
• no extant evidence other than Ch for the reading of Italian poems until maybe 16th C — speculation
whether Ch would have expected his unacknowledged sources to be recognised
• Il Filostrato: prob written c
...
456-69 ‘Chaucer can be seen subtly recasting his source, re-expressing the terms and values in which
Troilus conceives of his love for Criseyde, introducing those thematic elements of feudal service, illness
and cure, endurance and death, which will mark the Troilus’
• when working adopting and adapting, he seems engaged in a ‘paynted proces’ ii
...
1329
• Dares and Dictys: authorities on Trojan war for medieval writers, present themselves as eyewitness accounts of siege of Troy, thought to have Greek originals written 1st C, extant Latin of Dictys dates from
4th and Dares 6th — as eyewitnesses, felt to have advantage over Homer who was later and suspected of

!7
favouring Greeks by a Latin West — roles of some protagonists differ from Homer — Troilus given more
importance, Antenor and Aeneas assume Sinon’s role in betraying Troy, which Ch echoes
• Book I refers to the story ‘In Omer, or in Dares, or in Dite’ but in Book V gives reference to Dares for account of Troilus military career, suggesting greater knowledge of De excidio Troiae historia
• Isidore of Seville: ‘Just as Moses was the first to write a Christian history from the beginning of the world,
so Dares the Phrygian was in fact the first to set down a pagan history treating the Greeks and the Trojans’
• In Dares find descriptions of appearance of characters, tells how Troilus injures Diomedes, how Calchas
meets Achilles at Delphi — ‘Troilus was tall and handsome, strong for his age, brave, and desirous of glory’; ‘Diomedes was strong, squarely built, handsome of body, austere in looks, fierce in war, clamorous,
hot-tempered, impatient, and daring’; ‘Briseis was beautiful, not tall, blond, with soft golden hair, joined
eyebrows, lovely eyes, and a well-proportioned body; she was gentle, affable, modest, simple in spirit, and
pious’ — in including these descriptions in Book V Ch acts as historian
• however, actually closer to Joseph of Exeter’s version of Dares, Ilias: ‘His voice was fierce, his temper
violent
...
His
mighty deeds made him the worthy son of his father, Tydeus — such were the lightning bolts leaping from
his spirit, his savage voice, and his arms’ (Troilus v
...
In spirit he was a giant, but in age he was a boy
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Pride graced his noble features, more pleasing because it
was blended with manly vigour’ (Troilus v
...
Their hearts change very rapidly, and the wisest of them is foolish

!8
enough’ — Chaucer is much less like this, and has his Criseyde more unwilling than Briseida to give over
to Diomedes
• Criseyde’s anticipation of her future notoriety closely echoes Briseida’s words — Briseida’s soliloquy has
an ambiguous mixture of defensiveness, evasiveness, and a certain rationalising quality, which Ch’s very
selective use here in his fifth book has left behind
• Guideo de Columnis Historia destructionis Troiae, indebted to Benoît but its authority meant that vice versa assumed — less concerned than Benoît in the Roman to interweave the emotions of characters with their
role in the war — history rather than romance, confines himself to recording important actions of participants
• harsh comments about female inconstancy: ‘But oh, Troilus, what youthful credulity forced you to be so
mistaken that you trusted Briseida’s tears and her deceiving caresses?’; ‘It is clearly implanted in all
women by nature not to have any steady constancy … their fickleness and changeableness always lead
them to deceive men … If perchance no seducer appears to them, they seek him themselves … There is
truly no hope so false as that which resides in women and proceeds from them’
• ‘A more general influence may have been the model provided by Guido as the “historian”-narrator in presenting and commenting on his material … Guido maintains an aloof stance as a historian-narrator, exclaiming at fateful human ignorance of the consequences of men’s deeds, distancing himself from the sexual lives and religious outlooks of the protagonists’
• Guido and Benoît’s texts began the tradition of Troilus and Criseyde, and ‘references to Troilus and Briseida as type figures and stock characters began to occur’ — Gower, number of references — Vox clamantis,
balades, Confessio amantis
• Boethius: Troilus written after Ch had translated the Consolation of Philosophy (as Boece)
• Consolation of Philosophy: a dialogue between Boethius in his cell and the allegorical figure of Philosophy
...
‘In a process likened
to the healing of sickness by a physician, he is brought to understand the insubstantiality of Fortune, and to
see that that true happiness is to be sought in God rather than in the vanities of false and worldly outward
things … powerlessness of evil, justice of God, relation between divine providence and freedom of human
will’
...
Changeability is Fortune’s essential nature, represented by her wheel
...
Points out unsatisfactoriness of worldly goods, links true happiness with perfect goodness and with God
...
B asserts ‘the difficulty of accepting that the existence of divine foreknowledge
does not contradict that of human free will, and then proceeds to the implications for reward and punishment, hope and prayer, in a predestined world
...

