In Defense of Diomede: "Moral Gower" and "Troilus and Criseyde."
- Author/Editor
- Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey.
- Title
- In Defense of Diomede: "Moral Gower" and "Troilus and Criseyde."
- Published
- Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. "In Defense of Diomede: 'Moral Gower' and Troilus and Criseyde." In Geardagum: Essays on Old and Middle English 8 (1987): 1-12.
- Review
- Per Olsen's argument, most of the critical response to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" has been overly sympathetic to Troilus, forgiving his faults, while anachronistically hostile to Criseyde and Diomede. To recapture a more authentic, fourteenth-century view of the three characters, Olsen maintains, we can turn to their portrayal in the works of John Gower, where Troilus erred from his first sight of Criseyde (4), and Diomede was not without honor. The works of Gower provide us with a more nuanced view of the famous love triangle. Troilus, while given credit in the Vox Clamantis as faithful unto death, according to the Confessio Amantis was guilty of "sacrilege" due to the setting of his first attraction to Criseyde--a religious service (4). Never does Gower refer to Criseyde as a prostitute, as does Robert Henryson in "Testament of Cresseid," Olsen notes; rather, by leaving her "lief" (Troilus) to love Diomede, a "levere," she "changed lovers out of a genuine preference for the second man" (5). In the VC, Gower cites the serial seducer Jason, never Diomede, as archetype of the unfaithful male (5). In fact, Olsen asserts, there is no textual proof in any version of the story that Diomede had a lover before Criseyde, or that he ended his relationship with her (8). Crucial to Olsen's argument is the appearance of all three characters, more or less together, in the "Lovers' Paradise" of CA Book VIII (6). All of the company, including Diomede, are classed as "gentil folk" (6). By this evidence, "both men would still lay claim to Criseyde after death and . . . Criseyde would still find it difficult to choose between them" (7). According to Olsen, Diomede's life course should be understood by the French expression "il s'est range / he has put himself in order," which refers to a man who has settled down to a stable domestic life after sowing his youthful oats (8-9). Gower's portrayal of Diomede is thus "less puritanically English" than the later tradition, as exemplified by Henryson, and thus more in harmony with the bilingual court culture of Richard II (9). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 1987
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations