Abandoned Women: Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer

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Abandoned Women

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Abandoned Women

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Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, & Chaucer

Suzanne C. Hagedorn

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Ann Arbor

Fur meine Groj3mutter ~

Anna Seifried Hagedorn

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mit Liebe und Herzlichem Dank.

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2004 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America @ Printed on acid, free paper 2007

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

A ClP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging, in, Publication Data Hagedorn, Suzanne C., 1968Abandoned women: rewriting the classics in Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer / Suzanne C. Hagedorn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Based on the author's dissertation (Cornell University). ISBN 0'472'11349,6 (alk. paper) I. Literature, Medieval-Roman influences. 2. Women in literature. 3. Boccaccio, Giovanni, 1313-1375-Characters-Women. 4· Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321-Characters-Women. 5. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400-Characters-Women. 6. Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 or 18 A.D.-Characters-Women. 7. Ovid, 43 B.C.-I7 or 18 A.D.-Influence. 8. Ovid, 43 B.C.-17 or 18 A.D. Heroides. L Title. 2003 PN682.W6 H34 809'93352042-dC2I 2003011962

Ora mi avvedevo che non di rado i libri parlano di libri, ovvero e come si parlassero fra loro. Ana luce di questa riflessione, la bib .. lioteca mi parve ancora pili inquietante. Era dunque il luogo di un lungo e secolare sussurro, di un dialogo impercettibile tra pergamena e pergamena, una cos a viva, un ricettacolo di potenze non dominabili da una mente umana, tesoro di segreti emanati da tante menti e sopravvissuti aHa morte di coloro che Ii avevano prodotti, 0 se ne erano fatti tramite. -Umberto Eco, Il Nome della Rosa

Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books; it is as if they spoke among themselves. In the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of along, centuries ..old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors. -trans. William Weaver

Acknow ledgtnents

his book has been written in the course of a long intellectual journey, and, naturally, I have incurred many debts along the way. In its earli . . est form, a dissertation at Cornell University, it benefited from the insights and criticisms of my committee members: Thomas D. Hill, Marilyn Migiel, and last but certainly not least, my chairman, Winthrop Wetherbee. My decision to explore this topic in the first place owes a great deal both to Pete Wetherbee, whose intertextual approach to Chaucer and classical erudition has stimulated and influenced my own thinking in graduate school and beyond, and to Marilyn Migiel, who encouraged my interests in I talian and feminist studies. Of course, my journey as a medievalist began even earlier; I decided to pursue this field partly as a result of the inspiring medievalists with whom I studied at Princeton. In particular, John Fleming got me excited about Chaucer's classicism, and Robert Hollander taught such a memorable Dante course that I decided to go to Florence and study Italian there. I appreciate their abiding interest in my scholarly efforts, and especially thank Robert Hollander for offering his comments on chapter 2 and answering several bibliographical queries about Boccaccio. Since embarking on my teaching career, first at the University of Ari . . zona and now at the College of William and Mary, I have been grateful for the generosity and enthusiasm of various colleagues at both institutions in

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

offering advice and responses to my work. At Arizona, I would especially thank Alan Bernstein, who generously read and commented on chapter 2. At William and Mary, I have appreciated the sense of community among medievalists stimulated by the Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and its chair, George Greenia. In particular, Peter Wiggins has been a tremendously helpful interlocutor about the relationship between classical and Italian texts and their English reception. Monica and Adam Potkay have provided many hours of stimulating conversation, insightful commentary, and moral support. Finally, I am grateful to two Chairs of the Department of English, Terry Meyers and Christopher MacGowan, for making the department a welcoming and supportive environment in which to pursue my research. In the course of writing this book, I have needed many items that are not available in regular library collections. I therefore thank the Reference and Interlibrary Loan staffs at Olin Library, the University of Arizona Library, and Swem Library for their patience and skill in tracking down and providing me with books, microfilms, and articles from obscure peri . . odicals. Likewise, I am grateful to the staff of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Cornell University for their help in accessing materials housed in the Dante and Petrarch collections, and to the staffs of the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Biblioteca Laurenziana for access to annotated Ovid manuscripts in their collections. A project like this could not succeed without financial assistance; I would like to thank the Mellon Foundation for its considerable support, both monetary and moral, throughout my graduate school years and the Rotary Foundation for funding my studies at the Universita degli Studi di Firenze. For two summer grants that enabled me to explore the commen . . tary tradition on Ovid and its afterlife in medieval Latin poetry, I thank the College of William and Mary. As the manuscript neared completion, a number of scholars, both known and unknown, contributed their time, expertise, and comments. At the University of Michigan Press, I am grateful for the patient assis . . tance of my editor, Chris Collins, and the perspicacious (but sadly, anony . . mous) readers of the manuscript, which has certainly improved as a result of their interventions. For thoughtful responses to earlier stages of the manuscript, I thank Marilynn Desmond, Warren Ginsberg, Tom Still . . inger, and Karla Taylor. Naturally, all errors and omissions remain my responsibility. I regret that Prof. Ginsberg's own book, Chancer's Italian

Acknowledgments

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Tradition appeared too late for me to take account of it in my own work on Chaucer, Dante, and Boccaccio. Chapter 2 appeared in an earlier form as "A Statian Model for Dante's Ulysses" in Dante Studies 105 (1997); I thank the editor, Christopher Kleinhenz, for permission to reprint it in a modified form. Finally, I thank the members of my family for their loving encourage . . ment of my academic career. Without the support of my parents, Arthur and Janet Hagedorn, and my brother Tom, I simply would not have had the strength and determination to complete this project. In that spirit, I dedicate this book to one of my most important role models: my grand . . mother, Anna Seifried Hagedorn, in honor of her courage in coming to America alone at the age of eighteen to learn a new language and begin a new life. Over the years, her dedication, perseverance, and unwavering faith have inspired me as I have faced my own very different set of chal . . lenges. Danke, Nana.

Contents

Introduction

Abandoned Women and Medieval Tradition

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ONE

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

TWO

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses Fraud, Rhetoric, and Abandoned Women 47

THREE

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Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus

Duplicity and Desire 75 F0 U R

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Abandoned Women and the Dynamics of Reader Response Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

Re . .gendering Abandonment 130 SIX

Chaucer's Heroides

The Legend of Good Women 159 Afterword

The Metamorphoses of Ovid's Heroines 187 Appendix

"Deidamia Achilli," ed. Stohlmann 193 Bibliography 197 Index

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Introduction Abandoned Women and Medieval Tradition

n one of the more evocative moments of his Confessions, the adult Augustine recalls his schoolboy crush on Dido: forced to memorize poetry about "the wanderings of some fellow called Aeneas" in his North African grammar school, the young Aurelius Augustinus found himself shedding tears for the tragic queen of Carthage. In his eloquent autobiog .. raphy, the older (and wiser) Augustine, bishop of Hippo, sternly chastises himself for this youthful folly-rather than weeping for Dido, he says, he should have been weeping for himself, since at that very moment he was in danger of losing eternal life for not loving God: "et haec non flebam, et flebam Didonem 'extinctam ferroque extrema secutam'" (Conf. 1.13: "And I was not weeping for this, but weeping for Dido, who 'sought with a sword an end to her woe''').! But even though the Christian bishop has tried to exorcise the pagan fiction that once gripped him so powerfully, he cannot excise it from his memory. Dido still haunts him. In fact, echoes of Virgil's Aeneid linger in Augustine's own farewell to Dido, as his words

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I. Citations of the Confessions come from S. Aureli Augustini, Confessionum !ibn XIII, ed. Martinus Skutella (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1969).

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ABANDONED WOMEN

reinscribe Aeneas's address to the shade of Dido in the underworld: "infe .. lix Dido, verus mihi nuntius ergo / venerat exstinctam ferroque extrema secutam"2 (Aen. 6.456-57: "Unhappy Dido! then what I heard was truethat you were no more, and had sought with a sword an end to your woe"). But after Aeneas greets her thus in the Fields of Mourning, Dido's ghost not only refuses to answer, she refuses even to look at him. She turns away, fleeing from the man who once forsook her as he tearfully watches her dis .. appear into the shadows. In Carthage, Dido had wept for Aeneas when he abandoned her, but in Hades, they reverse roles: Aeneas now weeps for Dido as she leaves him behind to seek her husband, Sychaeus, among the shades. Paradoxically, Augustine's allusive description of his schoolboy tears over Virgil's Dido associates him with both the abandoned queen and her abandoner, Aeneas. On the one hand, he links Dido's death with the pos .. sibility of his own spiritual suicide. On the other, the allusion that closes the passage associates Augustine's tears with those Aeneas sheds over the woman he had left behind by order of the Olympian gods. Since Augustine significantly deploys this Virgilian allusion at a moment when he firmly repudiates pagan literature in favor of Christian truth, Dido may be under .. stood allegorically as a figure for the Virgilian text that Augustine himself must leave behind as he pursues his Christian destiny. Like the Aeneid's wayfaring hero, Augustine revisits the ghosts of his own past, recalling where he has been in order to further his own redemptive spiritual journey. The poignant Virgilian verses that the older Augustine invokes even as he denounces his youthful tears for the dead Dido reveal that he understands not only what he has gained, but what he has lost. Indeed, Augustine's most vivid memories of his schoolboy study of the Aeneid center on loss: his fragmentary account of the Aeneid in the Con . . fessions mentions the burning of Troy, the shade of Creusa, and most importantly, the tragic love affair between Aeneas and Dido narrated in the poem's first four books. In Augustine's reading of Virgil's epic, the events of book 4 overshadow the rest of the poem; despite its title, the Aeneid becomes the story of Dido. Such a reading of the Aeneid emphasizes the personal toll that the glorious founding of the Roman Empire exacts

