Inside out Or Outside In

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Mike Huxtable04/13/2019

Inside Out or Outside In? : Of the relative nature and function of the narrator in Boccaccio and Chaucer’s story of Troilus

(N.B. unless otherwise cited texts referred to are marked: A. Benson, Larry D. ed. The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1988. B. Brewer, D.S. & Brewer, L.E.eds. Troilus and Criseyde (Abridged). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971. C. Gordon, R.K.ed. The Story of Troilus. London: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd., 1934.)

1. General

There is a marked contrast between Boccaccio and Chaucer’s narration of the story, a difference that pertains to their motivations for telling it in the first place. Boccaccio wants to identify his personal plight, in waiting for the return of his beloved, with that of the Troilus he imagines. His telling is thus a form of catharsis, a vicarious undertaking, by which his attitude in portraying the characters and their actions is thoroughly coloured. Furthermore, for Boccaccio, the whole business of telling this tale, as he tells it, has an ‘instructive’ dimension. He would forewarn and forearm his reader as to an aspect of human nature from which he – not only his characters – has suffered much misery. Chaucer, by contrast, takes on the retelling of the tale from his own, subjectively uninvolved, point of view. His task is to entertain his learned middle-aged friends, like Gower and Strode, to read his poem to the court of Richard II, (as depicted in the frontispiece of the manuscript in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge), to offer his audience a diversion. Chaucer makes addresses to his readers and hearers, but of a different kind from Boccaccio. ([1]His audience is specifically addressed at various points, most obviously in V.1780ff.) He is more humorous and philosophical, maturer and less intense; his aim would seem to be more about ‘selling his story’ than passing moral judgements upon those within it. Indeed, when the form of the story he is modeling calls for such judgement, he is ill at ease and would ‘pass the buck’.

1. Of the self-referential nature of Il Filostrato

“Into the old story Boccaccio put his own longings and sorrows. Troilus is the central figure, and Troilus is Boccaccio. In Benoit we hear almost nothing of the grief of Troilus after he has lost his mistress. It was left for Boccaccio to show how Troilus ‘mounted the Troyan Walls / And sigh’d his soul toward the Grecian tents, / Where Criseida lay that night.’” (C. p.xiv.)

1. Of the change in tone brought about by Chaucer’s retelling of the tale.

“The tone is no longer lyrical and personal. Chaucer does not identify himself with Troilus. He writes of the sorrows and joys of the servants of love, but he is not one of them. He allows himself a smile at the extravagances of ‘these loveres’. Comedy and romance live side by side in the poem, and neither injures the other. If the English poem has less intensity and concentration than the Italian it has greater variety and complexity.” (C. p.xv.)

1. Of Chaucer’s peculiar, ‘half-cut illusion’ style of narration.

“…the facet which most immediately presents itself to us when we read is the tone of personal narration adopted by the poet […] The poet also continually makes us conscious of his own act of story-telling in the very course of the poem, sometimes claiming to see into a character’s mind, sometimes claiming to be reporting only what his source says, sometimes expressing ignorance. […] He is always a story-teller in our presence, as it were. Therefore his telling has not the aim of the complete illusion, … Or rather, the illusion lies not at the level of character and event, but at the level of narration.” (B. p.xiv.)

1. Of Chaucer’s use of ‘intentional ambiguity’ as a narrative technique

“Even when the poet’s comments, or manner of presenting his material, are not ironical, they are often ambiguous, as when he proclaims his ignorance of [2]Criseyde’s age. By an obvious paradox this ignorance increases the realism..” (B. p.xv.)

1. Of Chaucer as the poet, or as a character – the Narrator – in his own story.

“The occasional pose of ignorance or simplicity adopted by the poet has led some critics to speak as if the whole poem should be thought of as told by a fictional person, who is the Narrator, and is as it were a character as much ‘within’ the poem as any of the named characters. […] (But!) One must not completely separate the poet from the pose, the complex meaning from the simple meaning. Their relationship is their chief strength...” (B. p.xv-xvi.)

1. Specific

Turning now to the two texts, we can rapidly find examples of the poets’ narrative goals within their stories. Boccaccio uses a Proem and Canto IX to speak to us, objectively regarding his project before and after its execution. At other times his voice intrudes on the action simply to issue cautionary words as to what is about to happen or what has just happened. In Chaucer’s much more structurally coherent work (in five books, with book 3 containing the peak of the happiness wave, which then diminishes through to the end) the reader or hearer is addressed directly through prologues and epilogues and frequently in asides to the main presentation of events. There follow some pertinent cases for consideration.

