The Christian Classicist's Dilemma

The Christian Classicist's DilemmaAuthor(s): Katherine LeverSource: The Classical Journal, Vol. 58, No. 8 (May, 1963), pp. 356-361Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and SouthStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3294326 .

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THE CHRISTIAN CLASSICIST'S DILEMMA

I AM . . AT DULCARNOUN," Criseyde says to her uncle Pandarus, and

Pandarus replies, "Dulcarnoun called is

'flemyng of wrecches.' "1 To be at "dulcarnoun" is to be at the 47th propo- sition of the first book of Euclid, a point of great difficulty because one is forced to choose between the horns of a dilemma. In Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde it is not only the characters who must choose between two unsatisfactory alternatives but also the poet and with him the reader. For Troilus and Cri-

seyde the choices they make result in

wretchedness; for Pandarus, who considers dilemmas only the vanquishers of wretches, his refusal to admit he is in a dilemma makes his end also a wretched one. Chaucer, as poet, is caught between the characters he has created and the plot he has inherited. As man, he faces the metaphysical dilemmas posed by love, by Fortune, and by the foreknowledge of God. As a Christian by birth and as a classicist by education and taste, he, like Milton and many another learned man, recognized the conflict between the beauty and bril- liance of the classics and their paganism. When Beauty is Falsehood, which is a man to choose?

Troilus is the first to face a dilemma: his love for Criseyde should be kept a

secret (1.737), but to die from unre-

quited love would be foolish. Hearing Pandarus urge him to tell whom he

loves, he thinks of his folly, for nothing would be accomplished by his slaying himself (1.821-6); but not until Panda- rus promises to help Troilus attain his

love, even though the loved one were his sister, does Troilus reveal Cri-

seyde's name. The pleasure of Pandarus seems the natural reaction of a friend, since he praises Criseyde's good name, wisdom, and "gentilesse"; it is only later when Troilus fears that Criseyde will not listen to her uncle that we realize how extraordinary the reaction is. Troilus has naturally been reluctant to tell his friend that he loves Criseyde, knowing that his friend is her uncle and that an uncle's first duty should be the

protection of his niece's honor. Yet Pan- darus does not hesitate a moment. He feels no conflict between his position as friend and as uncle. If his niece will not love and cherish a knight, Pandarus will consider it a vice. He hopes to please both by bringing the affair to a happy consummation and then all three will be "gladed" (1.994).

Although Pandarus escapes being caught in dilemmas by not accepting their existence, he is well aware of the emotions aroused in others by being so



THE CHRISTIAN CLASSICIST'S DILEIMMA 357

caught. He presents his niece with the alternatives: love Troilus as he loves you or be responsible for the death of both Troilus and your uncle. Criseyde thinks of the many who have killed themselves for love. She considers that her "estat lith now in jupartie," and decides (11.470-2) :

Of harmes two, the lesse is for to chese; Yet have I levere maken hym good chere In honour, than myn emes lyf to lese.

Later that day, after Criseyde has seen the armed Troilus ride by her window, she weighs the alternatives of loving and not loving. She does not consider the possible death of her uncle nor of Troilus, but only her own safety and convenience. By not loving Troilus she may purchase his hate, dangerous for her since he is the son of King Priam and she is the daughter of a traitor. On the other hand, if she does return his love, she puts in jeopardy her security and liberty. Love is stormy; wicked tongues are quick to gossip; and men are notorious for the cooling of their love. Once again, Criseyde makes a choice. Her thought clears, and she says to herself (11.807-8):

He which that nothing undertaketh, Nothyng n'acheveth, be hym looth or deere.

To achieve the union of the lovers, Pandarus uses the same technique of boxing Criseyde within her own emotions. Twice Pandarus warns her that her refusal to see Troilus, supposedly suffering from jealousy, will "putte his lif al nyght in jupertie" (111.868,877). Criseyde's attempt to help Troilus by sending him her ring is deemed inade- quate by Pandarus. It is then that Cri- seyde says she is "at dulcarnoun." Her decision is less a choice than an abdica- tion of choice: " 'Than, em,' quod she, 'doth herof as yow list' " (111.939).

