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Reclaiming the Self: Chapter 3
The Binding of Criseyde and Troilus: Success and
Failure in the Attempt to Transcend the "love of kynde" in Troilus
and Criseyde
"Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
So sung a little Clod of Clay
Trodden with the cattle's feet,
But a Pebble of the brook
Warbled out these metres meet:
"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."---William Blake, The
Clod and the Pebble
At first glance, the story of Troilus and Crysede and
that of the Bhagavad Gita are entirely dissimilar. They come
from irreconcilably different times and cultures, and their
ideological bases are widely disparate. Furthermore, the Gita
is a manifestly philosophical and theological work, while Chaucer's
poem is a largely secular tale told in a mythological and theological
frame. The differences are numerous and obvious; however, the
similarity between the two is more interesting than the differences.
Each work is fundamentally concerned with the nature and effects of
love. Love is the quintessential impulse behind transcendence, if
love is understood as an identification with the Other, not an
attempt to assimilate the Other to the self or the narrow ego.
The two extremes are nicely illustrated in Blake's poem: the Love
which is identification "seeketh not Itself to please," and "for
another gives its ease," while the Love that is essentially an urge to
ownership, control, and assimilation "seeketh only Self to please,"
seeking to "bind another to its delight." The "Extasie" of Donne,
which "makes both one, each this and that," transforming the speech of
lovers into a "dialogue of one," is the transcendent quality of the
love of identification. Each lover stands outside the self, joins with
the Other, and forms a new Self in a kind of romantic dialectic.
Troilus, in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, attempts
to transcend his situation (that of a warrior in a besieged and doomed
Troy), his location (Troy), and the bounds of his self by pledging
himself in love's service to Criseyde. His love, however, is the love
of assimilation. His "love's service" is little more than a way to
console himself by appropriating the affections and experiences of
an(other)--his attempt at transcendence is a phony; the brave warrior
is unwilling and/or unable to bridge the chasm between self and Other.
His "love" for "Criseyde" is an auto-erotic attachment to a feminine
image of himself (what Jung calls the anima figure(see
note #1), and that attachment quickly turns to possessiveness.
He seeks, not unity with Criseyde the Other, but exclusive claim to a
Criseyde created in the image of Troilus. Troilus' relations with
other men--Pandarus, and ultimately Achilles, seem more
significant--reflecting his failure to transcend self and bond with
someone truly other--than does his affair with Criseyde. When Pandarus
says to Troilus:
For this have I herd seyd of wyse lered,
'Was nevere man ne womman yet bigete
That was unapt to suffren loves hete
Celestial, or elles love of kynde;' (I. 977-980)(see
note #2)
he raises an interesting question. What exactly is "love of
kynde"? I suggest that this is not merely human sexuality as opposed
to a love "Celestial" which manifests itself as a devotion to the
things of heaven. The opposition between sacred and profane
loves--perhaps initially to be read as an opposition of Agape to
Eros--which is reflected in the poem, might also be read as love of
other (the love of identification) vs. love of self or that which
reflects the self (the love of assimilation). "Celestial" love would
then be that which transcends self and the known, throwing lovers out
of themselves, binding them to their beloved. "Celestial" love can be
seen as a variation on the theme of bhakti devotion expounded
in the Bhagavad Gita: each person in a pair of lovers is both
devotee and object of devotion, and the goal is a kind of
participation by each in the innermost being of the other. This kind
of love is the Grand Option of Teilhard de Chardin, "the coming
together of. . .separate elements" (The Future of Man 55). This
love is one of giving, not of surrendering or taking, not of
masochism or sadism, but of generosity and love:
in a converging Universe each element achieves
completeness, not directly in a separate consummation, but by
incorporation in a higher pole of consciousness in which alone it
can enter into contact with all others. By a sort of inward turn
towards the Other its growth culminates in an act of giving and in
excentration. (The Future of Man 58)
In contrast to this kind of transcendent love, love of "kynde"
is a projection of self (understood in this context as the narrow ego,
or the I-maker) onto the universe, a kind of emotional imperialism
which transforms the "beloved" into an image of the self, thereby
binding that image to the self; this is, in effect, a binding of the
ego to itself.
