Troilus and Criseyde also pairs together a man and a woman who are reluctant to love, and in doing so explores the different ways in which romantic a(nti)pathy can be transformed along gendered lines. This complex work – which draws upon a variety of genres, including romance, tragedy, history, and epic – is primarily known as the story of Troilus’s ‘double sorwe’, his desperate passion for Criseyde and his subsequent betrayal by her.
1 Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 471–585 (i. 1). Accordingly, Troilus is best known as a lover rather than a reluctant one, and indeed his romantic a(nti)pathy (like Amadas’s) is short-lived, as he falls in love with Criseyde within the first three hundred lines of the poem. However, Troilus’s resistance is significant, both for the way it is described early in the poem and for the way it impacts our reading of the narrative as a whole. Troilus’s initial hostility towards love contributes to Chaucer’s interrogation of the tropes of
fin amor, while also developing a significant and sustained contrast to Criseyde. These topics have been discussed in previous criticism, but recognising the way that Chaucer deliberately aligns Troilus with literary portrayals of resistance to love can contribute not just to new understandings of how these features operate within
Troilus and Criseyde but also to recognising the significance and impact of resistance to love within romance writing more broadly.
2 Barry Windeatt has written most extensively on Chaucer’s approach to fin amor in Troilus and Criseyde: see ‘Troilus and Criseyde: Love in a Manner of Speaking’, in Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages, ed. by Helen Cooney (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 81–97; Troilus and Criseyde, Oxford Guides to Chaucer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 212–44; ‘Troilus and the Disenchantment of Romance’, in Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches, ed. by Derek Brewer (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 129–47; ‘“Love that oughte ben secree” in Chaucer’s Troilus’, Chaucer Review, 14.2 (1979), 116–31; see also Richard Firth Green, ‘Troilus and the Game of Love’, Chaucer Review, 13.3 (1979), 201–20. On Criseyde’s consent, see Louise M. Sylvester, Medieval Romance and the Construction of Heterosexuality (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 91–127; Elizabeth Robertson, ‘Public Bodies and Psychic Domains: Rape, Consent, and Female Subjectivity in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde’, in Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, ed. by Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 281–310; Louise O. Fradenburg, ‘“Our owen wo to drynke”: Loss, Gender and Chivalry in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’: ‘Subgit to Alle Poesye’: Essays in Criticism, ed. by R. A. Shoaf (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), pp. 88–106; Corinne Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 291–2; Jean E. Jost, ‘Intersecting the Ideal and the Real, Chivalry and Rape, Respect and Dishonor: The Problematics of Sexual Relationships in Troilus and Criseyde, Athelston, and Sir Tristrem’, in Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), pp. 599–632 (pp. 603–21). In the early sections of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer enhances and develops Troilus’s romantic a(nti)pathy from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, associating it more closely with the romance and Ovidian trope of resistance to love. Unlike Boccaccio, Chaucer explicitly and repeatedly identifies Troilus’s romantic a(nti)pathy as a form of pride: he is ‘this fierse and proude knyght’, ‘as proud a pekok’ as any Cupid has caught, while Boccaccio’s description of ‘how often follow effects all contrary to our intentions!’ is extended by Chaucer to reflect specifically on
How often falleth al the effect contraire
Of surquidrie and foul presumpcioun;
For kaught is proud, and kaught is debonaire.
3 ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, i. 225, 210, 212–14; Giovanni Boccaccio, The Filostrato of Giovanni Boccaccio: A Translation with Parallel Text, trans. by Nathaniel Edward Griffin and Arthur Beckwith Myrick (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929; repr. 2016), p. 145.Troilus’s pride is also directly contrasted with his sudden subjection to love, as ‘he that now was moost in pride above, / Wax sodeynly moost subgit unto love’ (
i. 230–1). However, this emphasis on Troilus’s pride seems to accord more with the representation of pride in early romances and the works of Ovid than with the insular tradition in which it becomes a gendered trope.
