Study guide
Troilus and Criseyde
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Overview
- Composed
- Mid-1380s, probably c. 1382–1386; an astronomical allusion in Book III (a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and the crescent moon in Cancer, which occurred in 1385) is often used to date it
- Author
- Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340/43–1400), London customs official, courtier and poet
- Language
- Middle English, in Chaucer's London dialect
- Form
- Narrative poem of 8,239 lines in five books, each opening with a prohemium (proem)
- Metre
- Rhyme royal: seven-line stanzas of decasyllabic (broadly iambic pentameter) verse rhyming ababbcc
- Main source
- Giovanni Boccaccio's Il Filostrato (c. 1335–40), in ottava rima; Chaucer never names Boccaccio and credits an invented authority, 'Lollius'
- Other sources
- Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy (which Chaucer translated as Boece), Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae, Petrarch, Dante, Boccaccio's Teseida
- Setting
- Troy during the last years of the Greek siege, and the Greek camp outside it
- Genre
- Called by Chaucer a 'tragedie' (V.1786); a love story in the tradition of fin' amors, framed by Boethian reflection on Fortune
- Dedicated to
- 'moral Gower' and 'philosophical Strode' (V.1856–57): the poet John Gower and the logician and lawyer Ralph Strode
Context
Geoffrey Chaucer wrote Troilus and Criseyde in the middle of the 1380s, while he was Controller of Customs in the port of London and living in rooms over Aldgate. It is the longest poem he finished, and by common consent his most perfectly achieved. It comes after the dream visions (The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Parliament of Fowls) and his prose translation of Boethius, and before the Canterbury Tales; in the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women the God of Love rebukes the poet for having written of Criseyde's falseness, which shows that the poem was known and talked about at court soon after it was finished (Pearsall 1992) (Windeatt 1992).
The story of Troilus and his faithless lady is not classical. Homer mentions Troilus only once, as a son of Priam already dead. The love affair was invented by the twelfth-century French poet Benoît de Sainte-Maure in his Roman de Troie, where Briseida, daughter of the Trojan seer Calchas, is sent to the Greeks and transfers her love from Troilus to Diomede; Guido delle Colonne retold it in Latin prose. Boccaccio, in Il Filostrato ('the one struck down by love'), made the episode a self-contained poem, renaming the heroine Criseida and inventing the go-between Pandaro, her cousin (Havely 1980) (Windeatt 1984).
Chaucer worked closely from the Filostrato, and long stretches of his poem translate it stanza by stanza; but he expanded it by more than a third and changed its character. He made Pandarus Criseyde's uncle, an older and wittier man; he slowed and complicated Criseyde's consent; he added the great scene of the lovers' first night at Pandarus' house, much of Book V, and the ending in which Troilus' soul ascends to the heavens. He also wove in philosophy from Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy, a sonnet of Petrarch (Troilus' first song, I.400–420) and the ascent of Arcita's soul from Boccaccio's Teseida (Lewis 1932) (Windeatt 1992) (Havely 1980).
Chaucer never names Boccaccio. Instead his narrator claims to follow 'myn auctor called Lollius' (I.394), a writer who did not exist; the name may come from a misreading of a line of Horace that addresses a certain Lollius in connection with 'the writer of the Trojan war'. Whatever its origin, the fiction of a Latin authority allows the narrator to present himself as a faithful translator, bound to report events he would rather soften, and that pose becomes one of the poem's chief instruments of irony (Windeatt 1992) (Minnis 1982).
The poem was read in Chaucer's own circle (it is dedicated to Gower and Ralph Strode) and was copied widely: about sixteen manuscripts survive, and the famous frontispiece of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61 shows a poet reading to a courtly audience. It shaped the later history of the story, from Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid, which imagines Cresseid's punishment by leprosy, to Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, and it made 'pandar' an English word (Windeatt 1992) (Benson 1987).
Plot overview
During the Greek siege of Troy, the seer Calchas foresees the city's fall and deserts to the Greeks, leaving behind his widowed daughter Criseyde. At a temple festival the young prince Troilus, who has mocked lovers, is struck by the sight of her and falls helplessly in love. His friend Pandarus, Criseyde's uncle, discovers the cause of his misery and offers to help.
Pandarus tells Criseyde of Troilus' love and works on her fears and her pity; she watches Troilus ride by from the war, hears her niece's song in praise of love, dreams of an eagle that exchanges its heart for hers, and slowly consents to accept his service. After letters and a staged meeting at the house of Troilus' brother Deiphebus, Pandarus contrives a supper at his own house on a night of torrential rain, and the lovers come together. For a time they are perfectly happy.
Fortune turns. The Trojans agree to exchange Criseyde, at her father's request, for the captured Trojan Antenor. Troilus, bound by secrecy and by his respect for her honour, does nothing to stop it; Criseyde promises to return within ten days. In the Greek camp she is courted by the warrior Diomede, finds no way back, and in time gives him her love.
Troilus waits on the walls, receives evasive letters, dreams of a boar that his sister Cassandra interprets as Diomede, and at last sees on a captured coat of armour the brooch he gave Criseyde at parting. He seeks Diomede in battle and is killed by Akhilleus. His soul rises through the spheres, looks down on 'this litel spot of erthe' and laughs at those who mourn him, and the narrator closes with an appeal to young lovers to turn their love to Christ.
Book by book
Book 1: Troilus Falls in Love
Book I, lines 1–1092 (Prohemium 1–56)
Summary
The narrator announces his subject, 'the double sorwe of Troilus', and calls on the Fury Tisiphone to help him write verses that weep. He presents himself as a servant of the servants of Love, too 'unlikely' to love himself, and asks the lovers in his audience to pray for those in Troilus' case. The story begins: the seer Calchas learns by divination that Troy will fall and flees to the Greeks. His daughter Criseyde, a widow, is left in danger and throws herself on the mercy of Hector, who promises her protection.