The poem's narrator suggests this reading when speaking of
love as that which "alle thing may bynde," and then says "may no man
fordon the lawe of kynde" (I.237,238). This second statement tells us
much about our narrator, but it also tells us much about Troilus.
Troilus appears in Book I as a young man adopting a posture of
immunity from love, referring to lovers as "fooles, nyce and blynde"
(I.202). At this point, our narrator tells us that the "God of Love. .
. hitte hym [Troilus] atte fulle" (I.206,209), so that "he that now
was moost in pride above / Wax sodeynly moost subgit unto love"
(I.230,231) The description of Troilus as one who "was moost in pride
above" brings to mind the figure of Satan. Troilus has, until the
moment of his binding by Yahweh/Christ/Eros/Cupid,(see
note #3) said non serviam to the idea of love, in
essence making himself a rival to both love and its divine source.
Troilus has resisted transcending the limits of self by being
voluntarily bound to any other--yoked together in love, as the
Christian God binds the male and female in marriage (qeòV--God
+ sune'zeuxen--yoked
or bound together)--and is now forcibly bound to himself through
his fascination (fascinum--charm, malefic spell; fascia--band;
fascis--bundle) with the image of Criseyde.
Mircea Eliade, in a discussion of "The 'God who Binds'" (Images
and Symbols, 92-124), emphasizes the negative aspects of such
binding when he speaks of Ouranos:"he immobilises--more exactly, he
'binds', he chains up--his eventual rivals in hell" (92). Nirrti and
Yama, two Vedic divinities of death, bind those whom they mean to
destroy. Yahweh also binds those whom he means to destroy: the prophet
Hosea chastises the people of Israel:
And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do
not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him for all this . . ..
When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them; I will bring
them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their
congregation hath heard (Hosea 7:10,12).
Similarly, the prophet Ezekiel when foretelling the exile of
King Zedekiah, speaks of Yahweh as binding those on whom he means to
take vengeance:
My net also will I spread upon him, and he shall be taken
in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the
Chaldeans;yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there. And I
will scatter toward every wind all that are about him to help him,
and all his bands; and I will draw out the sword after them (Ezekiel
12:13,14).
Satan, who like Troilus stood "most in pride above," is bound
in an abyss for a thousand years before being destroyed by the God who
is Love. Being bound would thus seem to be tantamount to being doomed
to destruction. However, Eliade is careful to point out that there can
be a positive side to such binding:
Ambivalence . . . is to be found in all the magico-religious
uses of knots and bonds . . . . what is essential in all these
magical and magico-medical rites, is the orientation that they give
to the power that resides in any kind of binding, in every act of
"tying." And this orientation may be either positive
or negative, according to whether one takes the opposites in
the sense of "benefic" or "malefic," or in that of "defence" or
"attack" (Images, 112).
An important factor, then, is the attitude of the one
bound towards the binding. Proud refusal to transcend the limits of
self and of the known--which is tantamount to an attempt to make
oneself the cosmos, to assimilate (through the "love of
kynde") that which is other--results in a binding of the self to the
self, and ultimately in destruction. Transcending the limits of self
and the known, by way of connecting with, or identifying with
(through "love celestial"), that which is other--acknowledging oneself
as a part of, rather than the whole of, the cosmos--results,
paradoxically, in a binding which liberates. Love, "that alle thing
may binde," is a kind of ontological gate, leading those who pass
through it into different states of being. This is a dangerous kind of
travel, whose destination may be the gate of the gods, or the gate of
hell.
Troilus passes through this ontological gate when, upon
seeing Criseyde for the first time, he is struck by "that Love [which]
hadde his dwellynge / Withinne the subtile stremes of hire yen"
(I.304,305). However, what Troilus is struck by is not Criseyde, but
the image of himself which he sees in her eyes. This is
illustrated by what happens next: he returns to his "chambre . . .
allone. . . . Thus gan he make a mirour of his mynde, / In which he
saugh al holly hire figure" (I.358,365,366). What Troilus sees in the
"mirour of his mynde" is what each of us sees in a mirror: a
reflection of self. The Crysede he sees is his own feminine image, a
Crysede he constructs out of his own desires, an anima projection that
has nothing to do with the essence of Crysede as Other. The "loves
hete" from which Troilus is suffering at this point is "love of kynde"--in
essence, love of self.
