Chaucer & Courtly Love

Chaucer’s story-telling: Troilus and Criseyde
“So may we come to Paradise through pain . . .”
(III, 172, p.153)

We have explored, exemplified and characterized
story-telling in Homeric Greece. We have explored, exemplified and characterized story-telling in Periclean Athens. Now we will explore, exemplify and characterize story-telling in medieval Europe.

Assignments

Read Troilus and Criseyde, Books I, II and III
(The Penguin edition translated by Neville Coghill is the translation of choice)

Discussion Forum Posting:
How does a particular passage
demonstrate the power of love?

Read Troilus and Criseyde, Books IV and V

Continuing Forum Postings
What enables Troilus and Criseyde
to come to Paradise through pain?

Engaging Chaucer
Our subject has one focus: the course of love. What makes love compelling? After reading, pick one passage that shows how lovers act at a particular time and place, in a particular stage of their encounters. Chaucer’s essential focus is on what contributes to the joy Troilus and Criseyde anticipate and eventually enjoy. Attentive readers will work to see through their eyes, their senses, their assumptions and expectations, their desires.

This is no little thing for me to say;
It stuns imagination to express.
For each began to honour and obey
The other’s pleasure; happiness, I guess,
So praised by learned men, is something less.
This joy may not be written down in ink,
For it surpasses all that heart can think.
(III,242, p 171)

After appreciating the fruits of love you may of course consider the costs Pandar, as well as Criseyde and Troilus, are initially wary of love. And Love’s old sweet song ends unhappily, as court ladies daily hear from fashionable singers. None-the-less all three at times agree with Chaucer’s condemnation of nay-sayers.

Lord! Do you think some avaricious ape
Who girds at love and scorns it as a toy,
Out of the pence that he can hoard and scrape,
Had ever such a moment of pure joy
As love can give, pursuing his foul ploy?
Never believe it! For, by God above,
No miser ever knew the joy of love.
(III, 195, p 159)

Misers would answer ‘Yes,’; but, Lord, they’re liars!
Busy and apprehensive, old and cold
And sad, who think of love as crazed desires;
But it shall happen to them as I told;
They shall forgo their silver and their gold
And live in grief; God grant they don’t recover,
And God advance the truth of every lover!
(III, 196, p 159)

I wish to God those wretches that dismiss
Love and its service sprouted ears as long
As Midas did, that man of avarice;
Would they were given drink as hot and strong
As Crassus swallowed, being in the wrong,
To teach such folk that avarice is vicious
And love is virtue, which they think pernicious.
(III, 197, p 160)

Chaucer’s World
After centuries of patriarchal concerns with war and honor, medieval women take center stage, and love flourishes in song (troubadours), in verse (The Divine Comedy and The Decameron as well as Troilus and Criseyde), in letters (Heloise and Abelard). Consider six changes from Greek culture which contribute to such new habits of attention..

A. Monotheistic belief now assumes a creator who moves creatures through desire. Among the most powerful of desires are sexual and familial love. Love makes the world go ’round.

B. This world prepares souls for life after death, for some in heaven, for some in hell. The exercise of desire in this life establishes not just the direction of life after death,
but more the development of character which will flourish or seethe in heaven or in hell.

C. Since every soul is unique, and the actions of every individual will lead to heaven or to hell, the study of the psyche, psychology, takes precedence. Character no longer arises from the pursuit of excellence, from earned pride. Character takes shape from the company one keeps, from the practice of love.
 

D. Pleasure and pain are pointers to heaven and hell. To recollect personal experiences of intense pleasure is to shape directions to future bliss, to salvation. To recollect personal experiences of pain is to shape directions away from future suffering, from damnation. Fearful isolation characterizes damnation. Cooperative company characterizes salvation.

E. Conversion, re-orientation, changes not just what we see and do, but how we see and act. Conversions may arise from the discovery of  generative patterns
in astronomy, in mathematics, in music (the medieval trivium). Conversions may appear in the discovery of a religious calling. But conversion most commonly appears
when individuals fall in love.

E. Scripture directs attention and focuses desire. The speaking soul anticipates, discovers and actualizes the language of love. In the beginning was the word . . .