At the spring festival of the Palladion, Troilus leads his young companions through the temple, mocking lovers and their sighs. The God of Love takes offence, and Troilus' glance falls on Criseyde standing in black near the door; he is struck at once. At home he sings a song of love's contradictions (the 'Canticus Troili', translated from a sonnet of Petrarch) and gives himself up to lovesickness, hiding the cause from everyone.
His friend Pandarus finds him groaning, and after a long exchange of proverbs, rebukes and comic persuasion learns that the lady is his own niece Criseyde. Pandarus praises her virtue, assures Troilus that she can be won, and promises his help; Troilus, revived, becomes a better knight and a kinder man. The book ends with Pandarus planning his campaign like a builder laying out a house before he begins.
Analysis
The first stanza gives the plan of the whole poem, a double movement 'fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye', and so tells the reader the ending before the story starts. Everything that follows is read under that shadow: the joy of Book III is already known to be temporary. The narrator's invocation of a Fury rather than a Muse marks the poem as tragic from the start, and his claim to be a mere servant of lovers, without experience of his own, establishes the persona whose sympathies and evasions will shape the telling (Donaldson 1970) (Windeatt 1992).
Troilus' fall is staged as the punishment of pride. The narrator turns aside to exclaim on 'blinde entencioun' and compares Troilus to the proud horse Bayard who must still feel the whip; the language of climbing and descending a stair anticipates the wheel of Fortune. The 'Canticus Troili' is Chaucer's addition, the first English version of a Petrarch sonnet, and it gives Troilus a vocabulary of paradox (sweet harm, living death) that belongs to a learned European tradition of love lyric (Windeatt 1984) (Wetherbee 1984).
Pandarus is Chaucer's greatest change to Boccaccio. Older than Troilus, himself an unlucky lover, full of proverbs, worldly sense and real affection, he is both friend and manipulator. His first great scene shows the poem's mixture of tones: Troilus' anguish is genuine and elevated, but Pandarus' bustling comedy keeps the reader at a certain distance from it. The final image of the builder, adapted from a passage in Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova on planning a poem, makes Pandarus a kind of author within the poem, arranging the plot that the narrator merely records (Muscatine 1957) (Spearing 1976).
The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the king Priamus sone of Troye, In lovinge, how his aventures fellen Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye, My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye. Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryte!
'The double sorrow of Troilus, son of King Priam of Troy, to tell — how in loving his fortunes fell from woe to weal, and afterwards out of joy — is my purpose, before I part from you.' The ending is announced in the first stanza.
O blinde world, O blinde entencioun! How ofte falleth al theffect contraire Of surquidrye and foul presumpcioun; For caught is proud, and caught is debonaire. This Troilus is clomben on the staire, And litel weneth that he moot descenden. But al-day falleth thing that foles ne wenden.
The narrator's exclamation on Troilus' pride: caught are both the proud and the meek. The image of a man who climbs a stair and little thinks he must descend anticipates Fortune's wheel in Book IV.
`If no love is, O god, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and whiche is he! If love be good, from whennes comth my wo? If it be wikke, a wonder thinketh me, Whenne every torment and adversitee That cometh of him, may to me savory thinke; For ay thurst I, the more that I it drinke.
The opening of the 'Canticus Troili', from Petrarch's sonnet 'S'amor non è'. Its questions turn love into a philosophical puzzle as well as a pain, and its final image of a thirst that grows with drinking defines desire as insatiable.
For every wight that hath an hous to founde Ne renneth nought the werk for to biginne With rakel hond, but he wol byde a stounde, And sende his hertes lyne out fro with-inne Alderfirst his purpos for to winne. Al this Pandare in his herte thoughte, And caste his werk ful wysly, or he wroughte.
Pandarus as architect: like a man founding a house, he plans before he acts. The passage echoes Geoffrey of Vinsauf's advice to poets and hints that Pandarus' arrangements are a kind of fiction-making.
Book 2: Criseyde Consents
Book II, lines 1–1757 (Prohemium 1–49)
Summary
The narrator compares his poem to a boat leaving the black waves of despair, calls on Clio, and excuses himself to lovers: he only translates 'out of Latin', and if the ways of love in ancient Troy seem strange, speech and customs change over a thousand years. On the third of May Pandarus, himself suffering for love, visits Criseyde, who is listening with her ladies to a reading of the siege of Thebes. After much teasing and delay he tells her that Troilus loves her and will die unless she shows him kindness, and that he himself will die too.
Criseyde weeps at her uncle's pressure but agrees to show Troilus friendly regard, within the bounds of her honour. Alone, she sees Troilus ride past from the battlefield, modest and wounded, and is moved: 'Who yaf me drinke?' She weighs, in a long and searching soliloquy, the freedom of her widowhood against the risks and joys of love. In her garden her niece Antigone sings a song in praise of love; at night a nightingale sings beneath her window and she dreams that an eagle tears out her heart and leaves its own in its place.
Pandarus carries a letter from Troilus and forces Criseyde to accept it; she writes a cautious reply. He then arranges, with the unwitting help of Troilus' brother Deiphebus, a dinner at which Criseyde will seek the protection of Hector and others in a fabricated lawsuit, while Troilus lies in bed feigning illness. The book ends as Pandarus leads Criseyde to Troilus' bedside.
Analysis
Book II is the poem's most leisurely and, for many readers, its most intimate: almost all of it concerns how Criseyde comes to accept love. Boccaccio's Criseida yields quickly; Chaucer gives his heroine time, fear, intelligence and a mind of her own. Her soliloquy ('I am myn owene woman, wel at ese') shows her valuing the independence of widowhood and weighing the dangers of jealousy and gossip, and the narrator insists that she did not love 'sodeynly' but by degrees. The book thus makes her eventual consent the result of many pressures and inclinations rather than a single choice (Mann 2002) (Spearing 1976).
The proem's remark on the change of language over a thousand years is one of the earliest reflections in English on historical difference, and it frames the courtship as a custom of a distant pagan world, observed with sympathy but also with detachment. Chaucer's ideal of love here draws on the conventions of fin' amors, the love of the courtly lyric in which the lover serves and the lady grants 'mercy'; the poem treats those conventions both seriously and with gentle irony (Lewis 1932) (Patterson 1991).
Pandarus' manipulations are the engine of the book, and critics have debated how far Criseyde sees through them. His threats of suicide, his half-truths about Poliphete's lawsuit and his staging of the scene at Deiphebus' house show love being managed as well as felt. The eagle dream, in which her heart is taken by force yet she feels no pain, condenses the ambiguity: it is at once an image of violation and of a willing exchange (Dinshaw 1989) (Aers 1980).
Ye knowe eek, that in forme of speche is chaunge With-inne a thousand yeer, and wordes tho That hadden prys, now wonder nyce and straunge Us thinketh hem; and yet they spake hem so, And spedde as wel in love as men now do; Eek for to winne love in sondry ages, In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.
'You know too that in the form of speech there is change within a thousand years.' Chaucer's narrator asks his audience to allow for the strangeness of ancient customs: in different ages and lands there are different usages in winning love.
For which he wex a litel reed for shame, Whan he the peple up-on him herde cryen, That to biholde it was a noble game, How sobreliche he caste doun his yen. Cryseyda gan al his chere aspyen, And leet so softe it in hir herte sinke, That to hir-self she seyde, `Who yaf me drinke?'
Troilus rides past Criseyde's window after the fighting. 'Who yaf me drinke?' ('Who has given me a potion?') suggests the suddenness of feeling while the surrounding narrative insists on its gradual growth.
`I am myn owene woman, wel at ese, I thank it god, as after myn estat; Right yong, and stonde unteyd in lusty lese, With-outen Ialousye or swich debat; Shal noon housbonde seyn to me "Chekmat!" For either they ben ful of Ialousye, Or maisterful, or loven novelrye.
Criseyde's soliloquy: she values her widow's freedom, untethered in 'lusty lese' (a pleasant pasture), and fears husbands who are jealous, domineering or fond of novelty. The chess term 'Chekmat' sounds a note of independence.
And as she sleep, anoon-right tho hir mette, How that an egle, fethered whyt as boon, Under hir brest his longe clawes sette, And out hir herte he rente, and that a-noon, And dide his herte in-to hir brest to goon, Of which she nought agroos, ne no-thing smerte, And forth he fleigh, with herte left for herte.
Criseyde's dream of the white eagle, which tears out her heart and leaves its own: an exchange of hearts that is also an act of violence, and that she feels without pain or fear.
Book 3: The Consummation
Book III, lines 1–1820 (Prohemium 1–49)
Summary
The proem is a hymn to Venus as the planet of love and as the cosmic force that binds the universe, adapted from a song in Boccaccio's Filostrato. At Deiphebus' house Troilus, rehearsing his speech, stammers his love to Criseyde, who accepts his service on condition that he guard her honour. Pandarus, alone with Troilus afterwards, admits that he has acted as a go-between and asks for secrecy; Troilus offers to do the same for him with any of his sisters.
On a night when the moon, Saturn and Jupiter are in conjunction, Pandarus invites Criseyde to supper. A great 'smoky reyn' keeps her from going home, and she sleeps in a small chamber; Troilus has been hidden in the house. Pandarus tells her a false story that Troilus has heard she loves one Horaste and is mad with jealousy. Troilus is brought in, Criseyde reproaches him, he faints, and Pandarus throws him into her bed. Revived, he takes her in his arms and she yields: had she not already yielded, she says, she would not be there.
The lovers spend the night in joy, lament the coming of day in a dawn song, and continue to meet in secret. Troilus, transformed by love, praises Love as the bond of the universe in a hymn adapted from Boethius, and becomes the best and most courteous of knights. The narrator ends the book at the height of the wheel, with the lovers in 'luste and in quiete'.
Analysis
Book III is the centre and the summit of the poem. Its consummation scene is largely Chaucer's own, and it is one of the most delicate in English poetry, at once comic, erotic, anxious and devout. The narrator keeps intervening: he begs lovers to judge for themselves, claims to follow his author word for word, and draws back at the decisive moment. These interruptions both heighten and veil the scene, and they have been central to discussions of the narrator's role (Donaldson 1970) (Windeatt 1992).
The question of Criseyde's consent is acute here. She is trapped by rain, by her uncle's lies and by a staged crisis, yet her reply to Troilus ('Ne hadde I er now ... Ben yolde, y-wis, I were now not here!') claims the decision as already her own. Some critics read the scene as a seduction engineered by men; others stress Criseyde's knowing participation and her careful protection of her reputation (Mann 2002) (Dinshaw 1989) (Hansen 1992).
The cosmic hymns that frame the book (the proem to Venus and Troilus' song of Love that 'of erthe and see hath governaunce', from Boethius II metrum 8) give earthly love a place in the divine order. But Criseyde's own reflection on 'fals felicitee', also drawn from Boethius, warns that worldly happiness is always mixed and unstable. The reader therefore experiences the lovers' joy with full sympathy while knowing, from the first stanza of Book I, that it cannot last (Wetherbee 1984) (Minnis 1982).
O blisful light of whiche the bemes clere Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire! O sonnes lief, O Ioves doughter dere, Plesaunce of love, O goodly debonaire, In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire! O verray cause of hele and of gladnesse, Y-heried be thy might and thy goodnesse!
The proem's hymn to Venus, 'blisful light' of the third heaven. Venus here is goddess, planet and cosmic principle of love; the stanza raises the story's love to a universal scale.
`O god!' quod she, `So worldly selinesse, Which clerkes callen fals felicitee, Y-medled is with many a bitternesse! Ful anguisshous than is, god woot,' quod she, `Condicioun of veyn prosperitee; For either Ioyes comen nought y-fere, Or elles no wight hath hem alwey here.