The major crisis in the lives of the lovers is the dilemma forced upon them

by the decision of Parliament to ex- change Criseyde for Antenor. When the proposal is made, Troilus in the Parlia- ment is once more caught between the necessity of secrecy to protect his lady's honor and his own desire to keep her. Love and reason contend within him (IV.162-8). No one else at the Par- liament is divided in mind. Hector with moral courage is repulsed by the suggestion. "We usen here no wommen for to selle," he says (IV.182), but he is shouted down and outvoted by the ma- jority, who see only their need for war- riors. There is no dilemma for those who see either what is morally right or what they believe to be politically ex- pedient. Dilemmas trap only those who both love and reason.

The torture of the lovers now begins in earnest, and the reader suffers with them in the suffocating torment of the trapped. Troilus' first reaction is to wish he were dead. In his utter despair he has no hope and thinks of no escape. Pandarus, also typically, is sad but not caught. He first suggests that Troilus take a new love to replace the old. When this suggestion is re- jected, he urges Troilus to ravish her. If Troilus is a man, he surely has the power to take and hold his woman. The answer of Troilus is an honest ap- praisal of his situation. The city of Troy is at war because of the ravishing of a woman. Troilus would be doing wrong if he withstood his father, the King, and the decision made for the city's good in Parliament. What is more, if Troilus openly seizes Criseyde, he publishes their affair and does her dishonor (IV. 572-4):

Thus am I with desir and reson twight: Desir for to destourben hire me redeth, And reson nyl nat, so myn herte dredeth.

Pandarus refuses to accept this emotional problem. Either Criseyde will stay with Troilus because she loves



358 KATHERINE LEVER

him, or she will leave him because she is false. If she is false, then Troilus can love her less (IV. 615-16).

Criseyde, like Troilus, reacts only in sorrow. She too anticipates an early death and thinks of the sorrow she will endure until that end. That night their wish for death is almost granted. Cri-

seyde falls into a swoon. Troilus, think-

ing she is dead, is about to slay himself with a sword, when Criseyde recovers. She assures Troilus that she too would have slain herself had she found Troi- lus dead. Instead she proposes the kind of action she has proposed before in similar situations: give in to immediate pressure with the hope that the consequences can be successfully managed. Thus she promises Troilus she will return within ten days, and re- assures him by sketching stratagems which will enable her to deceive her father. Troilus is doubtful. He sees all too clearly the difficulties which will confront her. Later, desperate, he re-

peats the suggestion of Pandarus that

they leave town together. Criseyde refuses for his sake as well as for her own. Troy needs Troilus. Moreover, her life would be in danger. For them to leave would brand Troilus a coward and herself shameful. The honor and

good name of both would be in jeopardy, perhaps unnecessarily since

peace might soon be declared. In any event she will return in ten days (IV. 1555-96).

The choice is made, a choice the lovers both regret. Troilus regrets it the very morning he rides with Cri-

seyde to the gates of Troy. He asks himself why he should not kill Diomede and steal Criseyde away, but he answers himself that Criseyde might herself be slain in the fight (V.45-9). Ten days later, when Criseyde finds her father unmoved by her stratagems, she wishes she had stolen away with Troilus (V.736-42). Criseyde is trapped. Her fa-

ther will not let her go, and Troilus will think her false. The only alternative - to try secretly to cross the enemy lines --would expose her to the dan- gers of being caught as a spy or falling into the hands of a wretch (V.701-5). Her words "I nam but lost" (V.706) echo the words of Troilus, "Thus am I lost" (IV.568). She foresees no hope of

success, yet her failure will make her seem false even if her heart is true. Worst of all, she must weep alone. She has no Pandarus now to guide and comfort her.

She has instead Diomede. Although Criseyde concludes her internal argu- ment with the decision to steal away to Troilus the next night without regard for "wikked tonges janglerie," two months later she is still far from that intention (V.755ff.). Diomede, who was determined to gain Criseyde's body from the moment he saw her, is "in his nedes prest and corageous" (V.800). No scruples prevent his immediate at-

tack, although he guesses at once that Troilus was Criseyde's lover. He says, as Criseyde had said to herself earlier, "For he that naught n'asaieth, naught n'acheveth" (V.784). On the tenth day after her arrival in the camp, the very day Troilus waits upon the walls, Dio- mede lays siege. On the eleventh day he returns and "gan pressen on"

(V.1011), leaving with her glove. That

night Criseyde lies in bed thinking of Diomede. Once again she considers the alternatives of yielding or not yielding to the pressure of a lover, and once

again she considers her safety. Just as before chastity was not an important consideration for her, so now faithfulness to Troilus is not involved in her

decision, and she yields to the immediate pressure (V.1023-9).