2. Quotations from the Aeneid are from The Aeneid of Virgil, ed. R. D. Williams, don: Macmillan, 1972).

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Introduction

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from individuals) This interpretation of Virgil's epic stresses its pathos and takes as its starting point the Virgilian narrator's evocative and empa . . thetic descriptions of characters who are lost, left behind, or abandoned as Aeneas makes his way on his fated journey to Italy-among them Creusa, Polydorus, Andromache, Helenus, Palinarus, and, of course, Dido. Nor does Augustine stand alone among ancient and medieval readers of the Aeneid in his emphasis on the epic's tragic romance rather than its martial glory; Ovid before him had highlighted this aspect of the Aeneid by telling Virgil's story from the forsaken Dido's vantage point in Heroides 7. And nearly a millennium after Augustine shed tears for Dido, Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame dramatizes an emotional reading of Virgil's epic from a distinctly Ovidian point of view. Chaucer's House of Fame begins by evoking a moving scene of reading familiar to a medieval audience steeped in Virgil's Aeneid. In book I of Virgil's epic, Aeneas stands in the temple Dido has built to Venus in Carthage, gazes at the images depicting the Trojan War, and weeps: "ani . . mum pictura pascit inani / multa gemens, largoque umectat flumine vul . . tum" (Aen. I.464-65: "His soul feeds on mere pictures; he sighs deeply and a wide stream of tears wets his face"). Likewise, in book I of the House of Fame, the narrator "Geffrey" dreams that he stands in the temple of Venus, viewing images taken from Virgil's Aeneid. While Geffrey does not literally weep, Chaucer clearly shows his intense emotional involvement with the pictures he sees in the temple. Like the young Augustine, Geffrey takes far more interest in reliving the fall of Dido than in remembering the fall of Troy or in following the fated progress of Aeneas's journey to Rome. A simple line count of the space allotted to various episodes in the poems reveals the overall pattern: the narrator condenses the first three books of the Aeneid into about ninety octosyllabic lines recounting the sack of Troy, Aeneas's flight from the burning city, and the hero's landing at Carthage (HF 1.143-238). But when Geffrey reaches book 4, his breakneck gallop through Virgil's epic slows down; he becomes so involved with Dido's story that it takes him nearly two hundred lines to narrate the events of this book of the Aeneid 3. Cf. the interpretations of the "private voice" in the Aeneid set forth by classicists including Adam Parry, R. D. Williams, and R. O. A. M. Lyne as well as the "Harvard School" of Virgil crit~ ics, who develop the interpretation articulated by M. C. J. Putnam. For a discussion of this trend in twentieth century scholarship, see S. J. Harrison, "Some Views of the Aeneid in the Twentieth Century," in Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 199°),5-10.

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alone (HF 1.239-432). Once Dido commits suicide, the narrator's interest in the story apparently dies with her; Geffrey's precis of the last eight books of the Aeneid takes a mere thirty~five lines (HF 1.432-67). Geffrey's retelling of Aeneid 4 stands out not only for its length but also for its intense emotional involvement with Dido. When, after hearing the story of his wanderings, Dido decides to make Aeneas "hyr lyf, hir love, hir lust, hir lord" (HF 1.258), the sympathetic narrator suddenly interjects a sermon on the falsity of appearances, exclaiming, Allas! what harm doth apparence, Whan hit is fals in existence! For he to hir a tray tour was; Wherfore she slow hirself, allas! Loa, how a woman doth amys To love hym that unknowyen ys! For, be Cryste, 10, thus yt fareth: "Hyt is not al gold that glareth."

After such moralistic observations on the perfidy of men in general and Aeneas in particular, Geffrey's imaginative sympathy with Dido only con~ tinues to deepen as he relates his bereft heroine's lamentations. As Christopher Baswell observes, once Geffrey's sentimental pity is aroused and his emotional involvement increases, the artifice of dependence on some ancient source com~ pletely crumbles, and Geffrey's narrative again moves from ecphrasis to the report of a speech directly overheard. s Likewise, Marilynn Desmond's reading of the House of Fame emphasizes the breakdown of the ekphrastic fiction that frames Geffrey's recounting of the Troy story. In discussing this portion of the text, she notes how Gef~ frey's slip into direct discourse affects the reader's own response to the nar~ rative:

4. All Chaucer quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the texts printed in The River, side Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 5. Christopher Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),233.

Introduction

5

We momentarily lose sight of the ekphrasis since Geffrey's perceptions and reactions dramatically intervene between us and the pictorial text he is viewing: his own account emphasizes that he is no longer attempting to narrate the story on the wall but has begun to seriously distort the picture as a result of the associative responses to the visual textuality encoded in the ekphrasis. 6 Of course, Geffrey is not the first medieval literary voyager to experience such striking auditory responses to the visual images he encounters on his journey. As she analyzes this section of the House of Fame, Karla Taylor draws attention to the relationship between the scenes Geffrey describes and the synesthetic images of humility that Dante the pilgrim encounters on the terrace of pride in the Purgatorio. 7 Moreover, Geffrey's disregard for his ekphrastic frame and flight into imaginative response make him strongly resemble yet another Dantesque pilgrim on an allegorical journey: to wit, Giovanni Boccaccio's narrator in the Amorosa Visione. Gazing at portraits of forsaken women prompts both Boccaccio's and Chaucer's first .. person narrators to imagine the sorrowful voices of these bereft figures and to view classical myths from their viewpoints. 8 But when Dido finally speaks her imagined lament in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and Chaucer's House of Fame, the tone of her eroticized elegy derives not from Virgil, who originated the story of the Carthaginean queen's tragic love affair, but from Ovid, whom medieval writers widely regarded as the classical expert par excellence on love and its discontents. As she reflects on Aeneas's opportunism, the Dido conjured up by Gef.. frey's imagination in the House of Fame sounds forlorn rather than furi .. ous-Ovidian rather than Virgilian. The heroine soliloquizes: "Allas," quod she, "what me ys woo! AlIas, is every man thus trewe, That every yer wolde have a newe, Yfhit so longe tyme dure, Or elles three, peraventure? 6. Marilynn Desmond, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval Aeneid (Minneapo~ lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 144-45. 7. Karla Taylor, Chaucer Reads "The Divine Comedy" (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 22-23· 8. See the discussion of the Amorosa Visione and its emotionally involved narrator in chap~ ter 4.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

As thus: of oon he walde have fame In magnyfyinge of hys name; Another for frendshippe, seyth he; And yet ther shal the thridde be That shal be take for delyt, Loa, or for synguler profit." In suche wordes gan to pleyne Dydo of hir grete peyne, As me mette redelyNon other auctour alegge I.

In the closing lines of this passage, Chaucer's Geffrey claims no source for Dido's lament other than his own dream, but as Sheila Delany (along with Baswell and Desmond) notes, the narrator actually relies on Ovid's Epistle of Dido in Heroides 7 for his "romance" view of Dido here and elsewhere. 9 In Geffrey's Ovidian retelling of the Aeneid, Dido talks far more than the poem's putative hero; in fact, Aeneas never gets a speech at all, let alone one of more than fifty lines like Dido's. Overcome with sympathy for his heroine, Geffrey continues relating Dido's despair for another forty . . five lines, concluding her speech with a plaintive lament for her lost fame:

o wel . . awey that I was born! For thorgh yow is my name lorn, And aIle myn actes red and songe Over al thys lond, on every tonge. wikke Fame!-for ther nys Nothing so swift, la, as she is! 0, soth ys, every thing ys wyst, Though hit be kevered with the myst. Eke, though I myghte duren ever, That I have don rekever I never, That I ne shal be seyd, alIas, Yshamed be thourgh Eneas, And that I shal thus juged be: "Loa, ryght as she hath don, now she

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9. See Sheila Delany, Chaucer's House of Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism, 2d ed. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, I994), 48-57; Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England, 235; Desmond, Reading Dido, I 48-49.

Introduction

7

W 01 doo eft . . sones, hardely"Thus seyth the peple prively.

