Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde Book

A medieval romantic tale of love destroyed by war
18 May 2012

The story of Troilus and Criseyde (I will use that Chaucerian as opposed to the Shakespearian spelling here) dates back only a far as the middle ages, despite it being set during the Trojan War. The interesting thing is that while Troilus does appear in the Iliad, this particular story does not. I will briefly recount the story as I suspect people are not too familiar with it. I also suspect that it is not the style of romantic comedy people would appreciate today. Well, I will call it a comedy, despite difficulty in finding anything funny in the poem, but that probably has more to do with it not being the easiest story to read.

Anyway, Troilus is the son of Priam, king of Troy, and Criseyde is a high born woman of Trojan origin. Initially Troilus is a warrior through and through, and claims to have no time for love, especially during a war. However, it is not that he meets Criseyde (for in those times, even in a city like Troy, you would probably know everybody anyway), but that he first looks on Criseyde and discovers her beauty and thus falls in love. This is a very intense, sickness causing, love, but fortunately, for a time, Criseyde responds to his advances (though this has a lot to do with Troilus' friend and matchmaker Pander). However it is not a happily ever after type love, as Criseyde's father defects to the Greek camp, and Criseyde is swapped for a prisoner being held by the Greeks, and then in turn is married to the Greek Diomede. In the end, or at least in the original, Troilus was killed by Achillies.

This is a romantic poem, pure and simple, and is a beautiful example of English Renaissance poetry, though one should consider that the period in which it was written, the 14th Century, England had not entered the Renaissance. Chaucer, however, had for he had travelled to Italy and spent time with Boccaccio (who was famous for the Decameron, the book upon which Chaucer's Cantabury Tales was based upon). The poem is also a tragedy, but not because of any fatal flaw (though one might argue that Troilus' fatal flaw is his obsession with Criseyde), but is rather the tragedy of a love that is torn apart by war. What struck me as I was reading this book was that I feel that this book was the beginning of the Renaissance in England (though it would not take off until at least two hundred years later) and in travelling to Italy, Chaucer brought back some of the earlier Renaissance ideas.

Now, Chaucer, and in fact many Europeans of the time, did not know Greek. Many of the Greek speakers, and even the Greek texts, were still in Byzantine libraries, and it would be another fifty to seventy years before the likes of Machiavelli, Michaelangelo, and Dante, appeared on the scene. Now, to put the book in context, it was written around 1380, which at the time England was engaged in a 100 year long war with France (though the war was not continuous = rather a series of campaigns that occurred over a period of 117 years). At the time the heroes of the first period of the war, Edward III and the Black Prince, and died, and Richard II was currently on the throne (though he was not a particularly good king). The use of Troy also conjured up images of patriotism as it was believed, even at that time, that the original Englishmen were descended from a man named Brutus who had left Aenias to establish his own colony.

Chaucer didn't know Greek, but then again neither did Shakespeare. The more modern languages had by this time begun to supersede Latin as the written language (and this poem was written in English, though not the English that we know), however most educated people of the time could read Latin, which means that Chaucer had access to texts like Virgil and Ovid (and he even attributes his work to them at the end of the poem). Granted, they would have known Homer (and once again, Homer also appears by name in the poem) however he did not have access to the original Greek (and I am unsure if there were any Latin translations). However, while he did not have access to Homer, he did have access to Ovid, and we see quite a few allusions to the Metamorphoses throughout the poem.

One of the reasons I mention this is because the poem falls into the category of a literary epic. A literary epic is an epic poem in the style of the Iliad, but unlike the Illiad it was originally written down. While these days all of the epic poems that we have have been written down, when you read the Odyssey you will see a number of recurring styles that suggest that is was originally a spoken poem. There is also the use of the epic simile, which is simply a very long and descriptive phrase. To be honest, we really only know of three true epic poems, two of them are Greek and one is German (the Nibelungenlied, though I am not sure whether that poem is truly an epic), though I should also make mention of Beowulf and the Song of Roland, so maybe there are five. However, being cheeky, I would also suggest that Paradise Lost is also a true epic, even if only for the reason that Milton dictated the poem to his daughter (he was blind so he could not easily write, however isn't it interesting that both Homer and Milton were blind poets, that says something about Milton).

Another convention in an epic is the term 'invoking the Muses'. The Muses were Greek spirits that would inspire artistic ability in people and what simply began as a mere religious exercise before writing something has come down to us as a literary convention. In a way invoking the Muses is very much like a Christian saying a prayer before embarking on a journey or a project. Chaucer does something slightly, or actually very, different here and that is that he invokes the Furies. Now the Furies are the closest in Greek mythology to what we would call a demon. They are quite nasty creatures, and if you are familiar with Greek literature and mythology, you would know that one appearance of the Furies was after Orestes killed his mother, and was tormented by them until he was found innocent of the crime of matricide (or rather that his duty as a son to avenge the death of his father overrid the crime of matricide). It has been suggested that the reason Chaucer changed the convention was because this story was much bleaker and darker than other stories where the Muses were invoked.