Meanwhile, Troilus, waiting in Troy, watching for Criseyde, blaming Cal- chas for Criseyde's failure to return, also considers crossing the enemy lines.



THE CHRISTIAN CLASSICIST'S DILEMMA 359

He too rejects this solution, his reason being that he can find no excuse suf- ficient to justify his presence in the Greek camp if he were discovered (V.1576-82).

One last choice remains for the three characters: the choice of ways of re- sponding to Criseyde's known falsehood. Each responds in character. Cri- seyde gives in to the immediate pressure while hoping for the alternative. She will at least be true to Diomede (V.1069-71). Yet she says she will never hate Troilus but will have for him a "frendes love," and that she will al- ways speak well of him and be sorry if he is in adversity. Pandarus once more simply rejects the trap: "I hate, ywys, Cryseyde" (V.1732). Troilus can nei- ther transfer his love to another nor hate Criseyde. She is still, with all her proven falsehood, his "swete may." In this emotional impasse he can only seek the physical death which is the counterpart of his emotional death.

Many readers, accustomed to modern novels, are impatient with the lovers for being caught in these dilemmas. They think the lovers themselves create the dilemmas unnecessarily. If only Troilus had wooed Criseyde openly and married her, their lives would have been happy. Criseyde says she does not want a husband to say "chek mat" to her (11.754), but she says this only to herself. Troilus makes no effort to overcome her resistance to mar- riage. Granted Criseyde is the daughter of a traitor and Troilus a prince, yet Deiphebus gives a dinner party for Criseyde, and Helen and Antigone are among the guests. Criseyde does not seem to be suffering from social dis- grace. If this were a modern novel, the action would be indeed implausible. But Chaucer was not a novelist creating people free to act within the limits of their characters and environment.

He was a mediaeval poet, and he was re-creating history.2

Chaucer himself is trapped. He has presented Criseyde as a very attractive and winning woman, one well able to evoke the passionate love of a prince and one worthy of it. Yet this same woman proves in fact to be false. Faced with the beauty of his own crea- tion and the falsity of her action, Chaucer makes clear that the story is responsible and he expresses openly his sympathy for Criseyde (V.1093-9). At the crucial point he refuses to accept what the story tells, "Men seyn -I not --that she yaf hym hire herte" (V.1050).

The reasons they were caught in these dilemmas are explored by the lovers themselves, who find their plight related to metaphysical dilemmas con- fronting every man. Troilus asks if love is good or bad (1.402-6):

If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me, When every torment and adversite That cometh of hym, may to me savory

thinke, For ay thurst I, the more that ich it

drynke.

The result of being in love is aptly expressed by Troilus in this image (I.415- 8):

Thus possed to and fro, Al sterelees withinne a boot am I Amydde the see, bitwixen wyndes two, That in contrarie stonden evere mo.

Criseyde bemoans the dilemma forced on human beings by the mutability of joy (111.820-3):

O brotel wele of mannes joie unstable! With what wight so thow be, or how thow

pleye, Either he woot that thow, joie, art muable, Or woot it nought; it mot ben oon of tweye.

If he does not know it, how can he have true joy being in ignorance? If he does know it, how can he have true joy fear-



360 KATHERINE LEVER

ing that he will lose it? She concludes that "ther is no werray weele in this world heere" (111.836). Troilus in a long passage reasons in much the same way about God's foreknowledge and man's free will, presenting the argu- ments men have given trying to recon- cile the wisdom and power of God with the freedom of man, but concluding (IV.978-80):

that from eterne if he Hath wist byforn oure thought ek as oure

dede, We han no fre chois, as thise clerkes rede.