• B’s alternating prose and verse may have been model for Ch’s use of lyric, five books in Consolation, five
in Troilus, mythological figures mention at close of Book III Consolation mentioned somewhere in Troilus
• dialogue between Tr and Pan second half Book I, parallel between visit by Philosophy, makes Pan a kind
of ‘Uncle Philosophy’, theme of sickness and cure
• Tr and Pan exchange on Fortune: Tr ‘Fortune is my fo’ (i
...
839-40) — Tr has limited understanding
of human freedom, Pan responds by asserting that mutability of Fortune means joy succeeds sorrow
• In Book III diff from Fil in tone and significance of lovers’ union created by use of B — third proem based
on Troiolo song in Fil based on conclusion of Book II of Consolation; iii
...
pr
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1254)
recalls Ph’s ‘And thus this charite and this love, that every thing hath to hymself’
• Fortune’s wheel turns at the beginning of Book IV, proem recalls iconography of Dame Fortune; Tr reproach of Fortune (iv
...
282 makes use of
Philosophy’s use of sailing imagery ‘Yif thou committest and betakest thi seyles to the wynd, thow schalt
ben shoven, nat thider that thow woldest, but whider that the wynd schouveth the’; iv
...
974-1078 close translation of Consolation — close to soliloquy in Consolation
‘because of the torturously involved syntax and prosaic effect of the stanzas that result; the differences because these shift the balance of the Boethian original towards a more resignedly predestinarian prejudice
on Tr’s part’
• Ovid: Chaucer was likened to Ovid within his lifetime by Eustache Deschamps
• Ovid not only master in matters of love and rhetoric but thinker and philosopher, seen as an authority,
source of many commonplaces on love, source of many of Ch’s allusions and sense of how gods and nat-

!10
ural world involved in processes of suffering and transformation — some Ovidian features derived from
other texts/lit trad
• inaccuracies: Apollo speaking from inside the ‘holy laurer’ iii
...
729-30; confuses Titan with Tithonus iii
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655
• remembered phrases: ‘Daun Phebus or Appollo Delphicus’ i
...
1807-10 from Ars amatoria or Amores; ‘Nyghtes doughtren thre’ iv
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451-2
• other works Ovidian influence: Procne allusion ii
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1389, Athamas iv
...

1030-6, 1041-3) but larger considerations of strategy from Ars amatoria — blotting letter with tears; ‘As
gret a craft is kepe wel as wynne’ iii
...
243-5), i
...
392 ‘Criseyde for to love, and nought repente’ — Romaunt 1974-6 ‘I wole ben hool at youre devis …
And repente for nothyng’
• Tr’s concern for secrecy parallels Amant; wish to kiss the doors of Cr’s house as an empty shrine echoes
God of Love, lover’s life of watching outside the lady’s house and kissing the door
• Pandarus, friend and counsellor of the lover, shares something of role of Ami and La Vieille — iii
...

1634, i
...
It is characteristic of Ch’s historical sense to provide the Trojan “present” of his narrative with
its own sense of a past’
• Statius’ Thebaid, available to medieval readers in manuscripts, also Boccaccio’s Teseida
• ‘Ch’s Trojan Cr thus hears an account of what for her is a historical event, but she listens to it in a book
which Trojan Pan apparently knows in a Roman version and which Cr has in its twelfth-century romance
form’
• Cassandra’s speech, v
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1262 and lofty prayer to the Trinity which brings poem to an end ‘Uncircumscript, and al maist
circumscrive’ v
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1765-6 claims to set

!12
aside possibility of epic treatment in Tr even as it plays w opening of Aeneid; consummation of love during storm recalls Dido and Aeneas; thematic absorption of conceptions of destiny and human character;
fatal battle at beginning of Book IV carefully accounted for as a military event; Book V Tr dispositions for
his own funeral draw on descriptions of cremation; ‘part of Ch’s sense of Trojan background as the
“present day” of his narrative to show the active prosecution of the Trojan War, and so to associate Tr’s
valour in war with his worthiness for love, while linking the fate of the lovers with the destiny of Troy …
Ch raises in his narrative the possibility that Tr is simultaneously participating as a character in an epic
which is concurrent with the present tale’; ‘traditions of Tr as a type figure of early death, and of a prophecy that the fates of Troy and Tr were linked … The role of Tr in tradition is in some sense that he is fated
not to develop into a mature warrior, and hence into an epic hero’
• Romance: Ch distances himself from romance, perhaps because indifferent to the marvellous and impatient
with episodic structure
...
Tr’s all-possessing experience of love makes it a kind of inward
aventure
...
Style and convention reflect the aspiration of romance, which structure and context comment upon with some irony
...
‘It offered a shapeliness of overall structure, tightly constructed scenesequence, and single-minded clarity of focus on one unified narrative action, very different from the way
medieval romance characteristically proceeds’
...
Its main narrative source is post-romance
...
Tr’s ‘aspirations and conceptions are those of the idealistic hero of romance, and this restores to Ch’s story that characteristic sense in romance that the hero’s experiences include a process of learning, and that romance develops an education of the heart’
...
Pandarus arranges
the lovers’ lives into the type-scenes of romance, plays role of ‘author’
...
Boccaccio challenged the approaches of Benoît and Guido, structuring Fil
so that time matters as it affects the lovers, and is experienced as feeling
...
Tr example of a ‘tale’ due to its closely defined scope and detailed narrative
...
Establishes itself in relation to histories of Troy
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Ending signifies removal to Christian present of the poem’s
audience
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Ch’s structure of rise and fall taken from
Fil
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Tragedye likely to recall definition Philosophy represents Fortune as giving — ‘What other thynge bywaylen the cryinges of tragedyes but oonly the dedes of
Fortune, that with an unwar strook overturneth the realmes of greet nobleye?’
...
Dante has Virgil refer to the Aeneid as a tragedy

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