Medieval Love Lyrics
Chaucer identifies himself, not as a lover, but as a student of love. He works to trace the sensations, the feelings and thoughts, the language and actions of specific lovers as they unfold in specific places at specific times. As an author, he stimulates us to participation in the lover’s world, a necessary prerequisite if informed judgments are to follow. Observation of actual experience, not just the empty exercise of presuppositions, feeds recollection and recognition.

Consider the evidence of natural desire, working
just before dawn (at matins), equally apparent
in wildlife and in people—

I have a gentil cock

I have a gentil cock,
Croweth me the day;
He doth me risen erly,
My matins for to say.

I have a gentil cock;
Comen he is of gret:
His comb is of red coral,
His tayil is of jet.

I have a gentil cock;
Comen he is of kynde;
His comb is of red coral,
His tayil is of Inde.

His legges been of asor,
So gentil and so smale;
His spures arn of silver-whyt
Into the wortewale.

His eyen arn of crystal,
Looking all in aumber;
And every nyght he percheth him
In myn lady’s chaumber.

The splendor of nature appears through the rooster’s shape, coloration, gestures and voice. A lover would himself perch in his lady’s chamber. Sexual passion
surely inspires this voice. The plumage, gestures,
voice and actions of birds draw attention to the
richness and energy of creation.

Consider now the appearance of a mother at sunset.
Her shape, coloration, gestures and voice also demonstrate natural passion. As the sun sets
(at vespers), as darkness grows, as chill spreads,
her memories pierce and fade—

Nu goth Sonne

Nu goth Sonne under wode.
Me rueth, Mary, thy faire rode.
Nu goth Sonne under tree.
Me rueth, Mary, thy Sone and thee.

Now goes the sun below trees
I pity, Mary, thy faire face.
Now goes the sun (Son) under tree (cross).
I pity, Mary, thy son and thee.

Mary, of course, recalls her son’s crucifixion. Her recollection, however, springs from the natural events, so common but so potentially affecting, she senses and inhabits. If spring and dawn evoke the promise of birth, of new life, of beginnings, autumn recalls sufferings attending age, experiences of mortality, endings. The observer, however, is not just Mary, but also the speaker, who sorrows with Mary, not by understanding her feelings, but by inhabiting her circumstances. Passion originates with suffering (recall the Valentine convention, a heart pierced with Cupid’s arrow), the heart contracts, and compassion with a fellow sufferer follows.

Complementary associations and desires arise
in the appearance of flourishing girl —

Stetit Puella

There stood the girl
In the crimson dress
At the softest press,
How that tunic rustled:
Eia!

There stood the girl,
Rosebud on a vine;
Face ashine,
Mouth a reddish bloom.
Eia!

Slender, lithe, dressed to impress, she invites, deserves and receives attention. Appreciative observers, drawn by the blush animating her mobile, expressive face, trace her attitudes, gestures, approaches, anticipating closer acquaintance. Eyes, windows of the soul, widening, glistening, aroused in anticipation. Lips invite carnal knowledge, attracting through texture, through gesture. Lips invite not just momentary bliss, but further acquaintance with the language of love.

Medieval observers would recall a parallel scene,
the Stabat Mater, where Mary stood suffering as a lance pierced her crucified son’s heart. Stetit Puella would replace such attentions with current attractions.
But experiences of carnal passion and experiences
of familial compassion are related, facing pages
of common, essential experience.

Mary, of course, is an exceptional, a matchless mother. Medieval approaches to her, however, emphasize circumstances evident in many mothers. The recognition
of pregnancy engenders appropriate surprise. Mary’s exceptional situation develops from the commonest
of the evidences of love: the desire of a mother for fruitful life, her desire for her child’s happiness, her awareness
of inevitable pain —

I singe of a Maiden

I singe of a Maiden
That is makeless;
King of all kinges
To her Sone she ches.

He cam all so stille
Ther his Moder was,
As dew in Aperille
That falleth on the grass.

He cam all so stille
To his Modres bour,
As dew in Aperille
That falleth on the flour.

He cam all so stille
Ther his Moder lay,
As dew in Aperille
That falleth on the spray.

Moder and maiden
Was nevere non but she.
Well may swich a lady
Goddes Moder be.

This song assumes, of course, listeners with shared religious beliefs. But the power of the song grows
from the most natural of circumstances, the real appearance of dew droplets— minute, opalescent, omnipresent and illuminating nourishment. Dew sustains equally the smallest blade of grass, the grandest oak,
the field mouse and the emperor. The archangel Gabriel appears to Mary, announcing the conception of Christ.
But we may take equal energy not just from rituals including such as baptism, but from the commonest
of sights available on any early spring morning.
Love makes the world go ’round.

Loves old sweet song

Medieval troubadours (perhaps in need of sustenance
in foreign lands) developed and practiced the language
of courtly love. Some might recall the joys of creation
in the accurate mimicking of springtime bird calls
(rou coucou for doves, cock-a-doodle-do for English roosters, ri-ki-ki-ki for German roosters). Bird calls
might delight even more those who also recognize astonishingly complex rhymes supporting such calls
as well as celestial and terrestrial geometries.

.

One song of courtly love, In a garden under a hawthorn bower, demonstrates the appeal of love to watchers,
well aware of love’s limits, but moved by anticipations of apparent bliss. Aubades, dawn songs, reappear in every age. If vespers, the time for evening meditations, invite reconsideration of daylight activities, and matins (dawn) serves as the time for renewed engagements, lovers prefer night. Enclosed in a bower, out of sight and mind from public scrutiny, lovers can escape the restrictions of judgment to explore unconditional passion, to seek
their mutual bliss.

In a garden under a hawthorn bower

In a garden under a hawthorn bower
A lover to his lady’s closely drawn
Until a watchman shouts the mourning hour.
O God! O God! how swift it comes—the dawn!

“Dear God, if this night would never fail
And my lover never far from me was gone,
And the watchman never saw the morning pale
But, O my God! how swift it comes—the dawn!”

“Come, pretty boy, give me a little kiss
Down in the meadow where birds sing endless song.
Forget my husband! Think—just think of this—
For, O my God! how swift it comes—the dawn!”

“Hurry, my boy. The new games end at morn.
Down to that garden—those birds—that song!
Play, play till the crier blows his horn,
For, O my God! how swift it comes—the dawn!”

“Down in the sweet air over the meadow hovering
I drank a sweet draught—long, so long—
Out of the air of my handsome, noble lover.
O God! O God! how swift it comes—the dawn!”

The lady’s pretty. She has many charms.
Toward her beauty many men are drawn.
But she lies happy in one pair of arms.
O God! O God! how swift it comes—the dawn!

The lady, older and more experienced than her lover, appreciates full well the disapproval of outsiders,
of those who would curtail her passions. She directs
her younger lover at night to a bower where all blossoms, where birds sing endless songs. In such a place
lovers freed from pressing duties, may discover the bliss
of mutually engaging desires. As each seeks the other’s bliss, that chain-reaction which fuels ecstasy unfolds, blossoms.

Her encouragement contains, of course, the wisdom
of experience: “O God! O God! How swift it comes—
the dawn.” But she still seeks out with her lover circumstances in which such concerns fade, enabling the flourishing of unconstrained desires. The experiences she seeks and offers will not endure. To attend to such limitations, however, will block the experiences, however momentary, she senses as living, experiences different in kind from the reasonable calculations of duty.

The watchman, of course, signals a return to reason
and civility. But those who hear this lady’s song, even while sharing the watchman’s judgment, may also cling for a moment to desire. Before a possible resurrection, we may seek fulfillment here and now:

This is no little thing for me to say;
It stuns imagination to express.
For each began to honour and obey
The other’s pleasure; happiness, I guess,
So praised by learned men, is something less.
This joy may not be written down in ink,
For it surpasses all that heart can think.
(III,242, p 171)

Criseyde (and Troilus) come to share the troubadour’s expressions of desire. The wisdom of experience will find voice: “O God! O God! How swift it comes—the dawn.”
But Criseyde and Troilus will none-the-less seek out circumstances in which such concerns fade, in which unconstrained desires flourish. Their experiences,
love’s old sweet song, will not endure. Attending too early too such limitations, however, blocks experience of love which offers the highest sense of being alive. Later, perhaps, we may return to the reasonable calculations of duty.

Watchman, of course, signal a return to reason and civility. But those who hear the cautionary reassurance of civility, recalling then the song of love, may cling for some moments to desire. Before a possible resurrection,
we may seek fulfillment here and now:

O God! O God! how swift it comes—the dawn!