Still, there remains at this point the possibility for
Troilus to transcend the "love of kynde" --Troilus' love for the idea
of Troilus--and give himself over to love "Celestial" in the form of a
genuine connection with Criseyde. He describes himself as "bitwixen
wyndes two / That in contrarie stonden evere mo" (I.417,418). This
pair of opposites is not merely the troubadour's plaint of line
420--"For hote of cold, for cold of hote, I dye"--expressing dismay at
burning with passion for an individual who is unaware of that passion;
it represents Troilus' choice (whether or not he is aware of
the responsibility for making such a choice) between a binding to the
"love of kynde" or the love "Celestial." He is bound by the God; now
it is up to him whether that binding will spell doom or salvation. The
narrator foreshadows Troilus' decision by showing us a Troilus who is
in such a state that "Alle other dredes weren from him fledde, / Both
of th' assege and his savacioun" (I.463,464). Troilus has not put
aside concern for a dying city and his own eventual death for
Criseyde's sake; instead he is fixated on his wish that Criseyde grant
him his amorous desires: "N'yn him desir noon other fownes bredde /
But argumentes to his conclusioun, / That she of him wolde han
compassioun" (I.465-467).
In contrast to Troilus, Criseyde is thrown out of herself
upon seeing Troilus, who is returning to the city after having
reportedly "put to flighte the Grekes route" (II.613). Criseyde,
unlike Troilus, does not come upon the sight of her eventual lover
unprepared. Pandarus has been filling Criseyde's ears with talk of
Troilus' nobility and desperate need for her, and has carefully
arranged to show him to her at the height of his military splendor:
"So lik a man of armes and a knyght / He was to seen, fulfilled of
heigh prowesse; / It was an heven upon hym for to see"
(II.631,632,637). When Criseyde "gan al his chere aspien," she "leet
it so softe in hire herte synke, / That to hireself she seyde, 'Who
yaf me drynke?'" (II.649-651)
The use of the love-drink motif here is crucial to
understanding Criseyde's reaction to Troilus. Hers is not a slow
warming of affection into passion; she is taken immediately, thrown
out of herself with such force that her thoughts are all of Troilus:
Lo, this is he / Which that myn uncle swerith he moot be
deed,/ But I on hym have mercy and pitee. [She] gan to caste and
rollen up and down / Withinne hire thought his excellent prowesse,
/And his estat, and also his renown, / His wit, his shap, and ek his
gentilesse, / but moost hire favour was, for his distresse/ Was al
for hire, and thoughte it was a routhe / To sleen swich oon, if that
he mente trouthe (II.653,654,659-665).
Just as Gottfried's Isot (Isolde) "shared a single heart"
(195) with Tristan after drinking the love-drink intended for herself
and King Mark, casting concerns for herself aside in favor of concerns
for Tristan, Criseyde transcends herself in her concern for Troilus.
She experiences the "Extasie" of Donne's poem, standing outside
herself, joining herself to Troilus in a "dialogue of one." Instead of
remaining focused on her own rather precarious situation in Troy--as
the daughter of Calkas, a despised traitor, she could be vulnerable to
possibly violent expressions of hostility from her fellow Trojans were
it not for the generous protection of Hector (II.1450-1456)--or on her
newly won, if only dubiously beneficial, freedom from her father, she
gives her heart. She progresses in short order from the declaration,
"I am myn owene womman" (II.750), and questions such as, "Syn I am
free, / Sholde I now love, and put in jupartie / My sikernesse, and
thrallen libertee?" (II.771-773), to worries about "wikked tonges . .
.prest / To speke us harm" (II.785,786). Soon, though "hire thought
gan for to clere, / And seide, 'He which that nothing undertaketh, /
Nothyng n'acheveth, be hym looth or deere" (II.806--808).
Troilus has nothing to lose; he is the son of Priam the King,
and he is second in reputation only to the legendary Hector--despite
this, he dares not enough even to do his own wooing of Criseyde,
letting Pandarus work his "engyn" and "loore" (II.565) on his behalf.