Chaucer does not present the alternatives in the same way his characters do, but he clearly communicates the contraries at work within human beings and inherent in the universe. Love binds all things, and no man may "for- don the lawe of kynde" (1.236-8). In the preface to Book III Chaucer says (III.12-14):

God loveth, and to love wol nought werne; And in this world no lyves creature Withouten love is worth, or may endure.

Yet Chaucer concludes (V.1828) "Swich fyn hath, lo, this Troilus for love!" Love brings Troilus both bliss and

despair. Similarly, Fortune favors their love affair but only for a short time (111.622-3; IV.1-7). Even the desire of Troilus to kill Diomede is thwarted by Fortune (V.1763-4).

The sense of human beings trapped by their natures and caught unescap- ably on the turning wheel of Fortune is rendered acute by the images. The im-

age of Troilus in a rudderless boat caught between contrary winds has al-

ready been quoted. A curious recurrent

image is that of loved ones like fish

(III.33-5): Whan they kan nought construe how it may

jo She loveth hym, or whi he loveth here, As whi this fissh, and naught that, comth

to were.

Criseyde asks how she can live in sorrow thus (IV.764-5), "How sholde a fissh withouten water dure?" Diomede argues within himself (V.774-7):

How he may best, with shortest taryinge, Into his net Criseydes herte brynge. To this entent he koude nevere fyne; To fisshen hire, he leyde out hook and lyne.

No escape from these traps was possible for the pagan Troilus and Criseyde. The way was opened first by Christ. He alone "nyl falsen no wight" (V.1845). Chaucer in a famous passage at the end of Troilus and Criseyde exhorts "yonge, fresshe folkes" to repudiate worldly vanity and "thynketh al nys but a faire/ This world, that passeth soone as floures faire" (V.1840-1). This is the Christian belief as Chaucer con- ceived it - the love of Christ and the renunciation of "feynede loves" - a belief which solves the problems created by human passions and Fortune's turning wheel. In turn, however, the repudiation of worldly vanity creates a new dilemma for the Christian who is a classicist.

Chaucer, in his envoy to his "litel bok" (an envoy modelled on Ovid's envoy), had modestly expressed the hope that it would be considered a humble member of the company of epics com- posed by Homer, Vergil, Lucan, Sta- tius, and Ovid. Elsewhere I have tried to demonstrate that Chaucer was deep- ly affected by the classics and that Troilus and Criseyde was intended to be in form a classical epic. Yet Chaucer's belief as a Christian led him to count the works of the great classical authors as "worldly vanity" by reason of their

paganism. They were "feynede," not true. Chaucer saw the beauty of the

Aeneid; he believed it false. Character- istically, he renounced "the forme of olde clerkis speche/ In poetrie" along with the "payens corsed olde rites," and the "wrecched worldes appetites,"



THE CHRISTIAN CLASSICIST'S DILEMMA 361

only after having written one of the greatest English poems in classical form about pagan rites and worldly appetites. Also in character was Chau- cer's faithfulness to his renunciation. His two subsequent works were a love vision about good women and a report of a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Ancient characters have been assigned the ac- ceptable position of exempla, and the classical stories told by some of the pilgrims are subordinate parts of a non- classical form.

Chaucer's recognition of the problem and his solution present the modern Christian classicist with problems of our own. Are classicism and Christian- ity fundamentally incompatible? Was Chaucer's dilemma in fact the result of his misunderstanding of the nature and meaning of either the classics or of Christianity? If Chaucer was right,

was he a great poet because of or in spite of his Christian belief? Converse- ly, is Troilus and Criseyde a greater or lesser work of art than The Canter- bury tales because it is classical in form (both in its completeness and fin- ish as well as in its place in the West- ern tradition), whereas The Canterbury tales is decidely unclassical in form, content, and style? Faced with ques- tions like these, I feel like saying with Criseyde, "I am at dulcarnoun."

KATHERINE LEVER

Wellesley College

1 Troilus and Criseyde 111.930-1. All quotations from Chaucer are from The works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2d ed. (Boston 1957). The meaning is explained in a note on p.825.

2 Cf. Arthur Mizener, "Character and action in the case of Criseyde," PMLA 54 (1939) 65-81.



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The Christian Classicist's Dilemma