#46 Troilus and Criseyde

I've finally gotten to my Riverside Chaucer with the hopes of completing the complete Chaucer this summer.  So I began by reading what is considered one of his finest works, with the exception of the Canterbury Tales.

Just over 8,000 lines of poetry, Troilus and Criseyde was long, but methinks it should have been longer.  I read this poem before, but this is the first time I read it in Chaucer's original english, and I was pleased.  The poem is broken into 5 books, and at the slow pace of storytelling there could easily have been 2 additional ones.  I felt the ending happened too suddenly, like Chaucer got bored and quickly finished it.  THe abrupt ending did not make Criseyde appear as bad as I remembered her as being.  Somehow I remembered her being even more fickle and that Dionedes Killed Troilus on the battlefield, both of which did not happen.  Maybe Shakespeare's play of the same name is confusing me.  By the way, Shakespeare's play seems like a Michael Bay adaptation of the poem.  "How many fight scenes can I have in this play?"

I enjoyed Chaucer's subtle humor whenever Pandarus was on the scene.  He was the best character, and his name shall live in infamy as a funny go-between.  His take on love is shallow, deceitful, and without emotion.  His advice to the two young lovers was anti-thetical to love.  At one point as he is wooing Criseyde on behalf of Troilus he tells her, in essence, "If you say no Troilus shall die of love, and I do love that man that I too shall die.  So you would be the cause of both of our deaths.  Don't be so wicked as to say no."  What a woo!

Of course this is a poem about love on this world set in the ancient times.  Chaucer reminds the reader at the end, in what made me laugh, that we are all Christian readers, so this isn't really a tragedy.  He has Troilus die, or was it Achilles?, go to heaven and look at how insignificant love on earth is.  So this poem I was reading for 8,000+ lines was insignificant.  I think this was Chaucer using some irony.  Who couldn't read this and laugh?  Though at the same time this small print was his way of getting around the church censers.