(HF I.345-60) Of course, Dido's self.. conscious meditation on her subsequent fame is highly prescient: her "actes" will not only be "red and songe" by her own people, but by generations who come after her, including Geffrey himself. And of course, this concern with the vicissitudes of "fama" shows Chaucer's awareness of his Virgilian matter, since it clearly evokes the famous passage from Aeneid 4 in which Fame travels swiftly through Libya, spreading the news of Dido's love affair with Aeneas. 1o Despite the fears that Dido expresses about her reputation, sympathetic readers like Geffrey will judge her far less harshly than she condemns herself in these lines. After interpolating Dido's imagined la~ents, Geffrey returns to the plot of the Aeneid, albeit briefly. He tersely describes Dido's death, recom . . mending that the reader who wishes to know more Rede Virgile in Eneydos Or the Epistle of Ovyde, What that she wrot or that she dyde; And nere hyt to longe to endyte, By God, I wolde hyt here write.

Despite his claim in these lines that he has no room to include Ovid's epis . . tIe in his narrative, Geffrey's stated concern about excessive length does not prompt him to resume tracing Aeneas's wanderings at this point. Instead, he pauses for another fifty lines or so to meditate on various sto .. ries of trusting women abandoned by traitorous men, citing the examples of Phyllis and Demophoon, Briseis and Achilles, Oenone and Paris, Hyp .. sipyle and Jason, Medea and Jason, Deianira and Hercules, and Ariadne and Theseus. What prompts the narrator to insert this digressive catalog right in the middle of his summary of the Aeneid? Perhaps we could con .. jecture that immediately after referring his readers to the "Epistle of Ovyde," Chaucer's Geffrey took a break in order to reread Ovid himself, for all of the tales of abandoned women he recounts come straight from 10. See Aeneid 4.173--97. Ralph Hexter, "Sidonian Dido," in Innovations of Antiquity, ed. Ralph Hexter and Daniel Selden (New York: Routledge, 1992),341-42, discusses this passage of the Aeneid and its implications for understanding the multiple meanings of Dido.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Ovid's Heroides, the series of Latin verse epistles in which Ovid imagines how epic heroes might look were they viewed through the eyes (and words) of the suffering women they have left behind-Dido, Phyllis, Bri .. seis, Oenone, Hypsipyle, and Ariadne, among others. For Geffrey, then, the major point of the Aeneid lies in its portrayal of Dido's tragedy: Dido's lament rather than Aeneas's journey stands at the narrative center of the events pictured in the table of brass he views in the temple of Venus. The key to understanding "Geffrey's Aeneid" lies in what the narrator says he omits: the "Epistle of Ovyde," Ovid's imaginative account of the events of Aeneid 4 from Dido's point of view in Heroides 7. Reflecting on Dido's story (not to mention reading Ovid's version of it) leads Geffrey directly to other stories of abandonment and loss, distracting him (and his reader) from the triumphal conclusion of his hero's voyage. In Chaucer's House of Fame, Geffrey finds that he cannot simply sing of "arms and a man"; rather, his poem focuses on the pathetic plight of an abandoned woman that in turn leads him to meditate on male perfidy rather than heroic pietas. In the end, Dido's fame overshadows Aeneas's in the poetic House of Fame that Geoffrey Chaucer built and that Chaucer's Geffrey encounters in the course of the narrative. Like Chaucer's Geffrey and the young Augustine in whose footsteps he follows, generations of readers have "wept for Dido," metaphorically, if not literally. But why? In his eloquent and wide--ranging comparative study Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition, Lawrence Lipking suggests that Dido's poetic power lies in her passion, understood in the Latin sense as both suffering and emotion: Dido's suffering lingers in the mind long after Aeneas's plotting and piety have faded. The stubborn inertia of abandoned and desolate pas .. sion, however ineffectual, however opposed to action, can acquire a power of its own. I I The shade of Dido thus haunts readers of the Aeneid even as she haunts Aeneas himself. And, like Augustine and Chaucer, many of those readers have gone on to reinscribe her powerful story in their own writings. Indeed, within the last decade alone, three important books that address major medieval and Renaissance rewritings of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas-Christopher Baswell's Virgil in Medieval England: Figuring the I ! . Lawrence Lipking, Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989),3-4.

Introduction

9

Aeneid from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer, Marilynn Desmond's Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval Aeneid, and John Watkins's The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian Epic-have examined the perennial fascination of Dido. Moreover, the three books themselves attest to the phenomenon. 12 While the specific details of Dido's story of loss and abandonment are unique, she does not stand alone in her plight, as the catalog conjured up by Chaucer's Geffrey serves to indicate. Mutatis mutandis, her narrative resembles that of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other women in litera .. ture-not to mention in real life. I3 As Lipking points out, such stories recur with some frequency in most literatures of the world: "Indeed," he writes, "in some cultures the role of women in literature has been virtually identified with abandonment."I4 In the case of abandoned women, Lip .. king argues, victimization and powerlessness paradoxically become the key to poetic power. By their very nature, abandoned women are subversive figures, for they call into question not only the integrity of individual heroes, but the necessity for heroic action-and even action-itself.Is In the final chapter of his book, titled "Aristotle's Sister: A Poetics of Aban .. donment," Lipking argues that the sense of pain and loss that abandoned women pour out in their laments offers a challenge to traditional social structures, values, and even poetic genres that enshrine and celebrate male dominance and male exploits. I6 The voice of the abandoned women, left behind and left out, calls attention to the darker side of these social and poetic traditions, just as Virgil's story of Dido casts a shadow on the mar .. tial exploits of his hero Aeneas. Published in 1988, Lipking's Abandoned Women and Poetic Tradition remains a pathbreaking work, assembling and deftly analyzing an enor.. 12. See Baswell, Virgil in Medieval England; Desmond, Reading Dido. The latter work discusses medieval Latin, English, and French versions of Aeneid 4. John Watkins, The Specter of Dido: Spenser and Virgilian EPic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), reads Spenser's recastings of the Aeneas and Dido story as an allegory for the poet's confrontation with literary genres that threaten the ascendancy of the epic. 13. Like Lipking, I do not consider the difficulties of abandoned women to be a purely textual phenomenon. Following Lipking's appropriation of Auerbach's concept of "figura" to remind us that abandoned women have an extratextual as well as intertextual reality, I will generally refer to "figures" of abandoned women. 14. Lipking, Abandoned Women, xvi, xv. IS. See Lipking, Abandoned Women, 3, on how the passive suffering described in the laments of abandoned women challenge the principle of action that undergirds the Aristotelian concept of poetry. 16. Lipking, Abandoned Women, 209-28.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

mous variety of poetic inscriptions of female abandonment by authors both male and female. Lipking's interpretive field is breathtakingly large; he ranges from laconic and evocative Chinese poems to Sappho's renowned Second Ode and its translations through the centuries by Ca .. tullus and others to the Tale of Genji, Gaspara Stampa's sonnets, Pope's Eloisa, Byron's Donna Julia, Pushkin's Tatiana, Wordsworth's Laodamia, and the poetry of modern women including Emily Dickinson, H.D., Anna Akmatova, Marina Tsvetayeva, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich. While Lipking does invoke Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides in his catalog of images of abandonment and mentions Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta at various points in his book, he has comparatively little to say about the influence of these and other Latin authors on the transmission of the figure of the forsaken woman during the Middle Ages, especially as compared to his magisterial and compelling analyses of poems both more ancient (such as Sappho's Second Ode) and more modern, such as Pope's Eloisa to Abelard and Byron's Don Juan. But if we seek to understand the importance of the figure of the abandoned woman in the European literary tradition, it is essential to give the same sort of critical attention to the way canonical classical authors like Virgil, Ovid, and Statius portrayed the relicta, as well as considering how major vernacular writers of the Middle Ages like Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer transformed the figure of the forsaken women into what we might dub a "poetics of plaintiveness." Any medievalist studying representations of abandoned women in the Middle Ages should take as her starting point Virgil's Dido, the most important example of this literary type for medieval readers. Nevertheless, since skilled interpreters such as Baswell and Desmond have presented rich and rewarding interpretations of a variety of medieval texts and com .. mentaries relating to the Aeneid, this path requires no further tracing here. 17 Instead, I will follow in the footsteps of Chaucer's Geffrey, who uses the story of Dido as a reason to pause and meditate upon the stories of other abandoned women celebrated in classical myth and story, especially those recounted by Ovid in his Heroides. This study focuses specifically on the retellings and revisions of classical myths of abandoned women by Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, three late .. medieval vernacular writers who were careful readers and revisers of Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, as well as other classical auctores. Their elabo .. 17. In chapter 6, however, I shall revisit Dido's story.

Introduction

I I

rately intertextual fictions dominate the literary landscapes of medieval England and Italy, influencing generations of readers and writers. In differ .. ent ways, each of these writers is considered a literary father figure in his own vernacular; moreover, as "Dead White European Males" all three have sometimes been targets in the "culture wars" over the teaching of canonical literature in university curricula. Nevertheless, despite their reputation in some critical circles as cultural icons of a "phallogocentric" literary tradition that systematically repressed women, these three men of the Middle Ages took women's stories very seriously indeed. In some sense, each of these male poets constituted and constructed his own poetic identity through his encounters with women as real and as fictive audi .. ences-Dante through Beatrice; Boccaccio through Fiammetta and the group of sympathetic ladies he addresses in the Decameron; and Chaucer through the imagined female audience of Troilus and Criseyde, the sympa .. thetic yet critical Alceste of the Legend of Good Women, and of course, the Wife of Bath as the fictive audience member who transforms her experi .. ence of the Knight's Tale into an authoritative narrative that privileges female autonomy. Yet certainly, one of the most important ways that each of these writers engage women and their concerns is by imagining female lives and creat .. ing female voices through their poetic craft. Though Ovid may have been best known to medieval audiences in his ironic role as the praeceptor amoris, he taught these three male writers far more than how to woo and win a lover. Indeed, by assuming the poetic personae of the famous hero .. ines of classical history and mythology in the Heroides, in what Lynn Enterline (following Elizabeth Harvey) views as "transvestite ventrilo .. quism," Ovid had cleared the way for Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer to understand the crucial importance of women's voices and viewpoints for a fuller and more accurate account of past mythic and literary history.I8 In essence, the process of reading, reimagining, and reinscribing Ovid's Heroides in their own vernacular fictions teaches Dante, Boccaccio, and 18. For the image of transvestite ventriloquism, see Elizabeth D. Harvey, Ventriloquized Voices: Feminist Theory and English Renaissance Texts (London: Routledge, 1990), 1-14. Lynn Enterline, The Rhetoric of the Body from Ovid to Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 20-2 I, discusses Elizabeth Harvey's work on Ovid's "vocal cross~dressing" in relation to Renais~ sance texts. As she notes, "Ovid's penchant for ventriloquizing female voices occupies a crucial, if mysterious, place in the Metamorphoses as a whole" (3). "Over and over," Enterline argues, "Ovid tries to speak as if he were a woman, to find a convincing 'voice' for female suffering. He contin~ ually speaks 'beside' himself in his poetry, a trademark displacement of voice with which Shake~ speare in particular was fascinated" (I I).

12

ABANDONED WOMEN

Chaucer how to write from a revisionist perspective-how to recast and reconsider epic history and mythology from women's viewpoints. Of course, some critics inclined to judge medieval culture by modern . . day standards of behavior may consider this argument, that Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer consistently engaged women's voices, to be a recuperative step backward, a sort of apology for a patriarchal medieval literary tradi . . tion that deflects charges of sexism from major canonical writers.19 But in my view, it makes little sense to impose modern . . day ideological categories on long . . dead writers; I prefer to attempt to read these writers in the con . . text of their own historical moment, examining their use and transforma . . tion of the classical narratives in their own texts. In short, it is possible for a twenty . . first . . century feminist to view Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer as important precursors who articulated a coherent vision of women in his . . tory. While their visions of women and their roles may not measure up to modern . . day social standards for equitable treatment, Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer nevertheless present powerful and sympathetic views of women. Dante, in particular, makes it abundantly clear that he believes the eternal salvation of his soul came about only due to the timely inter . . vention of his beloved Beatrice, who saw his suffering and sent him Virgil to guide him on an otherworldly journey that climaxes in Dante's reunion with her.20 While this critical project has been inspired by the general feminist goal of studying the ways in which women have been represented in the literary art of the past, it is not grounded in the work of any single feminist theorist. In fact, my own meanderings among the byways of recent post . . modernist writings on gender theory lead me to concur with the incisive words of T oril Moi: I find poststructuralist work on sex and gender to be obscure, theoreti . . cist, plagued by internal contradictions, mired in unnecessary philo . . sophical and theoretical elaborations, and dependent on the 1960s sex/gender distinction for political effect. As for the positive objectives that the poststructuralists wish to achieve, Simone de Beauvoir 19. In contrast, see Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), for an account of Chaucer's gender ideology that expresses extreme skepticism over the attempts of modem critics to construct a "proto,feminist" Chaucer. 20. See the discussion of Dante's reunion with Beatrice in his Purgatorio at the end of chap, ter 2.

I ntroduction

13

achieved them first, and with considerably greater philosophical ele . . gance, clarity, and wit.21 Toward the end of her book, Moi includes a series of essays discussing specific literary works, prefacing them with an introduction that mentions how she has rediscovered "what a pleasure it is to work on literary texts."22 And I agree wholeheartedly with Moi about the "pleasure of the text," to borrow her Barthean phrase. My own critical practice is skeptical of the presuppositions about the philosophy of language and the failure of signs to signify articulated by proponents of poststructuralist theories of Ian . . guage and sexuality, most prominent among them Derrida and Lacan. While Lynn Enterline and Yopie Prins find these forms of postmodernist theory useful as an ideological framework for their compelling close read . . ings of Renaissance and Victorian recastings of Ovidian myths about rape and the image of Sappho, I retain my skepticism of Derridean discursive practices, particularly given the powerful critique of the poststructuralist position on signification by semioticians and philosophers of language such as Umberto Eco and John Searle. 23 Rather than the poststructuralist critical framework of Derrida and Lacan adopted by Enterline and Prins, this interpretive project builds upon the theories of language and literary culture articulated by a different set of continental theorists, namely, semioticians like Umberto Eco, reader . . response critics such as Wolfgang Iser, and reception theorists like Hans Robert Jauss. 24 Broadly speaking, these critics work out of a tradition of structuralist and semiotic theories of language premised upon certain basic presuppositions about the significance of language, literary and oth. . erwise {notwithstanding the problems that human beings have in using 21. T oril Moi, What Is a Woman?: And Other Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 58-59· 22. Moi, What Is a Woman? 399. 23. See the contentious critiques of Derrida in John Searle, "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida," Glyph 1 (1977): 198-208, and "The World Turned Upside Down," New York Review of Books, October 27, 1983, 74-79. For Eco's contributions to this debate, see Umberto Eco, I Limiti dell'Interpretazione (Milan: Bompiani, 1990), as well as the discussion among Umberto Eco, Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, and Christine Brook Rose in Umberto Eco et al., Interpretation and Overinterpretation, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 199 2 ). 24. In addition to the works of Eco mentioned in the previous note, see Umberto Eco, Lector in Fabula (Milan: Bompiani, 1979); Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), and Iser, The Act of Reading (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); and Hans Robert Jauss, Towards an Aesthetic of Reception (Minneapolis: University of Min, nesota Press, 1982).

14

ABANDONED WOMEN

signs to signify) shared by medieval sign theorists like Augustine as well as medieval writers like Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer. Moreover, these particular modern theorists all seek to understand the ways in which struc . . tures of intertextual allusions work and how readers (and their horizons of expectations) are constructed within individual texts and the rhetorical traditions whence such traditions spring, theoretical projects directly rele . . vant to my own critical concerns. Regardless of the direction these theorists offer, my own critical prac .. tice begins by reading particular poetic texts. The present inquiry starts with the particular "intertexts" that specific medieval writers read and reinterpreted as they created their own poetic visions. Teasing out the web of intertextual allusions that connects medieval writers to their literary predecessors leads to a better understanding of the ways that medieval writers transformed and revised the classical past. In particular, I attempt to articulate the various ways in which major medieval writers understood and reinscribed the portrait of the elegiac relicta in their vernacular works. Given this focus on the continuing dialogue that writers carryon with their literary predecessors, the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin are extremely valuable for their construction of a "dialogic poetics" that sees writers as engaging in an active and ongoing literary conversation with their poetic predecessors. 25 The chapters that follow present close readings of major and minor vernacular works by Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer that explore the classical figures of abandoned women adapted from Virgil, Ovid, and Sta . . tius. In Dante's Inferno; Boccaccio's Teseida, Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, and Amorosa Visione; and Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Troilus and Criseyde, and Legend of Good Women, stories of abandoned women some . . times take center stage, but more often lurk in the wings of other narra . . tive dramas to enrich and complicate them. For instance, allusions to abandoned women may call up the "past histories" of protagonists and influence a reader's response to their actions. They may require readers to negotiate between conflicting versions of mythical and classical history. Furthermore, they can provide subplots to, and alternative perspectives on, the main narrative. Abandoned woman tend to be represented in literature as unstable and complex; consequently, when Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer incorporate 25. For the relevance of Bakhtin's ideas, see chapter I as well as the thorough presentation of Bakhtin on language and literature in Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson, Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, I990).

Introduction

15

classical stories of abandoned women, this poetic figure cannot be assigned a single fixed meaning. As Lipking significantly reminds us, the word aban . . doned is itself ambiguous, meaning both "forsaken or cast off' and "unre . . strained or shameless"-the abandoned woman is "both physically deserted by a lover and spiritually outside the law."26 And in proposing a new "poetics of abandonment" Lipking argues that these figures of forlorn women also stand outside the "laws" of Aristotelian poetics. Abandoned women resist closure, much as their laments and complaints protest against the scripts that their lovers have unilaterally imposed upon their passionate entanglements. 27 Thus, in considering how these three late . . medieval writers rethink, recast, and rewrite classical figures of abandoned women, any impulse to limit the polysemous potential of these figures in the texts they inhabit should be resisted. In particular, the opinions of medieval commentators on the relevant episodes in Virgil, Ovid, and Statius ought not to be adduced as if they spoke for Dante, Boccaccio, or Chaucer. While the tra . . dition of commentary on the Dido episode in the Aeneid or on Ovid's Heroides can provide valuable insights into the cultural formation of medieval writers, to assume that these writers simply accepted and adopted the views of the commentators wholesale credits them with little capacity for critical intelligence or poetic sensibility. As Winthrop Wetherbee has fruitfully argued with respect to Chaucer, Having been shown to our profit the importance of commentary, gloss, and mythographical compendium in accounting for medieval notions about classical poetry, we tend to substitute such tools for the texts of the poets themselves, forgetting that these texts were read as well as annotated .... There is a risk, however, of confusing the categories and purposes of teachers and glossators with those of poets .... It is finally the texts themselves, "the forme of olde clerkis speeche," that meant the most to Chaucer, as to Dante. 28 And, one might add, to Boccaccio as welL Although I touch on aspects of the tradition of medieval commentary, the aim here is to describe cultural contexts rather than prescribe interpretations. Modem critics assume at 26. Lipking, Abandoned Women, xvii. 27. Lipking, Abandoned Women, 3. 28. Winthrop Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on "Troilus and Criseyde" (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), 10.

16

ABANDONED WOMEN

their own peril that all medieval poets considered an abandoned woman's love as stultus (foolish) simply because some scholastic commentary said they should. 29 Just as Ovid chose to portray a plaintive Dido whose beseeching tone toward Aeneas differs dramatically from that of the furi; ous queen who curses her former lover at the end of Aeneid 4, a medieval poet may have chosen to approach classical characters from different per; spectives than those adopted by readers in preceding generations. And just as Lipking argues that Pushkin read Byron who read De Stael who read Pope who read Ovid, Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer were also enrolled in the "School of Abandonment" founded by Ovid himself, who taught these poets how to create a revisionary poetics that imagined forsaken female voices. Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer were subtle, complex, and highly educated poets: their representations of abandoned women should be read as the fruit of their own reading and meditation on the Latin classics, not as a recasting of an established commentary tradition in poetic form. Virgil's Dido was the model par excellence for medieval writers seeking examples of abandoned women in classical texts. Nevertheless, Ovid's Heroides, with its bevy of lamenting ladies, became the locus classicus for medieval writers seeking to portray abandoned women. At this point, a bit more background on Ovid's influential collection may be in order: Ovid's anthology of fictional verse epistles traditionally goes by the appellation Heroides, a word that simply means "heroines," even though some of its fictive letter writers are actually male.3° In fact, the collection consists of two distinct parts: a series of epistles by legendary or historical women addressed to men, and a series of epistles by men addressed to women that alternate with the women's replies, comprising the correspondence between Paris and Helen, Leander and Hero, and Acontius and Cydippe. 29. An example of this critical approach is seen in Mary Edwards, "A Study of Six Characters in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women with Reference to Medieval Scholia on Ovid's Heroides," B.Litt. thesis, Oxford University, 1970. Though this study has much of value to say about the commentary tradition, it tends to equate Chaucer's views of Ovidian women with those of the commentators. 30. R. ]. Tarrant, "Heroides," in Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics, ed. L. D. Reynolds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 268, states that the title Heroides is ancient, since Priscian attests to it, but not necessarily Ovid's. Ovid referred to the text simply as "epistula" in his statement on it in the Ars amatoria, and the titles given in the manuscripts vary between Liber epistularum and Liber heroidum. Although the Latin word heroides could be construed as a patronymic meaning "the daughters of heroes," Palmer argues in his edition that if Heroides is taken as the title of Ovid's work, it should be translated as "The Heroines." See Arthur Palmer, ed., Heroides (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1898), xi. Whether the title is Ovidian or not, I have cho~ sen to refer to Ovid's epistolary collection by its traditional appellation.

Introduction

I

7

Classical scholars tend to assign the first part of the Heroides to the early period of Ovid's career; those who do not deny Ovid's authorship of the so .. called double epistles tend to assign them to a later period)! General statements about "the Heroides" in the chapters that follow should be taken as referring only to the first part of Ovid's work, for it is here that the poet chooses to represent abandoned women and here that his successors in literary endeavor most consistently derive their poetic inspiration. Not all of the letter .. writing heroines in the first part of the Heroides fit comfortably into the category of "abandoned women." As Lipking defines the phrase and as it is employed here, an abandoned woman is "physically deserted by a lover and spiritually outside the law."3 2 A few of Ovid's plaintive women can be considered abandoned only in the latter sense, though the overwhelming majority fit the stricter definition: Penelope and Laodamia have been left behind by husbands who have gone off to the Trojan War, perhaps never to return. (In the case of Penelope and Lao .. damia, Ovid takes full advantage of the dramatic ironies of the heroines' different situations. While readers of the Heroides know that the Odysseus of the Iliad and Odyssey returns to his lamenting wife, they also know that Laodamia's husband Protesilaus was the very first Greek warrior killed in the Trojan War.) Similarly, the heroines Phyllis, Oenone, Hypsipyle, Dido, Deianira, Ariadne, Medea, and Sappho have all been forsaken by husbands or lovers; Briseis and Hermione are both separated from their lovers through the fortunes of war. While Ovid makes abandonment by a beloved the major theme of his collection, other motifs also run through this first set of epistles. One group of letters has more to do with the psychology of incest and the family romance than with forsaken lovers)3 For instance, Phaedra writes to Hip .. polytus in the hope of seducing her resisting stepson; Canace writes a sui .. cide note to her brother Macareus, her partner in incestuous love; Hyper .. mnestra writes a formal explanation and plea for aid to her husband 31. For arguments against Ovidian authorship of the "double epistles," see Palmer, ed., Hero~

ides, 436-37. Scholars who have affirmed Ovid's authorship of the epistles, but assigned them to a date later in the poet's career, include Louis Purser, introduction to Palmer, ed., Heroides, xxxii; Hermann Frankel, Ovid: A Poet between Two Worlds (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1945),48; Harold Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides" (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni~ versity Press, 1974), ix; and W. S. Anderson, "The 'Heroides,'" in Ovid, ed. J. W. Binns (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973),68. 32. Lipking, Abandoned Women, xvii. 33. For a consideration of the importance of incest as a literary theme in Ovid and the medieval poets who imitated him, see Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Literary Imagi~ nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 78-91.

I8

ABANDONED WOMEN

Lynceus, the cousin whom she regards more as her brother than as her spouse.3 4 These three women might be considered "abandoned," but only in the second sense of the word as "lascivious" rather than its primary meaning. Since their situations are quite different from those of the other twelve heroines, these figures will not appear in the discussions of Ovid's abandoned women that follow. Since Ovid's Heroides is the locus classicus for medieval writers seeking figures of abandoned women for literary inspiration or imitation, chapter I focuses on the critical and commentary traditions associated with this work. A survey of modem critical approaches to the Heroides forms a pre . . lude to a consideration of Ovid's text as his medieval readers would have encountered it, thickly encrusted with layers of glosses and moralizing commentaries that provide prescriptive-if sometimes contradictoryinterpretations of these narratives. After briefly examining how a few medieval Latin writers made use of the Heroides, the discussion concludes with a close reading of an anonymous eleventh . . century poet's Ovidian epistle from Deidamia to Achilles based on Ovid's Heroides and Statius's Achilleid. The poet's playful conflation of Ovidian tone and Statian plot shows an awareness of the moralizing medieval commentary tradition on the Heroides as well as an understanding of the Ovidian genealogy of Sta . . tius's Achilleid. The epistle's sharp focus on Deidamia's feelings, moreover, provides a compelling counterpart to Dante's allusive rereadings of the Achilleid and the Heroides in his Inferno, which are taken up in the chapter that follows. After an initial excursus into the Nachleben of Ovid's Heroides during the Latin Middle Ages, I embark on the main interpretive project, a series of thematically related studies that consider the ways in which Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer translated and transformed classical stories of abandoned women in their vernacular narratives. The chapters on Dante's Ulysses and the different versions of Theseus presented in the works of Boccaccio and Chaucer concentrate on the allusive presence of aban . . doned women in texts that center on male heroes. These marginal female figures function much as they do in Ovid's Heroides: they make the reader reexamine the values of the male . . oriented epic world and question the human cost of "heroic" action. In these texts, Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer employ figures of abandoned women to expose the darker side of epic adventure and to express their disapproval of heroic forgetfulness. 34. Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides," 125-29, points out that pietas rather than amor informs Hypermnestra's decision to defy her father's order that she kill her cousin~husband.

