"Troilus and Criseyde": The Inviolability of the Ending.

Author/Editor
Markland, Murray F.

Title
"Troilus and Criseyde": The Inviolability of the Ending.

Published
Markland, Murray F. "'Troilus and Criseyde': The Inviolability of the Ending." Modern Language Quarterly 31.2 (1970): 147-59.

Review
Fundamentally a character study of the narrator in the final stanzas of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde," Markland's essay digresses briefly (pp. 155-57) to address the friendship between Gower and Chaucer and comment on several literary passages that pertain to it. [Because they push against general critical opinion, I quote the comments at length.] Concerning Chaucer's dedication of TC to Gower, Markland suggests that the reference to "O moral Gower," "exclaimed by the uncommonly moral narrator, has an ironic ring and might well have been the start of a jesting exchange rather than the sincere admiration of Gower's moral measure that it has usually been taken to be. It is the sort of phrase that would come from the tongue of a man with the conventional morality, the unthinking sententious morality of the narrator. To that jibe Gower might have retorted, when he had the opportunity five years later [in Venus's greeting to Chaucer in Confessio Amantis VIII, *2940-59] by charging Chaucer with lightness. Chaucer's rejoinder in the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale, if it is a rejoinder, is sharper criticism, perhaps sharp enough to offend even in bantering exchange" (156). Through Venus's comments in the first recension of CA, Markland tells us, "Gower seems to urge Chaucer to admit, as he himself has admitted, that the service of love is no longer suitable to him." A bit further on, Markland concludes his digression: "Such a reading might also help us with our identification of the 'philosophical Strode.' It will not tell us who he was; but, by suggesting what he was, it may well relieve us of the urgency to find an important and truly philosophical Strode. He may have been philosophical only in pretension or he may have been one who cultivated a humor. That is what the exclamation 'O moral Gower' on the lips of the narrator implies about Gower's morality" (156). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]

Date
1970

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations