So, the next instillation of my essays is the one I did for my Chaucer class on Troilus and Criseyde which is Chaucer's great epic poem. I received a 95 on this paper because my prof said it was so well written, BUT he said the argument is a silent argument (means that the paper is about what is not said rather than what is said) and that's not good. There are some mistakes, but once again, I'm too lazy to go back and fix them. Hope you like it!
Manipulation, the Covert Game of Criseyde
Chaucer wrote his poem, Troilus and Criseyde, in an attempt to join the ranks of other great epic poets, toiling endlessly on it so that it would be his only true “masterpiece” (Pearsall 170). Homer was, and still is, one of the greatest poets to have ever lived. It took 700 years for another writer to finally find himself on a level playing field with the ancient great- Virgil, with his poem The Aeneid. Homer wrote of the siege of Troy in the Trojan War, as well as the journey home of the warrior Odysseus; Virgil looked at the other side and wrote of the few Trojans who escaped the collapse of their city and set about to found a new race (the Romans). When Chaucer sat down to compose his great epic he borrowed from a poem by Benoit de Sainte-Maure, as well as Boccaccio’s Filostrato. These poems helped outline for him his own great epic poem, and following in his idol’s footsteps, his story was set during the Trojan War (Pearsall 169). Upon first reading this epic, many people see the character of Pandarus as being a very obvious manipulator, playing with people for fun. A thorough examination of the poem though brings to light a somewhat subtle manipulator- Criseyde. Criseyde, usually portrayed as a victim, seems to have the upper hand throughout the entire poem, and therefore, Chaucer was not just writing a story about Troy but of the power of a sneaky woman.
The most important aspect of Criseyde’s personality and manipulation comes from her genealogy. Her father was the seer who ran from Troy when he learned that it was to be destroyed by the Greeks (Book 1, lines 64-70). Chaucer leads the reader to believe during the entire story that Criseyde was an innocent victim left behind to pay for the sins of her father, not even knowing why he left, but that isn’t the case. Criseyde admits in book IV, lines 1407-1414, that she knew her father was leaving because of a vision the gods gave him of the fall of the city (Roberts 96). This comes from a very important passage in which Criseyde and Troilus are planning a way for her to return to the city after she is surrendered to the Greeks. On one hand, it shows her outright plan to manipulate her father, proving without a doubt that she is a manipulative person when she wants to be. On the other hand, it also suggests that she may have always known her fate because, “To what episode is Criseyde referring in the last three lines? It is quite clear that the "text" referred to must be the oracle which lead Calchas to believe that Troy was doomed. But when did Calchas visit Delphi? No mention has previously been made of the visit- except such a hint as may possibly be inherent in the phrase "Apollo Delphicus” (Roberts 94). In other words, the reader only knows a small fraction of the information concerning the gods warning to her father to flee Troy. The importance of what is not said is that he very well could have informed his daughter of her fate, which would mean her entire relationship with Troilus was false because she knew it would end as it did. What is a better way of receiving a warm welcome from the Greeks than leaving behind a broken-hearted Trojan prince, the brother of the sworn enemy of King Agamemnon?
The God of Love and Fortune are the only gods who seem to be highly remarked on in the poem, but anyone familiar with classical mythology and Greek history know that the cause of the Trojan war was the Apple of Discourse, in which Paris chose Venus as the “fairest” of the goddesses, leaving Hera and Athena to have strong feelings of hatred for the Trojans because it was their prince, Paris, who was bribed into picking Venus, over either of them. It is interesting that Eros/Cupid would chose to play games with a Trojan prince during wartime when both his parents (Aphrodite and Ares) were on the side of the Trojans. That being said though, it could be argued, that if Criseyde’s father had told her that she was fated to manipulate Troilus she may have specifically been at the temple so that she was the one he saw when the God of Love struck him in the eyes with his arrow (Book 1, lines 208-209). The fact that she looked as if to say, “What, may I nat stonden here?” makes it seem that she was really there to be seen, waiting for his eyes to find her and drink her figure in (Book 1, line 292). For any other woman there would be no way to connect her actions to the plans of the gods and fate, but the daughter of a seer means that she was privy to knowledge others did not have. Chaucer tells us that she knew her father’s reasoning for leaving the city, she may have talked him down to Troilus, but since she ended up never returning to Troy it is easy to believe that there was a larger scheme behind her actions throughout the entire poem.
