"Troilus and Criseyde" and Chaucer's Dedication to Gower.
- Author/Editor
- Whitman, Frank H.
- Title
- "Troilus and Criseyde" and Chaucer's Dedication to Gower.
- Published
- Whitman, Frank H. "'Troilus and Criseyde' and Chaucer's Dedication to Gower." Tennessee Studies in Literature 18 (1973): 1-11.
- Review
- Whitman, following John H. Fisher's lead, sees "Troilus and Criseyde" in many ways a product of Chaucer's reading of Gower, e.g.: "the philosophy of Chaucer's poem . . . is but a development of the first thirty-six lines of Gower's 'Mirour'" (1). Where Fisher finds that Chaucer "refines [temporal love] and makes a tragedy of its eventual insufficiency," however, Whitman contends contrarily that the idea is "misleading": "too much has been made of Troilus as a tragic figure and insufficient of his foolishness" (2). "Chaucer," Whitman argues, "is even closer to Gower in sentiment" than many realize; the two especially agree on the character and condition of "the knight in love" (2). This for Whitman is fully expressed in the "Vox Clamantis" V, where Gower presents the debilitating effects love has on knights, and he traces this through Chaucer's poem by pointing out the "comedy" of Troilus' wooing in Book III, "swooning, then being thrown on the bed" (4), and the undercutting of "tender" scenes of parting in Books IV and V with outlandish description (4-5). In effect, he finds that love causes Troilus to "become impotent" (6) and eventually "blind and idolatrous" (8). Chaucer's narrator, however, equates "love with good," but this is also naïve, and not representative of Chaucer's own views, which lie closer to Gower's (and Andreas Capellanus's): "that any man who devotes his efforts to love loses all his usefulness" (11). Thus, the dedication of the "Troilus" to Gower is to be re-interpreted in a more serious light than commonly. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 1973
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Vox Clamantis