4 See the discussion in the Introduction. While other Middle English romances develop the motif of the proud lady in love, discussed in Chapter 2, Chaucer seems instead to build upon models like the
Roman de la Rose, Ovid’s Narcissus, and medieval rewritings of the Narcissus story, in which pride is not necessarily gendered. This is significant because while pride still frames resistance negatively, there may be slightly different implications for the representation of Troilus compared to the proud ladies here. While Troilus incites Cupid’s anger and vengeance for his rejection of love, he does not provoke anxiety or attempts to challenge his resistance from the human characters within the poem. Indeed, his expression of romantic a(nti)pathy differs from those of the proud ladies and the other knights discussed in this chapter: while Troilus is determined not to fall in love with a particular woman, he does seem to participate in heterosexual cultural practices, such as the aesthetic appreciation and objectification of women. At the temple, he is to be found
Byholding ay the ladies of the town,
Now here, now there; for no devocioun
Hadde he to non, […]
But gan to preise and lakken whom hym leste. (i. 186–9)
Aesthetic appreciation does not negate the possibility of asexuality or other queer orientations, but Troilus does seem to be positioned more as making a conscious choice to avoid loving any woman in particular than as being sexually uninterested in women generally.
5 In this light, Troilus is similar to the knight in Lai de l’Ombre, whom Love determines to conquer because of his lack of commitment to one woman – though this knight, unlike Troilus, explicitly engages in sexual relationships without committing himself to love. See Jehan Renart, Le Lai de l’Ombre, ed. by Alan Hindley and Brian J. Levy, trans. by Adrian P. Tudor, Liverpool Online Series, Critical Editions of French Texts, 8 (Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2004). This seems to be accepted by his own society as an expression of masculine detachment: Troilus leads a group of young knights with him, mocking any who show signs of devotion to one particular woman, in what could be seen as a variation on the ‘felawe masculinity’ Carissa Harris identifies in Chaucer’s other works.
6 Carissa M. Harris, Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Education in Late Medieval Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), pp. 26–66. While Harris defines ‘felawe masculinity’ as predicated on membership of the mercantile–artisan class, its focus on homosocial bonds and dehumanising attitudes to women resonates with the portrayal of Troilus here. Troilus is condemned and punished by Cupid for his proud refusal to love, but not by his own society, in which it is accepted as masculine detachment.
Troilus being shot by Cupid’s arrow is described in violent terms; as Cory James Rushton notes, ‘the punishment aspect is obvious, given the eventual fate of Troilus’.
7 Cory James Rushton, ‘The Awful Passion of Pandarus’, in Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain, ed. by Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 147–60 (p. 158). However, Chaucer also combines the violence of Troilus’s subjection to love with an explicit focus on his consent. When Troilus has reflected on Criseyde’s goodness, ‘with good hope he gan fully assente / Criseyde for to love, and nought repente’ (
i. 391–2). Likewise, in Troilus’s song, he asks love
How may of the in me swich quantite,
But if that I consente that it be?
And if that I consente, I wrongfully
Compleyne. (i. 412–15)
And again, when Pandarus urges Troilus to repent his pride towards the God of Love, Troilus proclaims ‘a, lord! I me consente’ (
i. 936). The repeated use of ‘consent’ is striking and seems to be unusual in a romance context. The
Middle English Dictionary and
Oxford English Dictionary both list references to consent that come primarily from religious (and sometimes historical) sources, such as
Handlyng Synne, the
South English Legendary, and
Cursor Mundi.
8 ‘Consenten v.’, Middle English Dictionary, ed. by Frances McSparran et al., Middle English Compendium (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2000–18) <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED9364> [accessed 4 February 2021]; ‘Consent n.’, Middle English Dictionary <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED9361> [accessed 4 February 2021]; ‘Consent, v.’ and ‘Consent, n.’, Oxford English Dictionary, ed. by Michael Proffitt et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) <https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/39518> and <https://oed.com/view/Entry/39517> [accessed 1 October 2022]. Only isolated examples from other romances are cited, such as
Kyng Alisaunder (which is not referring to consent in the context of marriage or sex but in the context of political rule). In Chaucer’s own work, forms of ‘consent’ appear most often in
The Parson’s Tale and
The Tale of Melibee, suggesting that ‘consent’ did have religious and solemn connotations for Chaucer, too.
9 See John S. P. Tatlock and Arthur G. Kennedy, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer and to the Romaunt of the Rose (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1963; first publ. 1927), p. 164. ‘Assent’ is more common in romance writing, although again seems somewhat over-represented in
Troilus and Criseyde, along with
The Clerk’s Tale,
amongst Chaucer’s oeuvre.
