“Lovers’ Consolations of Philosophy” in Boccaccio, Machaut, and Chaucer

Abstract

"Lovers' Consolations of Philosophy" in Boccaccio, Machaut, and Chaucer Katherine Heinrichs CRITICS HAVE long debated Chaucer's purpose in putting into the mouth of Troilus the long, and rather comical, Boethian soliloquy on predestination and free will, in which he concludes that "'the bifallyng / Ofthynges that ben wist bifore the tyde, / They mowe nat ben eschued on no syde' " and prays to ''.Jove" -the only one who knows what the outcome will be-to "'bryng Criseyde and me fro this destresse."' 1 Whereas some older critics took Troilus at his word and described the poem as a tragedy of predestination, there is now general agreement that the soliloquy is a deliberate perversion of the Boethian argument, which goes on to dis­ tinguish simple andconditional necessity.2 It would seem that Troilus's own conclusion is unsatisfactory, not because he isa pagan-for there is nothing explicitly Christian about the Consolation- but because he is caught up in irrational pursuit ofthe falsefelicity rejectedby Boethius, and would rather consider himself fated than acknowledge his own responsibility for his decision to serve Fortune. As far as I know, however, it has not been remarked that parodies of The Consolation ofPhilosophy are conventional in medieval love poetry from the time of the Roman de la Rose. 3 Michael Cherniss has correctly described the dialogue between Reason and the 1 TC 4.960-1082, in Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 551-52. All subsequentreferences to the works ofChaucer are to this edition. 2 That opinion is well stated by D. W Robertson inA Preface to Chaucer(Princeton, N.].: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 494; and by Ida Gordon, The Double Sorrow o/Trotlus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 42-48. For a summary ofcritical opinion on the matter, see Alice Kaminsky, Chaucer'., Troilus and Criseyde and the Critics (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1980), pp. 41-71. 5 By "parodies" I meannot simply laments against Fortune that borrow from TheConsola­ tion ofPhilosophy, but adaptations of the Consolation by lovers or partisans of love who employ Boethian doctrine perversely in the service of false conclusions. I therefore omit mention of a number of "Boethian" complaints in the poetry of Boccaccio, Machaut, and Chaucer that do not conform to this description. 93 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Lover, in which he rejects her philosophical counsel, as a parody of the Consolation that "emphasizes the moral and intellectual distance between the philosophical Boethius and the sensual Amant."4 In a slightly different way, the later French dits amoureux of the type designated by James Wimsatt "poems of complaint and comfort"5 also parody the narrative structure of the Consolation; in Machaut's Fonteinne Amoureuse and Froissart's Paradis d'Amourwe are offered the complaining lover in place of the downcast philosopher, Venus or the personifications of love in place of Lady Philosophy, and a "consolation" intended to confirm the lover in his love-service in place ofone intended to free the philosopher from another sort of servitude to Fortune. But it is in three other poems-Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and Machaut'sJugement dou Roy de Be­ haingne and Remede de Fortune- that we find the "lovers' consolations of philosophy" most relevant to the soliloquy of Troilus. In these poems the perversion ofBoethian arguments by lovers or their partisans has not been perceived by scholars. In theElegia, Fiammetta-a young matron ofold "Partenope" famed for her beauty and chastity-is first loved and then abandoned by the deceitful bachelor "Panfilo." The narrative oftheElegiais slight; most ofits consider­ able length is taken up with the extravagant and increasingly irrational lament ofits heroine, who alternates between desperate hope ofher lover's return and threats ofsuicide in his continuedabsence. After briefly describ­ ing her innamoramento, she devotes the rest ofher 50,000-word "elegy" to elaborate complaints against Fortune, Venus, and Panfilo, tearful reminis­ cences of the time spent with her lover, and frenetic rationalizations ofhis delay in returning to her. She ends in despair, comparing herself to the betrayed ladies of Ovid's Heroides and calling on death and Panfilo in the same breath. Early scholars ofBoccaccio praised the Elegia...

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