Criseyde in Troilus and Criseyde

Coghill refers to a key disagreement between Troilus and Criseyde and another(prenominal) medieval romances, which is Chaucer's "full awareness that a romantic hero is often ridiculous, especially at his most(prenominal) romantic; but he is not in the least the less sympathetic for being so" (Coghill xxiv). This argues a understanding of psychological realism in Chaucer's conception that runs counter to what could be called the received wisdom of the conventions of courtly love. Further to this point, Howard looks at Chaucer's demeanor in terms of the imminent decline of feudalism and the fiction of chivalry, and the beginnings of a large-scale fracture of medieval culture toward the last achievements of the Renaissance. He suggests that Chaucer's animateness and work, undergoing the personal transformations associated with the vicissitudes of courtly life under Richard II, was illustrative of a society and culture that was itself in transformation (Howard xv). According to Howard, for all practical purposes "by Chaucer's time scholasticism seemed formalistic and abstract, frigidly academic, and irrelevant to the realities of life" (Howard 31).

The realities of life for Richard II, of course, devolved into his abdication. Similarly, the realities of life for Criseyde as an individual and as a representative flake of woman seem central to understanding her behavior and psychology in the unfolding narrative of Troilus and Criseyde. To see how this comes about, it is useful to

'No, dearest niece.' 'O well, I am capability;

Criseyde does attempt to be as good as her word, prevaricating with Diomede, who wants to cook her not least because she is a prize of the major powerful in Troy, hence a trophy proof of the Greek who takes the prize. graduation exercise she raises the objection of homesickness for Troy, then the feature that she was married; Diomede persists. Only when she sees that any idea of returning to Troy is mere illusion (V.144) does she throw overboard herself to be seduced by Diomede, and when that happens she also acknowledges that, at long last, she has give the one possession she alone could claim:

Criseyde correctly gauges the center of these preoccupations as well.

In answering his long letter, which begs her to come to him to dispense with him from pain but which does not express concern for her well-being except insofar as it may have the power to wish him well and relieve him of his dreadful misery at her difference, she observes that "It seems you have not taken for the best / What Heaven has ordained, and what you care for / Most in your memory is your own pleasure" (V.230). Criseyde's clannish thoughts are not disclosed after the letter, which may visor for what has been cited as the "ambiguity" of her character and betrayal (Fries 58-9). But the fact that Troilus's letter very clearly delineates his self-absorbed sense of loss and very clearly omits any unselfish concern for the lamb Other, whose fate in the Greek camp is as a practical matter far from certain, may also beg off the absence of any more of Criseyde's internal monologues. In other words, the real ambiguity is not wherefore Criseyde betrays Troilus but why Chaucer does not feel compelled to justify beyond the point of the letter the psychological processes informing Criseyde's response to him. Indeed, it is only after a series of importunate letters from Troilus, all carrying the same message, that Criseyde finally, "in pity . . . took her pen" (V.227). Criseyde's letter is the last
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