Criseyde is in much the inferior position: she is, even in the best
and most normal of situations, of a lower social rank--now, with the
siege of the city being aided by her own traitorous father, her
position is as precarious as it can be. Despite this, she resolves to
turn Troilus' "bittre tornen al into swetenesse" (III.179). Her
resolve to transcend herself, and her lack of self-protective fear is
illustrated by her dream of the "egle, fethered whit as bon" (II.926).
Isot "shared one heart" with Tristan; Criseyde has her own heart taken
by the dream bird:
Under hire brest his longe clawes sette, / And out hire herte he rente,
and that anon, / And dide his herte into hire brest to gon-- / Of which
she nought agroos, ne nothyng smerte-- / And forth he fleigh with herte
left for herte (II.927-931).
The narrator does not specifically tell us who this bird is,
or whom it might represent; however, if the structural parallel to
Gottfried's Tristan can be profitably extended to this episode,
then the "egle, fethered whit as bon" may represent Troilus. Isot
"shared one heart" with Tristan; Criseyde's heart is taken by the "egle"
(Troilus), and she in return takes the heart of the "egle" (Troilus).
Another detail which might support an identification of the "egle"
with Troilus is found in Book I: "For love bigan his fetheres so to
lyme" (I.353). This peculiarly wet, ejaculatory image is also a
white image: lime-covered feathers would indeed be "whit as bon."
Another possible identification of the "egle" is as another
manifestation of the God of Love as the God that Binds. Yahweh, in
freeing the Israelites from the bonds of Egyptian slavery in order
that he may bind them to himself as his covenant people, bears them
"on eagle's wings" (Exodus 19:4). This dream "egle," which facilitates
Criseyde's transcendence of self, not only by putting her into contact
with that which is other, but by removing her heart--the seat of her
being--and replacing it with the heart of an(other), symbolically
carries Criseyde, through her heart, into the sky in a kind of ritual
ascent. This dream ascent echoes the ascent of Mentaweian
shaman-initiates who lose consciousness during their initiation (initium--a
beginning, a leaving behind of one ontological state and entering into
an[other]) and ascend to the realm of the celestial spirits on the
wings of eagles (Eliade, Shamanism 140.). For the Siberian
shamanic mythologies, the eagle is intimately connected with
transcendence and divinity (Shamanism 128), just as it is in
Judeo-Christian mythology at Exodus 19:4 and Revelation 12:14 (see
note #4). This magical dream of Criseyde's suggests that she
has been--as was Troilus--touched by God. The key difference between
Troilus and Criseyde lies in how each reacts to that contact.
While Criseyde willingly gives of herself to Troilus, Troilus
remains firmly entrenched within the limits of self. In giving his
assent to, and participating in, Pandarus' plot to deceive Criseyde
into thinking that her precarious situation in Troy had suddenly
become even more precarious due to the intention of "false Poliphete"
(who, to all indications, exists only in the imagination of Pandarus)
to "plete, / And brynge on [Criseyde] advocacies newe" (II.1468,1469),
Troilus demonstrates the extent of his self-centeredness. He is
willing to lie to Criseyde in order to get what he wants from her.
Where Criseyde already knows herself to be bound by the love
"Celestial" to Troilus, although she has yet to declare this love,
Troilus is attempting (successfully) to appropriate Criseyde, to make
her and her experience part of himself, rather than leaving himself to
join with her in a larger cosmos.
Despite this deception, and the emotional imperialism of
Troilus in carrying it out, the relationship between Troilus and
Criseyde might succeed, if only Troilus would take the
opportunity, now that he and she are together, to loose the bonds of
self and allow himself to be bound (sune'zeuxen---yoked
or bound together) by love to Criseyde. He never does. Despite his
pledge of service to Criseyde--made in amorous haste--he remains
determined to have Criseyde serve him and his emotional
needs. The potential for transcendence and completion offered by
Criseyde's promise that if she "be she that may yow do gladnesse, /
For every wo ye shal recovere a blisse" (III.180,181), is never
realized. His offer of service, "Now wolde God I wiste, / Myn herte
swete, how I yow myght plese" (III.1277,1278), is ostensibly made to
Criseyde; however, given the already demonstrated emotional
imperialism of Troilus' character, it seems likely that the pledge is
actually made to himself---at least indirectly---using his
preconceived-and-never-altered image of Criseyde as a proxy.