I ntroduction

19

More specifically, chapter 2 reads Dante's Inferno 26 in light of its allu . . sion to Statius's Achilleid, a fragmentary epic poem that describes Achilles' seduction of Deidamia and his subsequent abandonment of her at the per. . suasion of the rhetorically gifted Ulysses. After examining how Deidamia, the abandoned woman in the background narrative, relates to Penelope, the abandoned woman in the foreground, I argue that this "back story" exposes Ulysses' heroic rhetoric as empty and duplicitous. Like the Latin epistle "Deidamia Achilli" discussed in chapter I, Dante's poem alludes to Ovidian and Statian abandoned women, thereby calling a hero's values into question, though this time the smooth . . tongued Ulysses rather than amorous Achilles becomes the target of the poet's ironic gaze. Chapter 3 explains how the story of Ariadne's abandonment hovers in the background of both Boccaccio's Teseida and Chaucer's Knight's Tale. In the Teseida, Boccaccio's concerns about Teseo's past history as a seducer of women intrude upon the margins of the text in the form of the author's own glosses; he suppresses his hero's troublesome past by doctor . . ing the traditional chronology of Theseus's career as represented in Sta . . tius's Thebaid and Ovid's Heroides. In contrast, Chaucer's abbreviated retelling of the Teseida in the Knight's Tale openly mentions Theseus's exploits with the Minotaur, and in so doing, Chaucer invokes the alterna . . tive history for Theseus sketched in two of his other works, The House of Fame and The Legend of Good Woman-a Theseus who persuades Ariadne and Phaedra to help him, and who concludes his Cretan adventure by abandoning Ariadne. Theseus proves to be in the company of another man in his mistreatment of women; Chaucer complements Theseus's "doubleness" by constructing a parallel past history for Arcite in the frag . . mentary poem Anelida and Arcite, a fiction of the poet's own invention that tells of the Theban knight's abandonment of the queen of Armenia. Here, Chaucer's creation of a "genealogy of abandonment" recalls Ovid's own father . . son pairing of the perfidious Theseus and his unreliable son Demophoon, who leave behind both Ariadne and Phyllis in the course of the Heroides. Rather than functioning as allusive figures in the background of other stories, abandoned women become the main focus of narrative attention in two works that Giovanni Boccaccio composed after the Teseida. These poems, the Amorosa Visione and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, have received surprisingly little scholarly attention, even when considered only among Boccaccio's opere minore. Chapter 4 analyzes the Italian poet's exploration of the tension between the moralizing and affective responses

20

ABANDONED WOMEN

that abandoned women evoke in their readers-conflicting reactions that evoke the bifurcated views of the earlier medieval commentators on the Heroides discussed in chapter I. In both of these works, Boccaccio's sym .. pathetic portrayals of abandoned women vouch for his imaginative engagement with the Heroides; his interest in female points of view in these works suggests that the Teseida's ambiguous portrait of Teseo emerges from Boccaccio's awareness of how Ariadne, Ipolyta, or Emilia might have viewed the Athenian hero and his exploits. The closing chapters consider Geoffrey Chaucer's engagement with the Heroides in two classicizing poems in which abandonment emerges as a major theme. Chapter 5 considers Chaucer's use of the Heroides in Troilus and Criseyde, a poem that allusively links both hero and heroine with Ovid's plaintive women. Like several of the letters in Ovid's Heroides, Troilus and Criseyde places the epic events of the Trojan War in the back.. ground of a disastrous love affair. Nevertheless, Chaucer's Ovidian tech .. nique comes with a gender difference: although Criseyde's literary geneal .. ogy links her to Ovid's Briseis, the putative "author" of Heroides 3, the abandoned Troilus most fully assimilates the behavior and epistolary style of Briseis and other forsaken Ovidian heroines, for his speeches and writ .. ings in the latter half of the poem are punctuated with allusions to Ovid's

Heroides. Chapter 6 considers Chaucer's experiment with another ironic reading of a catalog of abandoned women. In The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer, like Ovid, incorporates a play of stylistic registers and modes of discourse as he narrates classical stories about abandoned women. The narrator's display of linguistic variety offers a challenge to the narrow con .. vent ions of the courtly aesthetic imposed on the narrator by his inscribed reader, the God of Love, who inhabits the sort of discourse .. world that Bakhtin termed "monologic" in contrast to Chaucer's more "novelistic" or "dialogic" poetics. Revisiting the discussion of Chaucer's Dido begun in this introduction, this chapter concludes with a discussion of the Legend of Dido. Here we see how Chaucer juxtaposes Ovidian and Virgilian views of the most famous abandoned woman of the classical canon in order to cre .. ate a novelistic form of discourse that challenges his earlier courtly cre .. ations and leads toward the dialogic poetics of his late masterpiece, the

Canterbury Tales.

~

One

~

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

s Ovid himself was not too humble to point out, he did something new in the Heroides. In the Ars amatoria, Ovid's narrator commends poetry as an appropriate pursuit for a lover and even includes a reference to some of his own works, including the Heroides, as appropriate reading material: "Vel tibi composita cantetur Epistola voce: / Ignotum hoc ali is HIe novavit opus" (3.345-46: "or read some letter with a practiced voice; he first invented this form, unknown to others"). I Ovid's hitherto unknown art is that of giving words to famous women, imagining how tra . . ditional mythology might look if retold from their vantage points. Nearly two thousand years after Ovid wrote the Heroides, it may be difficult to appreciate his work as innovative when it has been enshrined as a classic. Ovid's achievement can perhaps best be appreciated by analogies with much more recent works: what Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guilden . . stern Are Dead does to Hamlet, what John Gardner's Grendel does to Beowulf, and what Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea does to Jane Eyre, Ovid

A

I. The text and translation of the Ars amatoria come from the Loeb Classical Library edition, Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. J. H. Mozley (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19 2 9).

21

22

ABANDONED WOMEN

does to traditional Greek and Roman mythology.2 He turns the old tales inside out and shows how they look to those characters who are tradition .. ally denied speech, who are little more than pawns in a game controlled by others. Ovid's subversive art challenges the primacy of epic and mytholog .. ical discourse, pointing out the individual stories that they leave out. As Harold Jacobson writes in his thoughtful study of these poems, the Heroides make the individual all . . important, the seemingly insignificant individual who is obscured by the dazzling glare of massive events and great principles. But when the validity, indeed, the very reality of these events is made contingent on the per .. spective of the individual, we can understand that it is with the indi .. vidual that significance really rests. Historically, this view takes on extra importance when we place the Heroides against the backdrop of Augustus and Vergil's Aeneid, a world in which the individual is a mere sacrificial lamb on the altar of community and principle) As Jacobson's comments indicate, the formal innovation of the Heroides makes a serious political and philosophical point-one that, he further argues, put Ovid distinctly at odds with the official values of the Augustan regime. Ever since the Augustan Age, Ovid's innovative Heroides has been perennially read, but not perennially appreciated. Modern critics of the Heroides have mainly been troubled by its admixture of styles-the con . . trast between pathetic lamentation and seemingly incongruous wit. As L. P. Wilkinson pithily observes, "The heroines are not too miserable to make puns."4 To Wilkinson, who views the Heroides as a direct descendent of the rhetorical school .. exercise of the ethopoeia (characterization), the poems are primarily attempts to score debating points; their chief delights lie in the display of ingenious tricks, quotable aphorisms, and verbal con .. ceits. When Ovid's heroines seem to express any genuine feelings or pathos, it is only because "the poet forgets himself and his audience."5 Wilkinson's interpretation of the Heroides considers the poet's wit and his 2. The controversy over The Wind Done Gone, a novel that reimagines and rewrites Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, shows that the revisionary impulse of Ovid is alive and well in the twenty~first century-though modern laws regarding intellectual property may well interfere with such literary experimentation. 3· Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides, " 354. 4. L. P. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955),98. 5· Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled, 99.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

23

verbal dexterity the redeeming features of the poems, which he otherwise views as an undistinguished mass of all,too . . familiar complaints. For him, the single Heroides (I-XV) are a uniform plum pudding with a fair admixture of glittering rings and sixpences. The first slice is appetising enough, but each further slice becomes colder and less digestible, until the only incentive for going on is the prospect of coming across an occasional ring or sixpence. 6 Wilkinson thus sees the primary virtue of the Heroides in their comic and parodic elements. Taking this rhetorical view a step further, Eleanor Win . . sor concludes that the poems are sheer parody: "The letters of the Heroides are mock . . declamations so conducted as to ridicule the formalities of decla . . mation and render than absurd."7 While Wilkinson's and Winsor's views take due account of Ovid's wit in the Heroides, they brush aside his pathos as accidental or simply ignore it. On the other hand, a more traditional view of the Heroides holds that Ovid's wit is precisely what mars his epistles-the value of these poems lie in naturalistic depictions of the ebb and flow of the passions of their hero . . ines. John Dryden's preface to English translations of the Heroides by vari . . ous poets lodges this complaint against Ovid: I will confess that the copiousness of his Wit was such, that he often writ too pointedly for his Subject, and made his persons speak more Eloquently than the Violence of their Passion would admit: so that he is frequently witty out of season: leaving the Imitation of Nature, and the cooler dictates of his Judgment, for the false applause of Fancy.8 Writing nearly three hundred years after Dryden, Jacobson similarly values Ovid's poems for their explorations of the psychology of love and their interest in the subjective nature of reality. Jacobson reads the poems as a 6. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled, 106. 7. Eleanor Jane Winsor, "A Study in the Sources and Rhetoric of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women," Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1963, 360. See Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides," 325-30, for arguments against these "rhetorical" views of Ovid's poetry. 8. The Works of John Dryden, ed. Edward Niles Hooker and H. T. Swedenberg Jr. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956), I: I 10. For a discussion of this and other aspects of Dryden's Ovidian criticism and translations, see David Hopkins, "Dryden and Ovid's 'Wit out of season,'" in Ovid Renewed, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer~ sity Press, 1988), 167-90.