10 Ibid., p. 49. While Fiona Somerset has argued that Troilus’s thoughts reveal that ‘his consent is irrelevant to the ways in which power is exercised’, persuasively indicating how this reflection and the involvement of Cupid problematises the idea of the bounded self, philosopher Quill Kukla’s recent work on a non-ideal theory of sexual consent has explored how consent can be scaffolded and upheld while acknowledging the contingency of human agency.
11 Fiona Somerset, ‘Consent/Assent’, in A New Companion to Critical Thinking on Chaucer, ed. by Stephanie L. Batkie, Matthew W. Irvin, and Lynn Shutters (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2021), pp. 27–41 (p. 39); Quill R. Kukla, ‘A Nonideal Theory of Sexual Consent’, Ethics, 131.2 (2021), 270–92. Drawing upon Kukla’s work, consent can be considered not irrelevant or relevant but relative: while Troilus’s ability to consent is limited, his explicit narration of consent is unusual in the context of resistance to love and suggests that he, at least, feels that his consent
should matter. Indeed, that Chaucer explicitly narrates his consent offers a significant and sustained contrast to Criseyde.
While Troilus explicitly proclaims his consent, even if this is compromised by Cupid’s attack and his own initial resistance (which I have suggested can itself be seen as a choice), Criseyde’s consent is more complex and uncertain. As Nicholas Perkins argues, ‘Criseyde’s constrained choices, and her movement towards loving Troilus, should not be diminished as acts of will or agency simply because they operate under constraint’: Criseyde exemplifies the nuanced operation of agency by and through the figure of the reluctant lover, who is often constrained to love but also exerts a measure of choice and agency within the framework of constraint.
12 Nicholas Perkins, The gift of narrative in medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021), p. 138. Criseyde does experience love for Troilus, asking ‘who yaf me drynke?’ (
ii. 651) in a clear allusion to the sudden passion of Tristan and Isolde’s love.
13 See further Perkins, The gift of narrative, p. 139. Chaucer also gives Criseyde an extended monologue in which she debates whether she can love Troilus – a monologue that is similar to, if much more practical and measured than, Troilus’s earlier musings on his love for her.
14 See further Saunders, ‘Love and the Making of the Self’, p. 144; Corinne Saunders, ‘Affective Reading: Chaucer, Women, and Romance’, in Women’s Literary Culture and Late Medieval English Writing, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy and Diane Watt (= Chaucer Review, 51.1 (2016)), pp. 11–30 (p. 24). Yet this monologue consistently reveals Criseyde’s indecision about love and her preoccupation with social concerns, recalling Ydoine’s greater attention to social considerations in
Amadas et Ydoine. Criseyde determines she may love, but fears the uncertainty of love, the loss of her liberty, and the potential for gossip. Switching between ‘hope’ and ‘drede’, ‘hoot’ and ‘cold’, Criseyde is still poised ‘bitwixen tweye’ (
ii. 810–11) when she abandons her musings to join her nieces. While Troilus commits to loving Criseyde, Criseyde’s own feelings for Troilus and whether she desires to act on them remain uncertain. Criseyde’s infamous ‘slydynge’ (
v. 825) is present from the outset of the poem, alongside her love, indecision, and experiences of coercion.
15 For a recent subtle analysis of Criseyde’s shifting thoughts, see Stephanie Trigg, ‘Cloudy Thoughts: Cognition and Affect in Troilus and Criseyde’, in Gender, Poetry, and the Form of Thought in Later Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth A. Robertson, ed. by Jennifer Jahner and Ingrid Nelson (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, 2022), pp. 25–46.The entanglement of Criseyde’s consent with coercion is perhaps most evident in her response to Troilus’s insistence that she ‘yeldeth yow, for other bote is non!’ (iii. 1208), when she declares
Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte deere,
Ben yolde, ywis, I were now nought heere! (iii. 1210–11)
Framing this as a response to a
demand for consent (and thus consent given under duress) and obscuring its precise development by remaining unclear about when she had yielded, other than ‘er now’, Criseyde’s words highlight the ambivalence of her consent. Louise Fradenburg and Christopher Cannon have pointed to the other elements of this scene that undermine Criseyde’s apparent consent, observing that ‘just previous to this moment, the narrator has posed the following rhetorical question: “What myghte or may the sely larke seye, / Whan that the sperhauk hath it in his foot?”’, detracting from her claim that she has already yielded and is with Troilus willingly.