This image is the one which he calls up when he makes "a mirour of his
mynde," and sees "hire figure, / . . . that he wel koude yn his herte
fynde" (I.365-367).
Criseyde is pressed by Pandarus into forgoing her own
emotional needs in favor of those of Troilus. When Criseyde is upset
at Pandarus' insinuations that she has been unfaithful to
Troilus--Pandarus reports that Troilus "seith hym told is of a frend of
his / How that ye sholden love oon hatte Horaste" (III.796,797)---and,
because she is upset, seems reluctant to immediately drop everything
and rush to Troilus' side at Pandarus' behest, Pandarus launches into
a tale of Troilus' woe, speaking of the "peril [that] he is inne"
(III.911), and of how "with his deth he wol his sorwes wreke"
(III.905). After several attempts at delay by Criseyde--each of which
are met with increasing impatience by Pandarus--Criseyde meets with
Troilus, reproves him for his jealousy, and after offering to let
Troilus kill her if she had given him any legitimate cause for
jealousy, begins to weep. Here Troilus--at least according to the
narrator--shows some feeling for Criseyde: "But wel he felte aboute his
herte crepe, / For everi tere which that Criseyde asterte, / The
crampe of deth to streyne hym by the herte" (III.1069-1071). However,
this emotional moment is immediately revealed to be a moment of
concern by Troilus, for Troilus:
And al that labour he hath don byforn, / He wende it lost;
he thoughte he nas but lorn. / "O Pandarus," thoughte he, "allas,
thi wile / Serveth of nought, so weylaway the while (III.1075-1078).
Troilus is nonplussed--Criseyde is, in his mind, supposed to
attend to his needs, to be his comfort. But now, "wroth
was she that sholde his sorwes lighte" (III.1082). Then comes an even
more interesting moment. The first utterance out of Troilus' mouth is
an excuse:
God woot that of this game, / Whan al is wist, than am I
nought to blame (III.1084,1085).
Now Troilus, who once played a Satanic role as "he that now
was most in pride above," shifts into the role of a bumbling,
excuse-making Adam. The "game" is, of course, that conceived by
Pandarus at I.868; however, Troilus agreed to play his role in
order to get what he wanted. Now that it seems the "game" might
have backfired upon him, Troilus seems more than ready and willing to
blame Pandarus for the whole affair. His entire relationship with
Criseyde is based on self-interest and dishonesty. When Criseyde
demands to know why he had become jealous, Troilus, lest she find
"That this was don of malice, hire to fonde" (III.1155), lies to her:
"for the lasse harm, he moste feyne" (III.1158).
Criseyde, despite Troilus' jealousy and dishonesty, spends an
inordinate amount of time comforting Troilus. Just before
Troilus lies to her, Criseyde "with hire goodly wordes hym disporte /
She gan, and ofte his sorwes to comforte" (III.1133,1134). After their
first night together, Troilus whines for assurance from Criseyde that
he was "in [her] herte iset so fermely" as she was in his (not really
very assuring considering the state of Troilus' emotional maturity).
This assurance, says Troilus, would enable him to "bet enduren al
[his] peyne" (III.1488,1491). Criseyde comforts him, telling him to
"Beth glad, forthy, and lyve in sikernesse" (III.1513), and then
kisses him before he leaves. This emotional dynamic remains
consistent: Criseyde attends to the emotional needs of Troilus, and
Troilus attends to the emotional needs of Troilus. Criseyde is on her
own. This pattern holds even through the moments when Troilus and
Criseyde realize that they will be separated. When Criseyde is with "Thise
wommen, which that in the cite dwelle" (IV.685) who are commiserating
with her over the fact that she must soon leave Troy, Criseyde's
thoughts are with Troilus:
For Troilus ful faste hire soule soughte. / Withouten word,
on hym alwey she thoughte (IV.699,700).