1. The introduction of the story as found in Il Filostrato (C. Proem: pp. 25-30) and Troilus and Criseyde (A. Bk.1: 1-56, pp.473-4).

It is clear straight away that Boccaccio and Chaucer are reading from slightly altered hymn sheets. Boccaccio proffers his tale to his absent lover, and is seeking also to alleviate his own stressful circumstances by writing a form of warning for those who might fall into similar straits. Chaucer, as an older, wiser ‘servant of Love’, would present a tale that is a curiosity and a means for those who are content in love to understand and pity those who are not.

“But I wrote it for this reason, that when one has beheld happiness one understands much better how great and of what nature is misery which afterwards befalls. And yet this happiness is like my fortunes, in so far as I drew no less pleasure from your eyes than Troilus found in the happy love which fortune granted him with Criseida. […] And if you (his love, and by extension, his reader) chance to them (his words), as often as you find Troilus weeping and lamenting the departure of Criseida, you will be able to understand and know my very words, tears, sighs and agonies; and whenever you find portrayed the beauty of Criseida, her manners and any other excellent quality in a woman, you can understand that it is spoken of you.” (BOCCACCIO – C. Proem: p.29.)

“But ye loveres, that bathen in gladnesse, / If any drope of pyte in yow be, / Remembreth yow on passed hevynesse / That ye han felt, and on the adversite / Of othere folk, and thynketh how that ye / Han felt that Love dorste yow displese, / Or ye han wonne hym with so gret an ese. // And preieth for hem that ben in the cas / Of Troilus, as ye may after here, / That Love hem brynge in hevene to solas; / And ek for me preieth to God so dere / That I myght to shewe, in som manere, / Swich peyne and wo as Loves folk endure, / In Troilus unsely aventure.” (CHAUCER – A. Bk.I: 22-35, p.473.)

1. Boccaccio’s judicial comments and Chaucer’s objective asides, as exemplified in Il Filostrato (e.g. C. Canto 3: p.69) and Troilus and Criseyde (e.g. A. Bk.4: Prologue: 1-28, p.538).

The feature to notice with this comparison is how Chaucer again takes up a Boccaccian sentiment, but expands it and sets it within a broader, more philosophical field of speculation. Boccaccio heralds the end of Troilus’s time of joyful loving with resentful, bitter emotion – Chaucer with an air of inevitability born of wider sympathies. Furthermore, Chaucer pins his colours to the mast regarding his own opinion of Criseyde’s conduct: he finds it deeply sad, not passionately revolting. He would see the villains who have so described her, (presumably Boccaccio included), hang, if it be the case that she has been misreported. Chaucer would like to pass the buck when it comes to judging Criseyde, but he is bound by the conventions of a received story.

“But, thanks to envious fortune, which allows nothing in this world to remain stable, this happiness lasted but a short space. By a new turn of her wheel, as commonly chances, she showed him her wrathful face, and turning all things upside down, bereft him (Troilus) of the sweets of Criseida’s love, and changed his glad love into sad grief.” (BOCCACCIO – C. Canto III: p.69.)

“From Troilus, she gan hire brighte face / Awey to writhe, and tok of hym non heede, / But caste hym clene out of his lady grace, / And on hire whiel she sette up Diomede; / For which myn herte right now gynneth blede, / And now my penne, allas, with which I write, / Quaketh for drede of that I moste endite. // For how Criseyede Troilus forsook – / Or at the leeste, how that she was unkynde – / Moot hennesforth ben matere of my book, / As writen folk thorugh which it is in mynde. / Allas, that they sholde evere cause fynde / To speke hire harm! And if they on hire lye, / Iwis, hemself sholde han the vilanye.” (CHAUCER – A. Bk. IV: Prologue: 9-21, p.538.)

1. Boccaccio and Chaucer’s ‘different yet similar’ two-stage narrative endings to the story of Troilus, as contained in Il Filostrato (C. Cantos 8&9: pp.124-7) and Troilus and Criseyde (A. Bk.5: 1744-1870, pp. 583-5).