16 Fradenburg, ‘Loss, Gender and Chivalry’, pp. 99–100; Christopher Cannon, ‘Chaucer and Rape: Uncertainty’s Certainties’, in Representing Rape, pp. 255–79 (pp. 268–9; first publ. in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 22 (2000), 67–92). See also Rushton, ‘The Awful Passion of Pandarus’, p. 152; Perkins, The gift of narrative, pp. 141–2. For an alternative reading, see Jill Mann, ‘Troilus’s Swoon’, in Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory, ed. by Mark David Rasmussen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), pp. 3–19 (pp. 16–17). Criseyde’s passive declaration that she has ‘ben yolde’ is also intriguing in this respect (as Somerset notes), as it could imply she has
been yielded up,
17 Somerset, ‘Consent/Assent’, p. 38. perhaps subtly alluding to the way in which Pandarus has yielded her to Troilus.
18 On Pandarus’s role, see Cathy Hume, Chaucer and the Cultures of Love and Marriage (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 167–8; Rushton, ‘The Awful Passion of Pandarus’; Gretchen Mieszkowski, Medieval Go-Betweens and Chaucer’s Pandarus (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Criseyde’s words of apparent consent within this scene are complicated by Chaucer in a more subtle and pervasive way than Troilus’s. Although Troilus and Criseyde are both initially reluctant to love, their resistance is explored in different ways and to different extents by Chaucer, positioning romantic a(nti)pathy as a more complex or problematic issue when expressed by women than by men. There may also be an additional factor at work here: Criseyde’s status as a widow in Boccaccio’s and Chaucer’s narratives may have encouraged a greater exploration of the ways in which she might be coerced into another relationship by a family member. In the later medieval period, ‘kings and feudal superiors as well as heads of families continued to play a major role in the remarriage of widows of the elite – sometimes with the assent and even the encouragement of these widows, but often by exerting pressure in a number of ways’, while widows were the most common victims of bride-theft, a problem Caroline Dunn notes was increasingly the subject of legislation in the fifteenth century.
19 Rhoda L. Friedrichs, ‘The Remarriage of Elite Widows in the Later Middle Ages’, Florilegium, 23.1 (2006), 69–83 (p. 71); Caroline Dunn, Stolen Women in Medieval England: Rape, Abduction, and Adultery, 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 87–97. Troilus and Criseyde does not directly confront the coercion of widows into remarriage, remaining focused upon love and sexuality in keeping with the classical setting of the romance, but the coercion Criseyde faces may comment on this contemporary social issue.
In addition to addressing the particular vulnerability of the widow, Chaucer’s interest in the complexity and problematics of women’s resistance and consent is notable in view of the broader preoccupations with raptus in Troilus and Criseyde. As Elizabeth Robertson notes,
Various kinds of rape permeate
Troilus and Criseyde. Helen’s rape, or abduction, instigates the war against Troy. Throughout the work, Criseyde is threatened with rape as forced coitus, first from Troilus, and then from Diomedes. Before she is given over to the Greeks, Troilus considers the possibility of ‘ravishing’ Criseyde.
20 Robertson, ‘Public Bodies and Psychic Domains’, p. 298. See also the discussion in Cannon, ‘Chaucer and Rape’, pp. 263–5.Just as Chaucer uses the term ‘consent’ for Troilus’s acceptance of love, so too does he use the term ‘rape’ later in the poem, ‘for nearly the first time in English literature’, as Robertson observes; Carolyn Dinshaw notes that this word occurs rarely in Chaucer’s work, further heightening its significance.
21 Robertson, ‘Public Bodies and Psychic Domains’, p. 281; Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 8. When Troilus is reluctant to abduct Criseyde to prevent her being exchanged for Antenor, Pandarus declares
It is no rape, in my dom, ne no vice,
Hire to witholden that ye love moost. (iv. 596–7)
Troilus and Pandarus’s explicit discussion of rape and
raptus calls the problematic aspects of Criseyde’s consent to the reader’s attention perhaps more starkly than anywhere else in the poem, retrospectively adding to the uncertainty of Criseyde’s consent compared to Troilus’s. Pandarus’s own perspective on what is or is not a rape is particularly provocative in view of his coercive influence on Criseyde throughout the poem. In addition, this conversation takes place between Troilus and Pandarus, when ‘this discussion should not be taking place between two men, but rather between Troilus and Criseyde’.
22 Robertson, ‘Public Bodies and Psychic Domains’, p. 294. It later does, with Criseyde herself rejecting the possibility of eloping (
iv. 1528–1652), but the order of these conversations draws attention to the prioritisation of Troilus’s and Pandarus’s desires over Criseyde’s. This exchange thus again draws out the differences between Troilus’s and Criseyde’s resistance and consent, highlighting that these issues were treated differently in accordance with gendered constructs.
Troilus and Criseyde raises important and often uncomfortable questions about the significance of consent, the power of coercion, and the gendered dynamics of the transition from resistance to participation in romantic and sexual relationships. But while it attends to differences in how gender might influence experiences of resistance and consent, on a narrative level the connections between Troilus’s and Criseyde’s resistance to love are also important. By prefiguring Criseyde’s reluctance, Troilus places additional pressure upon her to accept love, as he has already modelled this narrative trajectory for her, indicating the normative function that could be served by pairing two reluctant lovers together. This expected trajectory is exploited by Pandarus in the poem, both to persuade Criseyde to love Troilus and to reassure Troilus of the likelihood that she will love him, telling him that there
Was nevere man or womman yet bigete
That was unapt to suffren loves hete,
Celestial, or elles love of kynde. (i. 977–9)
Troilus himself aptly illustrates this point, supporting Pandarus’s reasoning. Referring to Criseyde specifically, Pandarus then declares ‘it sit hire naught to ben celestial’ (i. 983);
it sate hire wel right nowthe
A worthi knyght to loven and cherice,
And but she do, I holde it for a vice. (i. 985–7)
Commenting on Pandarus’s conversations with Criseyde, Cathy Hume observes that
if Pandarus plays on Criseyde’s obedience and reliance on him as a familial protector, he also works on her as a courtly friend. These roles parallel two kinds of cultural pressure, which can be represented by the rival voices of moralising advice literature and love-glorifying romance, but surely reflect a more general tension in late medieval society. Pandarus combines these competing pressures in one person and makes them act together, to powerful effect […] tr[ying] to invoke a sense of love as something she is obliged to do rather than something she is obliged to resist.
23 Chaucer and the Cultures of Love and Marriage, p. 169.Troilus and Criseyde provocatively explores the tension between contemplative life and erotic love, not only through Pandarus’s comments but also in Criseyde’s own sense that ‘a widewes lif’ (ii. 114) should be to ‘rede on holy seyntes lyves’ (ii. 118), and perhaps most extremely in the narrator’s declaration after the consummation scene that
Now is this bet than bothe two be lorn.
For love of God, take every womman heede
To werken thus, if it comth to the neede. (iii. 1223–5)
By combining a plea ‘for love of God’ with advising women to be sexually active, Chaucer draws attention to
Troilus and Criseyde’s dramatisation of a fundamental division within medieval culture, between the lay world of love, marriage, and procreation, and the rejection of sexuality and (to some extent) marriage in clerical and ascetic circles. Resistance to love is an apt motif through which to address this division, as reluctant lovers can be positioned between these two worlds. Criseyde is given religious associations from the start, as she is described as ‘aungelik’, ‘an hevenyssh perfit creature’, but she is ultimately led away from piety towards earthly love and consciously rejects a religious model of life in her monologue on her feelings for Troilus, declaring ‘I am naught religious’.
24 ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, i. 102, i. 104, ii. 759. Although Saunders observes that Criseyde’s ‘presence opens the way to the celestial’ for Troilus, for Criseyde Troilus’s love perhaps has the opposite effect, moving her from a life of chaste widowhood to her involvement in multiple love affairs: see ‘Love and the Making of the Self’, p. 142. Troilus and Criseyde depicts loving as the expected and accepted course of action, reflecting the generic priorities of romance, but the narrative trajectory also holds this up to question and critique. While Troilus’s own modelling of the transition from reluctant to willing lover provides a powerful example that sets the reader’s expectations for Criseyde, Chaucer is not straightforwardly extolling love and secular life above chastity and virginity.
