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

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 ma y 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.

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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 decides 5 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 B ook 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 cha unge.’ (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 all- embracing 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)

At the night of the consummation, Troilus invokes several gods for assistance in his pursuit. When he succeeds, the narrator tells us that we should ‘lat hem in this hevene blisse dwelle, / That is so heigh that al ne kan I telle’ (Book III, 1322-1324), picturing a scene of heaven on earth from the na rrator’s and therefore a Christian point of view, which is problematic. Later on the lovers’ complaint to the cruel night is structured by an appeal to a single ‘God’, no longer the several gods invoked before, to prolong the night, repeated within each stanza. (Book III, 1429-1470).

The ambiguity of these scenes is much discussed, posing questions about the nature of these religious references in a pagan setting presented by a Christian author to a Christian audience. It can either be seen as a celebration of love or as ironic treatment in preparation of the moral ending 6 . Macklin Smith suggests that an implicit moral condemnation of this ‘sinful’ love can be found in comparing the distribution of the abbreviated, arbitrary forms of ‘sithen’, namely ‘sith’ and ‘syn’. The accumulation of ‘syn’, phonologically similar to ‘sin’, can be found throughout Book III and the following decline of Troilus’s and Criseyde’s love. He concludes that ‘increasingly, […] moral and theological play enters into some of the syn-clauses, especially when syn is put into association with life and death, God, and grace’ 7 . Thus, although Chaucer seems to be rejoicing the joys of secular love, a moral dimension is added to the structure of the narrative, indicating the Christian ending of the poem.

This end, although it seems rather incoherently attached to the narrative, can already be sensed in the ‘prologue’ of Book I. Love is characterised by a surpassing amount of negative adjectives, along with the foreboding of the eventual unhappy outcome of the poem, which culminates in condemnation of sexual love. This means that while the poem itself for its longest part may glorify it, the framework given clearly states that this cannot provide a lasting solution. After this, the narrator asks the audience ‘to prey’ and ‘to bid’ God to grant happiness to lovers, and if that can not be granted, to grant them at least to pass ‘soone owt of this world’ (Book I, l. 41) so that ‘Love hem brynge in hevene to solas’ (Book I, l.31). Salvation in heaven, after death, is a Christian idea, and the style supports this. Larry D. Benson comments on

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