Criseyde reflects that worldly happiness, which clerks call 'fals felicitee', is mixed with bitterness. The passage is drawn from Boethius (Consolation II, prose 4) and anticipates the turn of Fortune.
What mighte or may the sely larke seye, Whan that the sperhauk hath it in his foot? I can no more, but of thise ilke tweye, To whom this tale sucre be or soot, Though that I tarie a yeer, som-tyme I moot, After myn auctor, tellen hir gladnesse, As wel as I have told hir hevinesse.
'What can the poor lark say when the sparrowhawk has it in its claws?' The narrator's image of Criseyde as prey sits uneasily with his promise, 'after myn auctor', to tell the lovers' gladness.
This Troilus in armes gan hir streyne, And seyde, `O swete, as ever mote I goon, Now be ye caught, now is ther but we tweyne; Now yeldeth yow, for other boot is noon.' To that Criseyde answerde thus anoon, `Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere, Ben yolde, y-wis, I were now not here!'
Troilus' 'now yeldeth yow' and Criseyde's reply: if she had not yielded before, she would not be here. Her answer converts apparent capture into a choice already made.
`Love, that of erthe and see hath governaunce, Love, that his hestes hath in hevene hye, Love, that with an holsom alliaunce Halt peples ioyned, as him list hem gye, Love, that knetteth lawe of companye, And couples doth in vertu for to dwelle, Bind this acord, that I have told and telle;
The beginning of Troilus' hymn to Love, from Boethius' song of the love that binds the cosmos (Consolation II, metrum 8): love governs earth, sea and heaven and holds peoples and couples together.
Book 4: The Exchange
Book IV, lines 1–1701 (Prohemium 1–28)
Summary
The narrator laments that such joy lasts too little: Fortune turns her face from Troilus and sets Diomede on her wheel; from now on he must tell how Criseyde forsook Troilus. He invokes the Furies and Mars. In battle the Trojans are defeated and Antenor is captured. Calchas asks the Greeks to exchange Antenor for his daughter, and the Trojan parliament agrees. Hector objects that Criseyde is no prisoner, but the people insist; the narrator notes the irony that Antenor would later betray the city.
Troilus, who has said nothing in the parliament for fear of exposing Criseyde, laments wildly in his room. Pandarus urges him to find another love or to carry her off; Troilus refuses to act against her honour or her will. In a temple he delivers a long soliloquy on predestination, concluding that all that comes comes by necessity.
Criseyde, told the news by gossiping women, grieves as deeply. On their last night together she faints and Troilus, thinking her dead, draws his sword to kill himself before she revives. She then sets out an elaborate plan: she will deceive her father and return within ten days. Troilus proposes that they steal away together; she refuses, for the sake of his reputation and her own, and swears to be true. They part at dawn.
Analysis
Book IV turns the poem from comedy to tragedy. The proem names Fortune as the agent, but the story also shows human causes: Calchas' self-interest, the parliament's noisy decision, Troilus' silence, Criseyde's fear. The irony that Antenor, for whom Criseyde is traded, will betray Troy links the private tragedy to the fall of the city, a connection that the historical frame of the poem keeps in view throughout (Patterson 1991) (Spearing 1976).
Troilus' soliloquy on predestination (IV.958–1078) is closely based on Boethius' Consolation (V, prose 3), but Chaucer gives Troilus only the argument for necessity, not Lady Philosophy's answer that God's foreknowledge does not compel. The omission has been read in several ways: as a sign of Troilus' limited, pagan understanding, as a dramatic rendering of despair, or as a clue to the poem's larger concern with freedom and necessity (Bloomfield 1957) (Minnis 1982) (Wetherbee 1984).
The lovers' last night mirrors their first. Troilus' refusal to carry Criseyde off can be read as admirable respect for her will and honour or as fatal passivity; Criseyde's plan to return, built on confident predictions about her father, shows the same resourceful mind that weighed love in Book II, but now turned to self-deception. Her refusal to elope, grounded in concern for reputation, sets up the terrible irony that her name will be destroyed precisely by what follows (Mann 2002) (Aers 1980).
But al to litel, weylaway the whyle, Lasteth swich Ioye, y-thonked be Fortune! That semeth trewest, whan she wol bygyle, And can to foles so hir song entune, That she hem hent and blent, traytour comune; And whan a wight is from hir wheel y-throwe, Than laugheth she, and maketh him the mowe.
The proem: Fortune seems truest when she means to deceive, and when a man is thrown from her wheel she laughs and makes a mocking face at him. The stanza turns the whole poem at its midpoint.
Ector, which that wel the Grekes herde, For Antenor how they wolde han Criseyde, Gan it withstonde, and sobrely answerde: -- `Sires, she nis no prisoner,' he seyde; `I noot on yow who that this charge leyde, But, on my part, ye may eft-sone hem telle, We usen here no wommen for to selle.'
Hector in the parliament: Criseyde is no prisoner, and 'we usen here no wommen for to selle'. His single voice of principle is overruled by the people.
`For certaynly, this wot I wel,' he seyde, `That for-sight of divyne purveyaunce Hath seyn alwey me to for-gon Criseyde, Sin god seeth every thing, out of doutaunce, And hem disponeth, thourgh his ordenaunce, In hir merytes sothly for to be, As they shul comen by predestinee.
Troilus on necessity: since God foresees everything and disposes it, all things come as they are predestined. Chaucer translates the argument of Boethius V prose 3 without Philosophy's reply.
`And for-thy slee with reson al this hete; Men seyn, "The suffraunt overcometh," pardee; Eek "Who-so wol han leef, he lief mot lete;" Thus maketh vertue of necessitee By pacience, and thenk that lord is he Of fortune ay, that nought wol of hir recche; And she ne daunteth no wight but a wrecche.
