THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

persuading his niece to look favourably on Troilus’s love is rendered one of subtle negotiation, mediation, suggestion,
and emotional conditioning. She, rather than being fickle by nature, is seen as tender, sensitive, ingenuous, and open
to change. Chaucer’s narrative carefully balances the length of the process by which she is persuaded to accept Troilus
[p. 62]
against the time she takes over agonizing about abandoning him. When the lovers are forced apart by her removal to
join her father in the Greek camp outside Troy, Criseyde’s grief is intense. Her avowals are as extravagant as they are
agonized:
‘And Troilus, my clothes everychon
Shul blake ben in tokenyng, herte swete,
That I am as out of this world agon,
That wont was yow to setten in quiete;
And of myn ordre, ay til deth me mete,
The observance evere, in youre absence,
Shal sorwe ben, compleynt and abstinence.
‘Myn herte and ek the woful goost therinne
Byquethe I, with youre spirit to compleyne
Eternaly, for they shal nevere twynne.
For though in erthe ytwynned be we tweyne,
Yet in the feld of pite, out of peyne,
That highte Elisos [Elysium], shal we ben yfeere [together],
As Orpheus with Euridice, his fere [companion, wife].
Her ambiguously optimistic interpretation of the Orpheus/Eurydice story may well lead us to perceive how uneasily
tragic are the undertones of her avowal. For Criseyde, lovers symbolically pass through Hades to reach Elysium, or, in
medieval Christian terms, they suffer penitentially in Purgatory as a preparation for Paradise. Criseyde’s descent to
Hades/Purgatory, a place where the only certainty is uncertainty, will be metaphoric. Separated from Troilus, from her
friends, and from her roots she in fact discovers the advantages of Lethean forgetfulness in shoring up the
determinants of her life and her heart. When the narrator reaches the issue of her final denial of her vows to Troilus, a
new element of ambiguity enters the narrative. The narrator himself purports to consult his source to find an
exaggeratedly clear statement of her treachery; Criseyde, however, is painfully conscious that hers is indeed a worldwithout-end
decision, one which will render her infamous in subsequent human annals:
[p. 63]
But trewely, the storie telleth us,
Ther made nevere woman moore wo
Than she, whan that she falsed Troilus.
She seyde, ‘Allas! for now is clene ago [gone]
My name of trouthe in love, for everemo!
For I have falsed oon the gentileste
That evere was, and oon the worthieste!
‘Allas! of me, unto the worldes ende,
Shal neyther ben ywriten nor ysonge
No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende [reproach].
O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge!
Thorughout the world my belle shal be ronge!
And wommen moost wol haten me of alle.
Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle!’
Faced with such agonized self awareness, the narrator retreats into pity, reluctant to blame her more than his historic
predecessors have done but willing to concede that her penitence impresses him (‘For she so sory was for hire
untrouthe, | Iwis, I wolde excuse hire yet for routhe [pity]’).
If the narrator of Troilus and Criseyde is neither the gentle incompetent ‘Chaucer’ of The Canterbury Tales nor
the incomprehending innocent of the dream-poems, he nevertheless shares something of their generous susceptibility.