Discuss the interplay of religious themes and ideas in
Chaucer′s ′Troilus and Criseyde′

by: Meike Kohl
 

Within the range of religious and secular themes and ideas in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, love in several forms is a major theme. The main body of the poem deals predominantly with human love; one can further distinguish between ‘courtly love’ according to the courtly tradition and naturalistic, sexual love. The ending of Book V attaches a Christian perspective, thus representing religious love. Throughout the poem this interplay between love and religion can be found.¹ This essay aims to examine the interplay of these ideas in the narrative. Closely interwoven with this are the attitudes presented towards philosophical ideas, namely the role of Fortune and the question of the human being’s free will or predestination, and their relation to the representation of love. Due to the scale of this essay we will touch on these only very briefly. The analysis will start with the ‘prologue’, the first part of Book I, explain the development throughout the narrative and conclude with the epilogue, since prologue and epilogue contain condensed evidence. The main focus will be on the protagonists, Troilus and Criseyde.

The first stanzas of Book I already present the theme of love in its complexity, questioning and referring to the variations of love, foreboding the eventual outcome of events and also indicating a possible solution towards the problem of human love. Secular love is a source of pain and suffering, although it may lead to a momentary happiness, as the first lines imply: ‘In lovyng how his aventures fellen / Fro wo to wele, and after out of joie’² (Book I, 4-5). Unless steadiness is granted by God (Book I, 44), the lover is bound to the wheel of Fortune which may inevitably lead to a downfall once a state of bliss is achieved. This is what the ‘double sorwe’ (Book I, 1) of Troilus implies.

The figure of Troilus is a representative of courtly love, living up to the medieval standardized ideal of love.³ This set of rules requires a highly moral behaviour, stressing values such as honour and reputation, and most important ‘trouthe’. However, though the means may be subject to an aristocratic kind of love, the end pursued is still secular and thus sexual. This is the initial conflict Troilus encounters. The morality and truth, stability of his love gains a religious quality throughout the text. Set in quasi- historical circumstances, the pagan world Chaucer describes allows him to comment on natural love in Christian concepts. As Spearing suggests, for Troilus ‘love comes as an expression of religious intensity, and one that is described in religious terms ’⁴ . These religious terms can be traced as the narrative unfolds. After evoking the God of love’s wrath through his scornful mockery of lovers, and being initiated to love Criseyde, Troilus cannot tell ‘wheither [she is] goddesse or woman’ (Book I, l.425), but nevertheless decides⁵ to serve her unt il his death. The resolution to keep his ‘trouthe’ and be faithful causes a change in his character, corresponding to the cliché of courtly love in which love is seen as an ennobling force. Pandarus, still unaware of the cause of Troilus’s suffering, notices that something must have happened that converts ‘oure lusty folk to holynesse’ (Book I, l.560). Even though his love is physical as well, since he admits to burn ‘at [his] owen lust’ (Book I, l.406), by the end of Book I all of his former vices have been transformed : ‘Dede were his japes and his cruelte, / His heighe port and his manere estraunge, /and ecch of tho gan for a vertu chaunge.’ (Book I, 1082-1085). The ennoblement of Troilus’s character through human love resembles the Christian ideal of ennoblement through the belief in and the love of God. But Chaucer takes this even a step further: the development of the love affair, culminating in the night of the consummation, is paralleled by the use of religious language. The prologue of Book III depicts the universal power of love, very much alike the allembracing love of the Christian God:

In hevene and helle, in erthe and salte see
Is felt thi miyght, if that I wel descerne,
As man, brid, best, fish, herbe, and grene tree
Thee fele in tymes with vapour eterne.
God loveth, and to love wol nought werne,
And in this world no lyves creature
Withouten love is worth, or may endure.
(Book III, l. 8-14)

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1 Alfred, David. The strumpet muse: art and morals in Chaucer’s poetry (London, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976) 30.

2 Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde. (London: Oxford UP, 1988) 473- 585..Book I, 3-5. Subsequent references will be taken from this work and will be marked in the text.

3 Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French tradition: a study in style and meaning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957) 133.

4 Spearing, A.C. Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (London: Edward Arnold, 1976) 24.

5 For an analysis of predestination and free will in the character of Troilus, cf. Shanley, James Lyndon. ‘The Troilus and Christian Love’. Troilus and Criseyde & The Minor Poems (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961) 136-147.