Criseyde counsels patience: 'make a virtue of necessity', for whoever ignores Fortune is her lord. Her Boethian wisdom is sound in itself, yet in context it serves her hopeful plan to return.
Book 5: Betrayal and Ascent
Book V, lines 1–1869
Summary
The Fates bring on the destined day. Troilus hands Criseyde over at the gate to Diomede, who begins at once to woo her as he leads her to the Greek camp. In Troy, Troilus suffers, visits her empty palace, rereads her letters and counts the days; Pandarus takes him to the house of Sarpedon for distraction. On the tenth day Troilus waits all day on the walls. In the Greek camp Criseyde, looking at Troy, realises that she cannot escape; Diomede presses his suit, she gives him encouragement, and in time he wins her. She laments that her name will be shamed for ever and resolves at least to be true to Diomede.
The narrator records her gifts to Diomede and, refusing to chide her further, says he would excuse her for pity if he could. Troilus dreams of Criseyde in the embrace of a boar; his sister Cassandra, through a long history of Thebes and the boar of Calydon, interprets it as Diomede. Criseyde's letters are evasive. At last Troilus sees on a coat of armour taken from Diomede the brooch he gave Criseyde when they parted, and knows the truth. He seeks Diomede in battle but is killed by Akhilleus.
The ending moves through several conclusions. The narrator sends his 'litel book' out as a tragedy to kiss the steps of the great poets, and begs that scribes not miscopy it. Troilus' soul ascends to a heavenly sphere, sees the little earth, despises the world and laughs at those who weep for him. The narrator repeats 'swich fyn' ('such an end') five times, urges young people to love Christ instead of 'feyned loves', denounces the pagan gods, dedicates the book to Gower and Strode and ends with a prayer to the Trinity adapted from Dante.
Analysis
Book V is the slowest and saddest of the five. Chaucer added much of it, including the 'portraits' of Diomede, Criseyde and Troilus (V.799–840), Criseyde's soliloquy on her lost name and the narrator's refusal to condemn her. His narrator delays the betrayal, hedges it with 'men seyn' and 'I finde', and declines to say how long she took to yield. The effect is to make the infidelity at once certain, because the old books record it, and strangely hard to locate in time or motive (Donaldson 1970) (Mann 2002).
Criseyde's lament that 'thise bokes wol me shende' shows her aware of her own future reputation, as if she had read the tradition in which she appears. The poem thus becomes a reflection on literary fame and on the authority of books, culminating in the envoy to the 'litel book' and the anxious prayer against miscopying, one of the first expressions in English of a poet's concern for his text (Dinshaw 1989) (Windeatt 1992).
The epilogue has been the most debated passage in Chaucer. The ascent, taken from the flight of Arcita's soul in Boccaccio's Teseida, lets Troilus see his story from a cosmic height; the following stanzas reject 'worldly vanitee' and the 'cursed olde rytes' of the pagans in favour of Christian love. Readers disagree about whether this ending repudiates the love story, completes it, or simply sets two incompatible truths side by side. The text here reads 'seventh spere' (V.1809), while many modern editions print 'eighthe', following other manuscripts and Boccaccio; the reading affects which sphere Troilus reaches (Steadman 1972) (Benson 1987) (Robertson 1962).
`Allas, of me, un-to the worldes ende, Shal neither been y-writen nor y-songe No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende. O, rolled shal I been on many a tonge; Through-out the world my belle shal be ronge; And wommen most wol hate me of alle. Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle!
Criseyde foresees her infamy: no good word of her will be written or sung, 'for thise bokes wol me shende'. The character seems to know the literary tradition that will condemn her.
Ne me ne list this sely womman chyde Ferther than the story wol devyse. Hir name, allas! Is publisshed so wyde, That for hir gilt it oughte y-noe suffyse. And if I mighte excuse hir any wyse, For she so sory was for hir untrouthe, Y-wis, I wolde excuse hir yet for routhe.
The narrator refuses to chide 'this sely womman' further than the story requires and would excuse her for pity if he could: the most famous of his sympathetic interventions.
Go, litel book, go litel myn tragedie, Ther god thy maker yet, er that he dye, So sende might to make in som comedie! But litel book, no making thou nenvye, But subgit be to alle poesye; And kis the steppes, wher-as thou seest pace Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, and Stace.
'Go, litel book, go litel myn tragedie': the envoy sends the poem to take its humble place behind Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan and Statius, claiming a place for English poetry in the classical succession.
And whan that he was slayn in this manere, His lighte goost ful blisfully is went Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere, In convers letinge every element; And ther he saugh, with ful avysement, The erratik sterres, herkeninge armonye With sownes fulle of hevenish melodye.
Troilus' soul ascends 'to the holownesse of the seventh spere' and hears the music of the spheres. Many modern editions read 'eighthe'; manuscripts differ.
O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, In which that love up groweth with your age, Repeyreth hoom from worldly vanitee, And of your herte up-casteth the visage To thilke god that after his image Yow made, and thinketh al nis but a fayre This world, that passeth sone as floures fayre.
The narrator's appeal to 'yonge fresshe folkes' to turn home from worldly vanity to the God who made them: the world passes as soon as fair flowers.
Characters
Trojans
- Troilus
- A younger son of King Priam, second only to Hector in valour. Proud and scornful of love at first, he becomes its most devoted servant, and love makes him gentler and braver. He is idealistic, intensely private and often passive: he relies on Pandarus to win Criseyde and will not act to keep her. Critics have seen him as the perfect courtly lover, as a figure of pagan blindness or as a study in a nobility that cannot cope with a changeable world. In death he gains the perspective he lacked in life.
- Pandarus
- Criseyde's uncle and Troilus' friend, Chaucer's development of Boccaccio's Pandaro. Talkative, proverbial, comic and resourceful, himself an unsuccessful lover, he arranges the whole affair through lies, letters and stage-managed scenes. He is moved by real affection for both lovers, but his methods raise questions about manipulation and about his relation to his niece. His final words on Criseyde are of hatred.
- Hector
- Troilus' eldest brother and the city's greatest warrior. He protects Criseyde after her father's flight and alone speaks against the exchange in parliament: 'we usen here no wommen for to selle'.
- Deiphebus
- A brother of Troilus, whose house is used, without his knowledge of the purpose, for the lovers' first meeting in Books II–III. In Book V Diomede's coat of armour, with the betraying brooch, is carried before him as a trophy.
- Cassandra
- Troilus' sister, a prophetess. In Book V she interprets his dream of the boar through the history of Thebes and Calydon as signifying Diomede and Criseyde's betrayal. Troilus angrily rejects her reading.
- Antigone
- Criseyde's niece. Her song in praise of love in Book II helps to move Criseyde towards accepting Troilus.
- Antenor
- A Trojan captured by the Greeks and exchanged for Criseyde. The narrator reminds us that he will later betray Troy, so the exchange that destroys the lovers also hastens the city's fall.
Trojans, then Greeks
- Criseyde
- Daughter of the traitor Calchas, a beautiful young widow living under Hector's protection. Chaucer makes her far more complex than her predecessors: cautious, intelligent, humorous, afraid, sensitive to reputation and to her vulnerable position. She comes to love Troilus slowly and genuinely, and is later won by Diomede in the Greek camp. The narrator calls her 'slydinge of corage' but refuses to condemn her, and her character has been the central question of modern criticism.
Greeks
- Diomede
- A Greek prince, son of Tydeus, bold, eloquent and practical. He begins wooing Criseyde as he escorts her out of Troy and wins her by argument, persistence and the promise of protection. Chaucer presents him as everything Troilus is not: quick, worldly and unsentimental.
- Calchas
- Criseyde's father, a Trojan priest and seer who foresees the fall of Troy and deserts to the Greeks. His request to exchange Antenor for his daughter sets the tragedy in motion, and his presence in the camp makes Criseyde's return impossible.
Frame
- The narrator
- A self-described servant of Love's servants, lacking experience in love, who claims merely to translate his author Lollius. Sympathetic, anxious, sometimes evasive and sometimes moralising, he is the voice through which every event is filtered.
Themes
Love and its limits
The poem takes human love with the utmost seriousness. Love ennobles Troilus, binds the cosmos in his hymn and gives the lovers a happiness that the narrator describes as a kind of heaven. Yet the same love is subject to time, chance, social pressure and human weakness, and the epilogue sets it against the stable love of God.
Whether the ending condemns earthly love or places it in a larger perspective is one of the poem's open questions. Many readers find that the poem honours love as fully as any medieval work while showing why it cannot be a final good (Lewis 1932) (Spearing 1976).
Fortune, necessity and freedom
Chaucer's reading of Boethius saturates the poem. Fortune turns her wheel in the proem to Book IV; Troilus argues that all things happen by necessity; Criseyde reflects on false felicity; the Fates and the stars are repeatedly invoked. The poem asks whether the lovers are victims of destiny or authors of their own fate.
Because Troilus hears only part of Boethius' argument, the poem invites its Christian readers to supply the rest: that providence does not cancel free will, and that true happiness lies beyond Fortune's reach. The ascent at the end grants Troilus the vision that Philosophy gives Boethius (Bloomfield 1957) (Minnis 1982).
Truth, trouthe and reputation
'Trouthe' in Middle English means fidelity, promise and integrity as well as truth. The poem is a story of a broken pledge, and Criseyde's lament for her 'name of trouthe' shows how closely fidelity is bound to reputation.
Concern for 'name' shapes the lovers' choices: Criseyde's fear of gossip, Troilus' silence in parliament and the refusal to elope. The irony is that the secrecy which protects their names helps to bring about the loss of Criseyde's for ever (Mann 2002).
Authority, history and translation
The narrator presents himself as bound by his 'auctor' and by the 'olde bokes'. This fiction lets him express sympathy while disclaiming responsibility, and it turns the poem into a meditation on how stories are transmitted, judged and changed.
The remarks on the change of language, the envoy to the 'litel book' and Criseyde's fear of what books will say of her make the poem one of the most self-conscious works of medieval literature (Windeatt 1992) (Patterson 1991).
Paganism and Christianity
Chaucer sets his story in a pagan past and takes care to make his characters think and pray as pagans. Their religion is presented with respect but also with limits: they invoke Venus, the Fates and Jove, and they have no access to grace.
The epilogue's denunciation of 'payens corsed olde rytes' makes the contrast explicit. Critics differ on whether it rejects the pagan world or affirms the virtue that pagans could achieve without revelation (Minnis 1982) (Wetherbee 1984).
Women, power and exchange
Criseyde's position is shaped from the start by men: her father's desertion, Hector's protection, Pandarus' plans, the parliament's decision, Diomede's offer of safety. Hector's protest that Trojans do not sell women names what the exchange is.
Feminist criticism has read the poem as an exploration of how women's choices are constrained and of how male writers have made Criseyde a byword for female falseness (Dinshaw 1989) (Hansen 1992) (Aers 1980).
Motifs
Proverbs and sententiae
Pandarus especially, but all the characters, speak in proverbs. They give the dialogue a sense of shared practical wisdom, but they are often used selectively and persuasively, and their abundance reminds us how far human judgement in the poem relies on received opinion.
Songs
Lyrics punctuate the narrative: the 'Canticus Troili' in Book I, Antigone's song in Book II, the aubades and the hymn to Love in Book III, Troilus' laments in Books IV–V. They mark peaks of feeling and connect the story to the European lyric tradition.
Dreams
Criseyde's dream of the eagle in Book II and Troilus' dream of the boar in Book V frame the affair. Both concern hearts and violence; the first promises a union, the second reveals its end. The characters' debates about whether dreams mean anything echo a recurring medieval question.
Windows, walls and enclosed spaces
Criseyde watches Troilus from her window; the lovers meet in closets and small chambers; Troilus waits on the walls of Troy looking at the Greek camp. Enclosure and watching express secrecy, desire and separation.
Days and time
The poem is full of dates, hours and counted days: the third of May, the conjunction of planets, the ten days of Criseyde's promise. Time measured so precisely makes the lovers' happiness and its loss feel inevitable.
Symbols
Fortune's wheel
The governing image of the poem's structure: Troilus rises in Books I–III and falls in Books IV–V, as the proem to Book IV explicitly says. It stands for the instability of all worldly goods.
The brooch
Troilus gives Criseyde a brooch at their parting and finds it on Diomede's captured armour. A token of fidelity becomes the proof of betrayal.
The eagle and the boar
The two dream animals represent Troilus and Diomede respectively, and the violence of both dreams suggests that love in the poem is always close to possession and force.
The spheres
The heavens, invoked in the proem to Book III and seen by Troilus' soul at the end, represent the cosmic order within which the lovers' story is finally placed. From the spheres the earth is a 'litel spot'.
Critical debates
What Chaucer did to the Filostrato
Since C. S. Lewis's influential essay of 1932, critics have compared Troilus closely with its main source. Lewis argued that Chaucer 'medievalised' Boccaccio, bringing the story into line with the conventions of courtly love, of the rhetorical arts and of moral philosophy. Later comparison, aided by Havely's translation of the source and Windeatt's parallel-text edition, has shown in detail how Chaucer slowed, deepened and complicated the story (Lewis 1932) (Havely 1980) (Windeatt 1984).
Critics continue to disagree about the significance of the changes: whether they make Criseyde more sympathetic or more mysterious, Pandarus more benevolent or more sinister, and the whole poem more courtly or more philosophical (Windeatt 1992) (Wetherbee 1984).
The narrator
E. Talbot Donaldson's essays established the view that the poem's narrator is a character distinct from Chaucer: a naive, sympathetic, increasingly distressed reader of his own source, whose love for Criseyde leads him to evade and excuse. This reading made the narrator a key to the poem's ironies (Donaldson 1970).
Others have found the distinction overdrawn, preferring to speak of a flexible narrative voice or of a poet performing before an audience, and have questioned whether modern ideas of an unreliable narrator fit a medieval text (Spearing 1976) (Windeatt 1992).
Courtly love
Older criticism, following C. S. Lewis and his predecessors, read Troilus as the great English example of 'courtly love', a code of secret, adulterous, ennobling love. The lovers here are unmarried, and the poem's love is marked by secrecy and service but also by deep feeling and mutual commitment (Lewis 1932) (Kittredge 1915).
D. W. Robertson and his followers challenged the very notion of courtly love and read the poem as a Christian critique of cupidity. More recent critics tend to speak of fin' amors as a set of literary and social conventions that Chaucer both uses and examines (Robertson 1962) (Patterson 1991) (Muscatine 1957).
Criseyde's character
For centuries Criseyde was a byword for female inconstancy, and Henryson and Shakespeare both reshaped her accordingly. Kittredge's description of her as a woman of complex, mixed nature began a long critical effort to understand rather than judge her (Kittredge 1915).
Modern critics have read her as a realist in a dangerous situation, as a figure of the vulnerability of women in a society that trades them, or as a character deliberately left opaque. Jill Mann, Carolyn Dinshaw and Elaine Tuttle Hansen have shown how her treatment by the narrator, by the men around her and by the literary tradition is part of the poem's subject (Mann 2002) (Dinshaw 1989) (Hansen 1992) (Aers 1980).
Fortune and predestination
Troilus' predestination soliloquy, the proems to Books IV and V, and the many references to Fortune and the stars have led critics to ask how deterministic the poem is. Morton Bloomfield argued that the narrator's historical distance from his story creates a sense of predestination, since the end is known in advance (Bloomfield 1957).
Others emphasise the role of human choice and responsibility, noting that Chaucer omits Philosophy's answer in Book IV so that the reader may supply it, and that the poem's pagans lack the Christian vision of providence (Minnis 1982) (Wetherbee 1984).
The ending and the ascent
The epilogue, with Troilus' ascent, his laughter and the narrator's rejection of 'worldly vanitee', has generated more debate than any other part of the poem. Some read it as the culmination of a Christian design implicit throughout; others see it as a sudden recoil from the love the poem has celebrated; others, such as E. Talbot Donaldson, find in its repeated attempts to end the narrator's struggle to come to terms with his own story (Robertson 1962) (Donaldson 1970).
John Steadman traced the 'apotheosis' tradition behind Troilus' flight, from Cicero's Dream of Scipio to Lucan, Dante and Boccaccio's Teseida, and showed how it gives Troilus a philosophical perspective on earthly life. The textual question of whether Troilus reaches the seventh or the eighth sphere remains debated, and this text reads 'seventh' (Steadman 1972) (Benson 1987).
Tragedy and genre
Chaucer calls the poem a 'tragedie', apparently in the medieval sense of a fall from prosperity to adversity, as defined in Boethius and in the Monk's Tale. Monica McAlpine studied the poem's relation to Boethian ideas of tragedy and comedy and asked whose 'tragedie' it is, Troilus' or Criseyde's, while Henry Ansgar Kelly traced the medieval meanings of the term (McAlpine 1978) (Kelly 1997).
The poem also contains elements of romance, comedy and lyric, and its ending gestures towards the 'comedie' that the poet hopes to write next. How far its moments of comedy, especially Pandarus', undermine or deepen its tragedy is a recurring question (Spearing 1976) (Muscatine 1957).
Key passages
The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen, That was the king Priamus sone of Troye, In lovinge, how his aventures fellen Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye,
The opening sets out the poem's double structure, from woe to weal and then out of joy. By announcing the ending at once, the narrator ensures that the reader experiences the love story with knowledge of its outcome, a central source of the poem's irony and pathos.