Criseyde has transcended herself. She has put aside her fears
about leaving the only home she has ever known and having to enter the
camp of the enemy Greeks, and thinks instead of Troilus, and his
ever-present pain:
O deere herte ek, that I love so, / Who shal that sorwe
slen that ye ben inne? (IV.759,760)
She eventually declares that his pain means more to
her than her own pain:
"Gret is my wo," quod she, and sighte soore / As she that
feleth dedly sharp distresse, / "But yit to me his sorwe is muchel
more. . . . Grevous to me, God woot, is for to twynne, ' / Quod
she,"but yet it harder is to me / To sen that sorwe which that he is
inne"(IV.897-899,904-906).
Criseyde truly loves Troilus, not only erotically, but
in the truest Christian sense of a-ga'pe or caritas. Her
love is patient; it is kind; it is not jealous; it does not seek its
own interest; it does not act unbecomingly; it is not provoked; and it
does not keep account of injury. She "love[s] hym bet than he hymself"
(IV.900).
After Criseyde leaves Troy, Troilus sinks into a morass of
self-pity. He asks Pandarus to prepare him a funeral fire on which he
will be burned to ashes, which ashes he asks Pandarus to deliver to
Criseyde. He "rewen on hymself so pitously / And eft bygynne his aspre
sorwes newe, / That every man myghte on his sorwes rewe"
(V.260,265,266). Troilus still cares more for himself than for
Criseyde:
Who speketh for me right now in myn absence? / Allas, no
wight, and that is al my care, / For wel woot I, as yvele as
I ye fare (V.236-238 emphasis added).
In this state of self tightly bound to self, Troilus assumes
that Criseyde, while in the Greek camp, will mirror his own emotions
at home inside the walls of Troy:
O pitous, pale, grene / Shal ben youre fresshe wommanliche
face/ For langour, er ye torne unto this place (V.243-245).
Troilus--little Troy--is, in fact, entirely shut up
within the walls of self . This is nicely illustrated by
his actions immediately after finding out that Criseyde would be
exchanged for Antenor:
He rist hym up, and every dore he shette, / And wyndow ek,
and tho this sorwful man / Upon his beddes syde adown hym sette, /
Ful lik a ded ymage, pale and wan (IV.232-235).
He remains enclosed, imagining himself and his experience to
be so central to everything and everyone that the citizens of
Troy asked themselves and each other what was wrong with him.
However--and this is the key to Troilus' character in two lines--"al
this nas but his malencolie, / That he hadde of hymself swich fantasie"
(V.622,623).
Troilus's ultimate transcendence seems cheaply won; his
ascent to "the holughnesse of the eighte spere" at V.1809 (as opposed
to the "hevene he gan him to delyte" at III.1251) reads like the final
scenes of a modern Hollywood test-screened and tinkered-with film
script. Whether the "eighte spere" represents the sphere of the fixed
stars where the souls of the Church assemble, or the sphere of the
moon where souls go whose vows have been broken through no fault of
their own, Troilus seems singularly unqualified for either sphere.
If Troilus has been truly brought "in hevene to solas," it is the
cloacal "solas" of Book III--the "hevene" of a longed-for,
struggled-with, and finally-achieved bowel movement, nothing more. His
"soul' is certainly not Christian--not even to the extent to which
Criseyde's soul, due to her practice of a-ga'pe/caritas,
is Christian; even more outstandingly, Troilus' vows of "love's
service" to Criseyde were broken the instant they were made, due to
his inability to care for anyone who is not Troilus. Even his
battle-fury at the end of Book V springs from his rage at losing his
cloacal outlet, his possession, his eroticized self-image; thus, even
his death at the hands of Achilles is selfish, a self-pitying suicide
performed to escape his ever-present emotional hunger. Troilus is a
failure: bound only to himself, he never transcends the "love of kynde"
by climbing beyond the walls of Troy or those of Troilus.