Instead, Chaucer’s dramatisation of the conflict between earthly and heavenly love is part of
Troilus and Criseyde’s provocative and ambivalent approach to
love.
25 For further discussions of love in Troilus and Criseyde, indicative of some of the different views of the poem, see Marcia Smith Marzec, ‘What Makes a Man? Troilus, Hector, and the Masculinities of Courtly Love’, in Men and Masculinities in Chaucer’s ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, ed. by Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 58–72; Saunders, ‘Love and the Making of the Self’; Derek Brewer, ‘Chivalry’, in A Companion to Chaucer, ed. by Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 58–74 (pp. 70–1). The ending of the poem, with Troilus’s ascent into the heavens and his sense of the futility of love, has been particularly but perhaps misleadingly significant for interpreting its attitude towards love. Noting that ‘modern criticism has interpreted the poem through a retrospect’, while Chaucer’s later retraction ‘would have been scarcely necessary if he shared the religiose modern interpretation of the poem as a cumulative critique of earthly love’, Barry Windeatt suggests
It is not too soon to seek a reading of the poem’s approach to love that attempts to match the openness and open-endedness of
Troilus itself as inseparably both a humanist and experimental work. […] It has been uncommon – yet logical and timely – for the poem’s conclusion itself to be included as not more than one among that multiplicity.
26 Windeatt, ‘Love in a Manner of Speaking’, pp. 82, 95.Rather than condemning love, Chaucer questions the performance of love – its rituals, tropes, and social mannerisms – throughout the poem.
27 See further Windeatt, ‘Love in a Manner of Speaking’, p. 86. Troilus’s initial hostility to love is more important to this than has previously been acknowledged, as Chaucer adds to his questioning of the tropes of romance and courtly love by framing Troilus within the Ovidian and romance framework of resisting love as arrogance. Notably, Chaucer seems to express doubt about the trope of the reluctant lover’s conversion when Criseyde starts to favour Troilus, as the narrator suggests that some might think
This was a sodeyn love; how myght it be
That she so lightly loved Troilus
Right for the firste syghte. (ii. 667–9)
This doubting perspective is partly affirmed when the narrator clarifies,
28 Although, for a contrary view, see Mann, ‘Troilus’s Swoon’, p. 8.I sey nought that she so sodeynly
Yaf hym hire love, but that she gan enclyne
To like hym first. (ii. 673–5)
No such question of the plausibility of love at first sight was raised in relation to Troilus falling in love, and yet the connections between Troilus’s and Criseyde’s transformation from reluctant to willing lover ensure that any question raised about Criseyde’s love may also reflect back upon Troilus’s.
29 Fradenburg also notes that this passage ‘pushes the point of the contrast upon us’: ‘Loss, Gender and Chivalry’, p. 103. This is not to say that Chaucer, or his narrator, is cynically disavowing Troilus’s love: the implied contrast perhaps suggests that love at first sight does exist and may even happen to those who wished to avoid it.
30 For a contrasting perspective, see Rushton, ‘The Awful Passion of Pandarus’, p. 160. Chaucer seems to find the romance trope of resistance to love good to think with, as it intersects with ideas about the will and its violation, consent and
raptus, and the operations of human, divine, and supernatural agency. Crucially, Chaucer also seems to recognise resistance to love as a trope particularly associated with romance. It recurs elsewhere in his
Knight’s Tale,
Wife of Bath’s Tale (not in relation to the rape at the beginning but the knight’s resistance to loving the loathly lady),
Man of Law’s Tale,
Franklin’s Tale, and
Merchant’s Tale, works that between them make up a significant proportion of Chaucer’s romances.
31 Resistance to love is also mentioned briefly in The Book of the Duchess, perhaps more in the form of dangier (lines 1242–3), and is a major thematic concern in The Parliament of Fowls. In portraying both Troilus and Criseyde as reluctant to love in different ways, and for different reasons, and making their romantic a(nti)pathy part of his interrogation of romance tropes and the stylisation of love, Chaucer reveals the capacious functions to which resistance to love could be put and highlights the understanding of this
as a generic trope.