`If no love is, O god, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and whiche is he! If love be good, from whennes comth my wo? If it be wikke, a wonder thinketh me,
From Troilus' first song, translated from Petrarch. The questions express love's paradoxes in the form of logical alternatives, and they set out the problem the whole poem examines: what love is, and whether it can be good if it brings so much pain.
`I am myn owene woman, wel at ese, I thank it god, as after myn estat; Right yong, and stonde unteyd in lusty lese,
Criseyde's soliloquy on her independence as a widow. She weighs the freedom she enjoys against the risks of love and marriage. The passage shows the inner life and practical intelligence that Chaucer gives her, and it makes her later choices hard to judge simply.
`Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere, Ben yolde, y-wis, I were now not here!'
Her reply when Troilus tells her to yield. It suggests that her consent was given before the scene engineered by Pandarus, and so reclaims her agency; the line is central to arguments about Criseyde's will and responsibility.
`For of fortunes sharpe adversitee The worst kinde of infortune is this, A man to have ben in prosperitee, And it remembren, whan it passed is.
Pandarus warns Troilus, in words drawn from Boethius (Consolation II, prose 4) and echoed by Dante's Francesca, that the worst misfortune is to remember past happiness. At the height of joy the poem looks ahead to its loss.
`For al that comth, comth by necessitee; Thus to be lorn, it is my destinee.
The thesis of Troilus' soliloquy on predestination. His conclusion follows one side of Boethius' argument; Chaucer leaves Philosophy's reply unspoken, so the reader must judge how far Troilus' fatalism is right.
Tendre-herted, slydinge of corage; But trewely, I can not telle hir age.
From the portrait of Criseyde in Book V. 'Slydinge of corage' (unstable in heart) is the narrator's only direct judgement of her character; it is set among her virtues, and followed by a comic admission of ignorance.
To Diomede algate I wol be trewe.
Having betrayed Troilus, Criseyde resolves at least to be faithful to Diomede. The line is both touching and painfully ironic: 'trouthe' survives, but transferred.
And doun from thennes faste he gan avyse This litel spot of erthe, that with the see Embraced is, and fully gan despyse This wrecched world, and held al vanitee
Troilus' soul looks down from the heavens on the 'litel spot of erthe', an image that goes back to Cicero's Dream of Scipio. The new perspective shows the world as vanity compared with the felicity of heaven.
Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love, Swich fyn hath al his grete worthinesse; Swich fyn hath his estat real above, Swich fyn his lust, swich fyn hath his noblesse; Swich fyn hath false worldes brotelnesse.
The repeated 'swich fyn' ('such an end') sums up Troilus' story in a series of hammer blows. It can be read as a moral conclusion, a lament or a rhetorical struggle to find an adequate ending.
Questions for study
Why does the narrator tell us the outcome of the story in the first stanza?
Think about suspense, irony and the Boethian pattern of rise and fall. How does knowing the end change the way you read Book III?
How does Chaucer's narrator shape our response to Criseyde?
Look at his claims to follow his 'auctor', his hedging ('men seyn', 'I finde') and his wish to excuse her in Book V. Is he reliable?
Is Pandarus a friend, a manipulator or both?
Consider his motives, his use of lies and proverbs, and his final words about Criseyde. Compare him with Boccaccio's Pandaro.
Does Criseyde freely consent to love Troilus?
Weigh her soliloquy in Book II, the rain and the staged crisis in Book III, and her reply 'Ne hadde I er now ... Ben yolde'.
How does the poem use Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy?
Look at the proem to Book IV, Troilus' soliloquy on predestination, Criseyde on 'fals felicitee' and the hymn to Love. What does Chaucer leave out?
Why does Troilus not try to stop the exchange or carry Criseyde away?
Consider secrecy, honour, her reputation and his own temperament. Is his passivity a virtue or a fault?
What is the significance of Criseyde's fear that 'thise bokes wol me shende'?
Think about literary tradition, fame and the poem's self-consciousness about authority and history.
How should we read Troilus' laughter after his death?
Compare the ascent with its sources in the Dream of Scipio and the Teseida. Is the laughter contemptuous, joyful or detached?
Does the epilogue reject the love story or complete it?
Consider the multiple endings, the appeal to 'yonge fresshe folkes', the denunciation of pagan rites and the dedication to Gower and Strode.
In what sense is Troilus and Criseyde a 'tragedie'?
Think about the medieval definition of tragedy as a fall from prosperity, and about the comic elements in the poem, especially in Books II and III.
Further reading
- Aers, David. Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
- Benson, Larry D., gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
- Bloomfield, Morton W. "Distance and Predestination in Troilus and Criseyde." PMLA 72 (1957): 14–26.
- Dinshaw, Carolyn. Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989.
- Donaldson, E. Talbot. Speaking of Chaucer. London: Athlone Press; New York: Norton, 1970.
- Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
- Havely, N. R., trans. Chaucer's Boccaccio: Sources of Troilus and the Knight's and Franklin's Tales. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980.
- Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Chaucerian Tragedy. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997.
- Kittredge, George Lyman. Chaucer and His Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1915.
- Lewis, C. S. "What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato." Essays and Studies 17 (1932): 56–75.
- Mann, Jill. Feminizing Chaucer. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002.
- McAlpine, Monica E. The Genre of Troilus and Criseyde. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978.
- Minnis, A. J. Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982.
- Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study in Style and Meaning. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957.
- Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
- Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
- Robertson, D. W., Jr. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.
- Spearing, A. C. Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. London: Edward Arnold, 1976.
- Steadman, John M. Disembodied Laughter: Troilus and the Apotheosis Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
- Wetherbee, Winthrop. Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
- Windeatt, B. A., ed. Troilus and Criseyde: A New Edition of 'The Book of Troilus'. London: Longman, 1984.
- Windeatt, Barry. Troilus and Criseyde. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Written by the Poetry Codex editors. Updated 2026-10-19.