As the scene progresses, Criseyde also seems to make comments that counteract each other, hinting that she has known her fate and knows that she is about to hurt a man who loves her. This idea comes from when she is promising and reassuring Troilus that she will return to him after a period of ten days with the Greeks. The first thing that should have jumped out to him that she was manipulating him was the fact that she was using Juno (Hera) as her witness. There is a problem in this for two reasons. The first reason is that Juno hated the Trojans with a fiery passion and would never have punished someone who hurt a Trojan, especially Paris’ brother. The second reason that swearing on Juno was a stupid thing is that Juno was the goddess of marriage and family, she hated adulterers, and since Criseyde and Troilus had an affair she would not have been one to support their “love.” Apparently, the arrows from Cupid’s bow made Troilus’ brain hazy and he didn’t realize that her reassurance was nothing but empty promises, based off of swearing to a goddess who wanted to see the Trojans destroyed. The other reason that these passages show her manipulation, and enforce my idea that she knew all along what she was doing, is that she says, “Whoso wol han life, he life moot lete” (Book IV, line 1585). In other words, “She has already devoted two stanzas (11. 1534-1547) to swearing that she will return, and now she, so notoriously and fatally " slydynge of corage," exhorts Troilus to be master of his fate,” but, “the audience already knows that Troilus is doomed to "losse of lyf" (IV, 2t7), and any persuasion, no matter from whom, that he can master Fortune is tinged with tragic irony” ( Evans 586). Another great representation of the idea that Criseyde is a manipulator is explained by Cook-
Joly calls attention to the fact that, on the point of leaving Troy, she had all her precious possessions packed, "and," says the poet, "all her gowns put up; she clothed and decked her person with the richest garments she had", and these the poet then proceeds to describe, in terms which might well set any feminine heart a-flutter. This, be it remembered, is the morning after the night spent in tears and moans with Troilus. Could anything more clearly paint the character of the woman? However, says the poet, "the damsel thinks she will die when obliged to part from him whom she so loves and holds dear;" but he has already assured us that she will be calmed in time, and will soon forget. "If now she has sorrow, then she will have joy. Her love will soon turn to one whom she has never seen." To which, in the extremity of his indignation, the poet adds: "Grief does not last long with a woman; she weeps with one eye, and laughs with the other. They soon change their fancy; and the wisest of them is enough of a fool (Cook 535)
Why would Criseyde have packed her and half of her father’s belongings if she meant to return to Troy? The “scheme” to use her father’s greed for his own possessions is really a scheme to give him back half of his goods in the guise of a plan to trick him. Rather than her father being a poor traitor to his people, he is now a somewhat wealthy immigrant in the Greek camp. The Trojans all hated her father for abandoning them, but the manipulation by Criseyde allows her father to regain some of what he left behind without anyone stopping the goods from leaving the city, a plan she could have only come up with if he had given her foreknowledge of the situation. All of her actions regarding her departure from Troy hint at the fact that she has been manipulating everyone from the start.
Criseyde may have been the innocent victim and Pandarus the real manipulator of the poem, but that is hard to believe when, as the poem draws towards the end, she slips up and seems to give away her true intentions in many different ways. It can not be forgotten that she was a widow, and much like the character of the Wife of Bath in the Canterbury Tales, was probably raised to know how to manipulate men and be married. This idea can be seen when Troilus tells her that he will die without her and fears she will marry a Greek from the insistence of her father (Book IV, lines 1464-1498). Whether it was foreshadowed knowledge that she meet Troilus and manipulate him or really just a matter of fate, she still played her cards right and had a prince of Troy willing to abandon his family and country to be with her, or die if he lose her. Criseyde even seems to try and manipulate the readers into thinking that she was a victim, her long inner monologues really just devices to sway people into feeling that she had no control of her own life and was just a pawn to be played by men and gods, when in reality she was really the one playing the game. There is a saying that nice girls finish last (just like the nice guys), and Criseyde did not finish last in the least, she had a prince fall in love with her which would have kept her safe if Troy had been the victor, and she found a Greek warrior to love and protect her when she was sure Troy would lose, “Her wit and governance never deserted her, apparently. She can pretend to her agonizing lover that she has no idea what he seeks of her, and afterwards is ready to deal with Diomede in the same way; she does not scruple to speak to Troilus of her own dissimulation, and she is quite capable of telling Diomede, that, save for her dead husband, other love, so helpe me now Pallas, Ther in myn herte nis, ne ever was” (Cook 544). In the end, the only victim seems to be Troilus, first as a victim of punishment for making fun of the God of Love and falling in love, and then for falling in love with a woman who would leave him alone and destroyed in the end, even giving a present from him to her new husband.
Works Cited
Benson, Larry. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 471-586.
Cook, Albert. "The Character of Criseyde." PMLA. 22.3 (1907): 531-547.
Evans, Lawrence. "A Biblical Allusion in Troilus and Criseyde." Modern Language Notes. 74.7
(1959): 584-587.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1992. 168-177
Roberts, P. "Notes on Troilus and Criseyde, IV, 1397-1414." Modern Language Notes. 57.2
(1942): 92-97.
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