In contrast to Troilus, Criseyde is a success. She transcends
her fears for her reputation, for her precarious situation in Troy,
and for the possibility that, by loving Troilus, she might "put in
jupartie / [her] sikernesse, and thrallen libertee" (II.772,773). She
steps through the ontological gate, meets the Other, and binds herself
to him. Despite the suggestion of the love-drink motif, the trickery
of Pandarus, and the complicitous behavior of Troilus, Criseyde
willingly makes the decision to love Troilus, and joins herself to
him with clear vision:
"But natheles, this warne I yow," quod she, / "A kynges
sone although ye be, ywys, / Ye shal namore han sovereignete / Of me
in love, than right in that cas is; / N'y nyl forbere, if that ye
don amys, To wratthe yow; and whil that ye me serve, / Chericen yow
right after ye disserve / And shortly, deere herte and al my knyght,
/ Beth glad, and draweth yow to lustinesse, / And I shal trewely,
with al my myght, / Youre bittre tornen al into swetenesse."
(III.169-179)
C.S. Lewis describes Criseyde's actions as "a complete
abandonment of self" (The Allegory of Love, 184). His
assessment is accurate in the sense that Criseyde abandons an
exclusive concern with Self and is willing to take the risk that is
involved in loving the Other. Her "abandonment of self" however, is
not a total female submission to a rigid patriarchal phallocracy; she
is, after all, her "owene womman, wel at ese" (II.750). She does the
best that she can in precarious situations to retain her freedom of
choice and action; even after she is turned over to the Greeks against
her will, the relationship with Diomede in the Greek camp is one which
Criseyde, after weighing the benefits, chooses.
This is perhaps the most significant difference between
Troilus and Criseyde, and the factor which goes furthest in explaining
the failure of Troilus and the success of Criseyde: Troilus chooses
nothing--when he is bound by love, he follows its dictates blindly;
Criseyde, however, retains her rational faculties and the concomitant
power to choose how she will react to the emotions she experiences at
the moment she says "Who yaf me drynke?" (II.651), and those she
experiences during, and after, the dream of the "egle, fethered whit
as bon" (II.926). It is precisely this knowledge and control of self
which allows Criseyde to transcend self and be bound to the Other.
Troilus, having no such sense of self or control of self, remains
forever bound to self, unable to transcend the "love of kynde" in
favor of "loves hete Celestial."
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Works Cited List
Notes
1)"Every man carries within him the eternal image of
woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite
feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary
factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of
the man, an imprint or "archetype" of all the ancestral experiences of
the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by
woman--in short, an inherited system of psychic adaptation" (Jung, vol
17, 198). Back to main text
2)All citations of Chaucer are from The Riverside
Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). Back
to main text
3)Although the context of lines 206-210 suggest that
the "God of Love" is the classical Eros/Cupid, this God is not
specifically named. The loose association of Troilus with Satan--each
being "most in pride above"--suggests that this "God of Love" might be
seen as the God who is Love of 1 John 4:8. "qeòV
aga'ph," identifiable as the Christian God in both "his" manifest and
non-manifest aspects, is the God of a-ga'pe--a love governed by
principle. At first glance, a-ga'pe would not seem to be the
"Love . . . that alle thing may binde"; however at Matthew 19:6 God is
described as binding male and female together in marriage (qeòV--God +
sune'zeuxen--yoked or bound together). Thus the Christian God can be
the "God of Love" of line 206. A-ga'pe is referred to in the
Greek scriptures as a binding force in its own right. 2 Timothy 4:10
speaks of a man named Demas as loving (a`ga`ph'saV--a-ga-pe'sas)--in
the sense of being bound to--"the present age," and so deserting Paul.
John 3:19 speaks of "men [who] loved [h`ga'ph`san--e-ga'pe-san]
the darkness rather than the light." The binding force of a-ga'pe
is even more clearly illustrated at John 14:21: "he who loves [a`gapwn--a-gapon]
Me shall be loved [a`ga`ph`qh'setai--a-ga-pe-the'setai] by My
Father, and I will love [a`gaph'sw--a-ga-pe'so] him."
The binding power of e'ros is familiar
enough in our own notions of romantic love. What may not be so
familiar, however, is the idea that Eros personified was once the
force that moved the entire Cosmos:
. . . the Orphics say that black-winged
Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the
Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of
Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from
this egg
and set the Universe in motion. (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths,
vol.1, p.30)
Regardless of which binding force has hit
Troilus, he has been smitten--whacked over the head--by the sacred. Back
to main text
4)"But the woman was given the two
wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into
the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and
times, and half a time." Back to main text
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Works Cited List
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