Geoffrey Chaucer

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Geoffrey Chaucer

• Troilus Criseyde

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Geoffrey Chaucer BIO/HISTORICAL CONTEXTS

• Life Dates
• b. ca. 1340-45
• TC done ca. 1385
• CT started ca. 1387
• Relevant Regnal Dates
• 1327-77 (Edward III)
• 1377-99 (Richard II)
• 1399-1413 (Henry IV)

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Chaucer Bio and Implications

• upwardly mobile, bourgeois family
• civil servant
• royal esquire, diplomat, customs official, etc.
• borderer -- living between worlds
• royal courts, commerce, other countries
• foreign service for king -- esp. Italy
• exposure to other cultures, writers

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Troilus Criseyde Formal Overview

• Source
• Verse Form
• Genre
• Objectives (ambitious ones)

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TC Formal Overview, contd.

• Source Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filostrato(The
  Love-Flattened One)
• Verse Form Rhyme Royal
• 7-line stanza, rhyming ababbcc
• iambic pentameter rhythm (5 beats, x / x / x /
  x / x / )

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TC Formal Overview, contd.

• Genre Romance (definition)
• but with many classical epic details/ techniques
• invocations of Muses
• book divisions
• high style (incl. astronomical machinery)
• classical setting
• send-ups of Aeneid, maybe Iliad
• Ch. playing off classical, canonical literature
  and culture

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TC Goals and Major Themes

• Ambitious Objectives
• The Religion of Love -- fin amour or courtly
  love (esp. Bks. 1-3)
• History vs. His/Her Story -- focus, character,
  and theme (esp. Bks. 2-4)

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TC Very Ambitious Objectives

• Classical traditions explored
• Philosophical analysis thru literature
• Interrogating Societal Codes/Ideologies of Love
• Developing Richly Developed Characters

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Fin amour (aka courtly love)

• Worship of lady
• Ennoblement of lover(s) -- esp. man
• Secret relationships
• Deep (usually male) emotion
• Recurrent image/metaphor patterns
• eyes/visual images dynamics
• religious metaphors
• STILL PART OF WESTERN IDEOLOGY OF LOVE (cf.
  popular song lyrics)

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History vs. His n Her Story

• intertwined questions of focus, character, theme,
  esp. in Bks. 2-4
• dual focus (big-picture history vs. close-up
  individual stories)
• complexly motivated characters
• and so what?

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From Troy to London Town Medieval British
History/Genealogy

• Meleager (Diomedes ancestor)
• Theban War (Ds dad et al.)
• Troy
• Rome (Aeneas, Romulus/Remus)
• Britain (founded by Brutus, descendant of Aeneas)
• Arthur (ca. 500-540?)
• 14th-c. England
• later audiences addressed at end of poem

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Time and Trouthe Theme in Structure

• Structure, Narrative Tactics, Theme
• esp. Bks. 4-5
• ME trouthe MnE truth/troth
• Zodiacal and Seasonal Clues
• Bk. 123 - April
• Bk. 28 - Taurus (May 3)
• Bk. 390 - Cancer/Gemini (June)
• Bk. 45 - early Leo (late July - early August)
• Bk. 5193 - early Leo to 2 mos. (Sept./Libra)

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Time and Trouthe, contd.

• How long does the affair last???
• Linear vs. cyclic time
• different value systems idealistic/pragmatic
• repeated concerns/imagery appear in Canterbury
  Tales

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Love, Fortune, Fate Philosophy, Image, and
Theme

• Boethian Imagery and Theme in TC
• esp. Bks. 3-5
• cf. Consolation of Philosophy (trans. Chaucer)
• wheels that make the world go round
• the ties that bind
• harmony, bonds, unity, bondage, (un)freedom
• from philosophical advice to experience??
• (Eternal) Love as binding force of universe
• Final values placed on Ts and Cs loves??