24

ABANDONED WOMEN

series of painstaking psychological portraits of their subjects, and for him, as for Dryden, Ovid can be "witty out of season." In cataloging Ovid's shortcomings, he writes, The wit and humor that now and then are present in the Heroides degenerate at times into little else than cleverness .... Many of Ovid's faults, both in the Heroides and elsewhere, reside in that very instinct which is at the same time responsible for much excellence in his poetry, namely, his close attention to language .... But when points of the language take precedence over points of sense, when plays on words prove no more than a substitute for substance, then his failure is manifest. 9 For both Dryden and Jacobson, Ovid's inappropriate WIttICIsms occur when he either forgets himself in his playing with language or when he becomes more interested in his audience's appreciation of his wit than in his subject matter. Whatever the explanation, these critics agree that such lapses are disturbing flaws that blunt the emotional impact of the poems. In contrast to both of these positions, which hold that Ovid acciden~ tally breaches poetic decorum as he mingles witty and pathetic registers, Florence Verducci's study of the Heroides sees this admixture as key to Ovid's rhetorical strategy. For her, Ovid's wit functions as an alienation device that calls the reader back from sentimental involvement with silly heroines: The rule of Ovid's Heroides is the rule of indecorum, of wit in concep~ tion no less than in language, a wit which is not his heroine's own but the token of the poet's creative presence in the poem. Its dispassionate, intellectual, emotionally anaesthetizing presence is a constant reminder of how far we, in our sympathy for a heroine, have departed from the traditional view of her situation, and it is a constant goad to the dissociation of emotional appreciation from formal articulation. 10 While Verducci's own readings of the Heroides do acknowledge the pathetic register of Ovid's text as deliberate rather than accidental, she takes a highly skeptical view of it. Verducci sees Ovid's pathos as what his 9. Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides, " 8. Florence Verducci, Ovid's Toyshop of the Heart (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), 32. 10.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

25

"authorial" wit warns the reader against. V erducci' s formalist approach to Ovid thus ends up reading his poems as parodies; the main problem with her analysis lies in its privileging of Ovid's wit as authorial and its brusque dismissal of Ovid's pathetic register-its unfailingly ironic view of any emotional involvement with Ovid's plaintive women as foolish sympathy with the histrionic inhabitants of "Ovid's toys hop of the heart."11 More recently, Marina Brownlee has used the writings of Bakhtin to navigate between the Scylla of Ovid's wit and the Charybdis of his pathos. Instead of viewing either extreme as a flaw, she considers them examples of the different forms of discourse that Ovid interweaves in his text. She sees the Heroides as illustrating Bakhtin's ideas about novelistic discourse, pointing out that Ovid's playing of various rhetorical styles and stylistic registers against one another destabilizes ideological systems and the con . . ventions of the epic in a way that Bakhtin views as characteristic of the novel. 12 Bakhtin's conception of the novel may require some explanation: for him, the "novel" as a genre has less to do with conventional periodization than with discursive strategies, so that even a verse work written during the Middle Ages (e.g., Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival) may be classified as a novel in Bakhtinian terms.13 The interplay between differ . . ent varieties of discourse distinguishes the novel from other genres: The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (some . . times even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized. The internal stratification of any single national language into social dialects, characteristic group behavior, profes . . sional jargons, generic languages, languages of generations and age groups, tendentious languages, languages of the authorities, of various circles and of passing fashions, languages that serve the specific socio . . political purposes of the day ... this internal stratification present in every language at any given moment of its historical existence is the indispensable prerequisite for the novel as a genre. 14 I I. Both the quotation (and Verducci's title) allude to Alexander Pope's Rape of the Lock. 12. Marina Scordilis Brownlee, The Severed Word: Ovid's Heroides and the Novela Sentimental (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 199°),27. 13. For a reading of Wolfram's work through the lens of Bakhtin's ideas about discourse, see Arthur Groos, Romancing the Grail: Genre, Science, and Quest in Wolfram's Parzival (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). 14. M. M. Bakhtin, "Discourse in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 262~63.

26

ABANDONED WOMEN

An author's orchestration of this multiplicity of discourses separates the novel from other literary genres (such as epic and lyric) that valorize a unified narrative discourse that excludes such linguistic variety. Bakhtin claims this sort of intersection of discourses as the special terri, tory of the novel but acknowledges that in the centuries before the novel existed "we find a rich word of diverse forms that transmit, mimic, and rep, resent from various vantage points another's world, another's speech and language," a phenomenon that he calls heteroglossia or polyglossia. IS Within a Bakhtinian framework, Ovid's heteroglossic Heroides may be understood as pointing out the one,sidedness of traditional epic and tragic views of the heroines he portrays. In contrast to Verducci's reading of the Heroides, Brownlee's Bakhtin, ian interpretation does not privilege Ovid's wit as authorial and ascribe pathos to his foolish heroines (or their foolish readers). Her reading of Ovid sees his pathos as a part of a discursive variety that tends to point out the inability of monologic, "straightforward" poetic genres to include the whole range of human experience. Rather than mocking individual hero, ines, as Verducci argues, Brownlee sees Ovid as calling generic conven, tions into question-especially those of the epic. Brownlee's dialogic approach to Ovid's complex work recognizes the validity and importance of both of Ovid's stylistic registers, rather than throwing out those portions of his work that do not agree with a particular reader's preference for either wit or pathos. While this understanding of Ovid's poetics as a constant dialogue between conflicting discourses underlies my work on the Heroides as a whole, I shall be exploring its implications most explicitly in my chap, ter on Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, a work that exhibits similarly troubling tonal variations. As this brief survey suggests, modern interpreters react in a variety of different ways to Ovid's lamenting letter,writers. Of course, Dante, Boc, caccio, and Chaucer had a rather different set of interpretations to respond to, for they would have likely read Ovid's Heroides in manuscripts provided with a preliminary "accessus" that provided introductions to the work as a whole, as well as extensive marginal and interlinear glosses. In considering how these poets approached their reading of the Heroides, several ques, tions spring to mind: what did the Heroides look like to medieval readers? How were these texts commented on (and, presumably, taught) in medieval schools? What influence did the Heroides and their medieval IS. Bakhtin, "From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse," in The Dialogic Imagination, 50.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

27

commentaries exert on Latin writing in the Middle Ages? Lastly, what ver . . nacular translations, if any, would have been available to Dante, Boccac . . cio, and Chaucer as they approached the task of transforming Ovid's Latin verses into their native tongues? Taking up the first question, Ralph Hexter points out that reading the Heroides was a rather different experience in the Middle Ages than it is today-and not simply because medieval readers encountered Ovid's epis . . tIes in unique manuscript environments rather than in standard printed editions. I6 While the single letters from heroines and the "paired epistles" formed a single book, as they do now, the collection was one letter shorter: Epistle 15, the letter of Sappho to Phaon, was transmitted separately. I 7 Moreover, Epistle 16, the letter of Paris to Helen, was missing verses 39 to 144, and Epistle 2 I, the letter of Cydippe to Acontius, ended at verse 14. 18 Besides these facts of manuscript transmission, a medieval reader's impres'" sion of the Heroides would have been greatly influenced by the poetic sources available for comparative study. While readings of the Heroides by modern classical scholars regularly compare Penelope's letter to the Odyssey, Briseis's to the Iliad, Phaedra's and Medea's to Euripides' dramas, Hypsipyle's to Apollonius of Rhodes's Argonautica, Ariadne's to Catullus 64, and Dido's to the Aeneid, all but the last of Ovid's source texts would have been unavailable to most medieval European readers of the Heroides, who did not know Greek and lacked the poems of Catullus. I9 Thus, aspects of the poems that certain modern readers consider parodic when read against their sources would very probably not have appeared so to medieval readers. 20 Nevertheless, while they lacked Ovid's poetic sources, medieval readers generally did have access to various versions of the clas . . sical myths and stories that Ovid drew on, either through mythographic compilations, translations, or versions of these stories by later writers. As Hexter's extensive work with them demonstrates, commentaries on the Heroides also provided medieval readers with this mythological back. . 16. See Ralph Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling: Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid's Ars amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto, and Epistulae Heroidum (Munich: Arbeo~Gesellschaft, 1986), 14I. 17. This fact, along with features of the letter itself, has led to a controversy among modern classicists as to whether it is by Ovid at all. Most recent critics of the Heroides do ascribe Heroides 15 to Ovid himself. 18. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, 141. 19. For instance, see the comparative readings of the Heroides in Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides," and Verducci, Ovid's Toyshop. 20. For instance, Verducci, Ovid's T oyshop, sees Heroides 3 as a parody of the Briseis episode in the Iliad and Heroides 10 as a travesty of Catullus 64.