The two-stage closing of the story is similar in Boccaccio and Chaucer inasmuch as they both first bid farewell to their characters and story locale – with comments – and then bid farewell to their audience – with comments. The differences are of course to do with the tone and content of these comments. As such we see Boccaccio’s farewell to his deceased hero as an opportunity to lament once again the pangs of abandoned love and to issue his concluding advice to young men to beware the charms of proud girls. We are then, in Canto 9, reacquainted with Boccaccio’s ultimate purpose in writing the tale; to salve his broken heart and appeal to his lost love to return to him. We are, in fact, recruited into his project and asked, through Love and our imaginations, to bid his girl to go back to him. Chaucer’s two-part closure fulfills his own, slightly different criteria as a maturer narrator. He also laments the fallen Troilus and his unhappy fate, but is at pains to distance himself from the harsher judgements that are heaped upon the ‘false’ Criseyde and seeks to point out that betrayal can work both ways. Indeed he seems more anxious to see the honour of women upheld by men than that of men upheld by women. His epilogue moves into a new phase as he describes his work as a ‘litel tragedye’ and sends it out to be considered (modestly) alongside the Greats - Virgil, Homer, Lucian and Statius. Before offering up a final round of dedications to his audience, (moral Gower and philosophical Strode, et al), Chaucer presents a much more thoughtful and balanced moral for his tale, one of Christian sympathy. He too addresses the young, but of both sexes, and urges them to balance their transient passions by remembering God as the source of all Love. Without giving up the vanities of a passing world, all are ‘fallen’ as Criseyde, but in doing so, all are redeemable, as, by implication, is Criseyde in Chaucer’s eyes. Who needs feigned love when the perfect love of Christ is available to all? (Perhaps Chaucer was especially stirred to make this analysis by Boccaccio’s decidedly unchristian sentiment that his lover alone can give him salvation!) There is a problematic paradox here regarding the relation between religious and secular love, but there is at least a flavour of a wider perception to be found in Chaucer’s stance.

Phase One:

“O youths, in whom amorous desire springs up as your age increases, I pray you in the name of God check your eager steps towards the evil passion and see yourselves imaged in the love of Troilus which my verse hath set forth. For, if you read with right feeling, you will not easily put your trust in all women. A young woman is inconstant and desirous of many lovers, and she rates her beauty more highly than does the mirror, and had exulting pride in her youth; and the more she thinks of it the more pleasing and charming she finds it. […] Avoid these then and deem them vile, for they are beasts, not noble ladies. […] ..and may love grant you grace to love so wisely that in the end you die not for a worthless woman.” (BOCCACCIO – C. Canto VIII: pp.124-5.)

“Bysechyng every lady bright of hewe, / And every gentil womman, what she be, / That al be that Criseyde was untrewe, / That for that gilt she be nat wroth with me. / Ye may hire gilt in other bokes se; / And gladlier I wol write, yif yow leste, / Penelopees trouthe and good Alceste. // N’y sey nat this al oonly for thise men, / But moost for wommen that bitraised be / Thorough false folk – God yeve hem sorwe, / amen! – / That with hire grete wit and subtilte / Bytraise yow. And this commeveth me / To speke, and in effect yow alle I preye, / Beth war of men, and herkneth what I seye!” (CHAUCER – A. Bk.V: 1772-85, pp.583-4.)

Phase Two:

“Then thou, after resting a little, wilt go to the gentle lady of my thoughts. Oh, happy art thou, for thou wilt see her, which I, weary and woeful as I am, cannot do. And when thou art joyfully received by her hands, commend me humbly to her high worth, which alone can give me salvation. […] If thou seest in her beautiful face any sign that she is ready to listen to thee or to sigh for my suffering, entreat her as earnestly as thou canst that she may be pleased now to return, or to order my soul to depart from me, for better is death than such life. […] But take heed not to go on such a high mission without love, for it might chance thou wouldst be right ill received, and , besides thou wouldst lack understanding. […] Go now; for I pray Apollo to lend thee such grace that she will hearken to thee and send again to me with a happy answer.” (BOCCACCIO – C. Canto IX: pp126-7.)

“O yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she, / In which that love up groweth with youre age, / Repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte, / And of youre herte up casteth the visage / To thilke God that after his ymage / Yow made, and thynketh al nys but a faire, / This world that passeth soone as floures faire. // And loveth hym the which that right for love / Upon a crois, oure soules for to beye, / First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above; / For he nyl falsen no wight, dar I seye, / That wol his herte al holly on hym leye. / Ans syn he best to love is, and most meke, / What nedeth feynede loves for to seke?” (CHAUCER – A. Bk.V: 1835-48, p.584.)

[1] See B. p.xli for more on Chaucer’s audience.

[2] See A. Bk. V: 826, “Tendre-herted, slydynge of corage; / But trewely, I kan nat telle hire age.”