28

ABANDONED WOMEN

ground necessary for a basic understanding of the situations of Ovid's indi .. vidual heroines. 2I Besides giving medieval readers necessary background information, the commentaries on and accessus to the Heroides also provided them with a general interpretive framework in which to place the individual poems. 22 Contemporary readers, accustomed to assuming the autonomy of imagina" tive literature and the lightheartedness of Ovid's amatory poetry, may be surprised to learn that in the Middle Ages the Heroides was interpreted as a didactic work. As E. K. Rand writes, "Medieval thinkers were quick to see that beneath Ovid's persiflage runs a vein of sobriety and moral acute .. ness," and therefore, Ovid's poems-even his amatory ones-were inter .. preted under the rubric of "Ovidius Ethicus."23 As Warren Ginsberg argues, this tradition clearly manifests itself in the medieval commentary tradition on the Ars amatoria. 24 In the case of the Heroides, Ovid was seen as distinguishing between bad and good sorts of love, in order to reprove the former and recommend the latter. A stanza from a twelfth .. century poem about Ovid and his works concisely sums up this general approach to the Heroides: Actoris intentio restat, condemnare Amores illicitos fatuos culpare Et recte feruentium mentes commendare: Utilitas nostra sit ius tum pignus amare. 25

[The intention of the author rests in condemning illicit loves, blaming the foolish, and in commending those whose minds are rightly inflamed; the use .. fulness for us is to love legitimate contracts.]

2 I. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, I 7 I -204, analyzes the mythological information pre~ sented in one commentary on the Heroides. 22. For general discussions of the medieval accessus and commentary tradition see Edwin Quain, "The Medieval Accessus Ad Auctores," Traditio 3 (I945): 214-64; A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); and Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, I982 ). 23. E. K. Rand, Ovid and His Influence (New York: Longmans, 1928), 131. 24. Warren Ginsberg, "Ovid ius ethicus? Ovid and the Medieval Commentary Tradition," in Desiring Discourse, ed. James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravless (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1998),62-71. 25. Hermann Hagen, Carmina medii aevi maximam partem inedita (Bern, 1877),207-9. Cf. F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2d ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I957),2:21+

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

29

The basic "condemnare/commendare" interpretive schema described in these verses undergirds the more extensive prose commentaries used in medieval schools. As one twelfth .. century commentator writes in an acces .. sus to the Heroides: intentio sua est legitimum commendare conubium vel amorem, et secundum hoc triplici modo tractat de ipso amore, scilicet de legitimo, de illicito et stulto, de legitimo per Penelopen, de illicito per Canacen, de stulto per Phillidem. Sed has duas partes, scilicet stulti et illiciti, non causa ipsarum, verum gratia illius tercii commendandi interserit, et sic commendando legitimum, stultum et illicitum reprehend it. Eth .. icae subiacet quia bonorum morum est instructor, malorum vero exstir .. pator. Finalis causa talis est, ut visa utili tate quae ex legitimo procedit et infortuniis quae ex stulto et illicito solent prosequi, hune utrumque fugiamus et soli casto adhereamus. 26

[His intention is to commend legitimate marriage or love, and accordingly he considers three types of love, namely legitimate love, illicit love, and foolish love: legitimate love through Penelope, illicit love through Canace, and fool .. ish love through Phyllis. But the latter two types, namely foolish and illicit love, he includes not on their own account, but rather that the third should be commended, and thus commending the legitimate, he reprimands the fool .. ish and illicit. The work relates to ethics because it is the instructor of good morals, but the uprooter of bad ones. The final cause is the following: that having seen the advantage that proceeds from legitimate love and the misfor.. tunes that usually follow from foolish love, we will flee these two and only devote ourselves to chaste love .]27 Here, Ovid the praeceptor amoris becomes Ovid the instructor bonorum morum-the jocular instructor of love has, perhaps to the surprise of some modern readers, metamorphosed into a sober tutor of morals. The tripar .. tite division of love made in this accessus appears in other medieval intro .. ductions to the Heroides, though some commentators distinguish only between "eastus" and "incestus" love, that is, chaste and unchaste. 28 Hex .. 26. R. B. C. Huygens, Accessus ad auctores, Bernard d'Utrecht, Conrad d'Hirsau "Dialogus super Auctores" (Leiden: Brill, 197°),3°. 27. Also translated in A. J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criti~ cism, c. 1100-C. 1375: The Commentary Tradition, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 20-21.

28. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, 157.

30

ABANDONED WOMEN

ter expresses some surprise at this particular commentator's explication of the "finalis causa" of Ovid's epistles, for the fates of the "legitimate" lovers of the Heroides are not as edifying as the commentator implies. Moreover, Hexter wonders about the "we" who are supposed to embrace only chaste love, given that the readers of this commentary would have presumably been clerics in orders or ordained and bound by a vow of celibacy.29 Nev-ertheless, a later accessus even more strongly sets forth the view that Ovid's Heroides are a how--to manual for love: Utilitas est duplex scilicet communis et propria. Propria utilitas huius libri est quia cognito hoc libro cognoscemus dominas vel arnicas nos . . tras et cognatas caste amare; utilitas communis est duplex scilicit pulcritudo cognoscimus que sit in hoc libro et pulcritudo vocabulorum. 30

[I ts usefulness is double, that is, common and personal. The personal use . . fulness of this book is that when we have understood it, we can understand how to love ladies or our mistresses or our kinswomen chastely. The common usefulness is double, that is, we recognize the beauty of this book and its words.] Here, the commentator sees the Heroides as a compendium of female psy . . chology; in contrast to the previous accessus, this writer more explicitly describes the objects of the "chaste love" in which his reader ought to engage-"dominas vel amicas nostras et cognatas" [ladies or our mistresses or our kinswomen]. Moreover, in recognizing the "beauty" of the book and of its words, this commentator shows himself to be of a more literary bent than some of his predecessors. As the two commentaries quoted above demonstrate, Ovid's Heroides was viewed as having practical as well as theoretical implications. Indeed, the most extensive twelfth . . century accessus to the Heroides also adds that Ovid intended to provide his readers with model love letters, as well as listing "giving pleasure" among the work's general intentions:

29. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, 158. 30. For a slightly different text and translation, see Allen, Ethical Poetic, 28. For the text, I have relied upon Mauro Donnini, "L' 'Accessus Ovidii Epistularum' del Cod. Asis. Bibl. civ. 302," Giornale Italiano di Filologia, n.s. 10 (1979): 129. Donnini edits this text and assigns the manu~ script to the fifteenth century.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

3I

Aliter, intentio sua est, cum in preceptis de arte amatoria non ostendit quo modo aliquis per epistolas sollicitaretur, illud huic exequitur.... Sciendum quoque est quod cum in toto libro hanc et supradictas habeat intentiones, preterea duas habet in hoc libro, unam generalem et ali am specialem; generalem delectare et communiter prodesse, spe .. cialem habent intentionem, sicut in singulis epistolis, aut laudando castem amorem ... aut vituperando incestum amorum)!

[Since in the precepts concerning the art of love he does not show how some . . one is wooed by epistles, it is his intention that this be fulfilled here. . . . Let it be known that while he has this and the above . . mentioned intentions in the entire book, beyond those he has two intentions in this book, one general and the other special, the general intention being to delight and to be for the com . . mon good. The special intention, as expressed in individual epistles, is to commend chaste love . . . or to condemn unchaste love.] Although this commentator strongly insists that Ovid constructs a moral framework in the Heroides, his suggestion that the epistles might be used as model love .. letters and his notion that Ovid also aims to delight make the modern reader suspect that he realized that reading the Ars amatoria or the Heroides might well teach something other than strictly ethical behavior. In fact, some commentators do read the Heroides as an instructional manual in the art of love . . letter writing. One medieval manuscript dating from the thirteenth or fourteenth century includes a biographical account of Ovid claiming that the poet was in love with the empress Livia. Besides writing the Amores in her honor, it adds, "Propter amorem illius fecit lib rum epistolarum, ut possent iuuenes doceri. Quomodo de bent scribere amicis suis et e converso" [Because of his love for her he wrote the book of epistles (i.e., the Heroides) in order that they might teach young people how they should write their friends and vice .. versa].3 2 Similarly, a thir .. teenth .. century commentator writes that the Heroides, in effect, provides a manual for dealing with a love affair gone wrong: "Vel utilitas est si quan .. doque contigerit nos a puellis nostris destitui hoc opus exemplar habeamus quomodo eas ad amorem nostrum revocemus vel e contrario" [The utility 31. Huygens, Accessus ad auctores, 32. 32. From Ms. Vat. Lat. I479, printed in B. Nogara, "Di alcune vite e commenti medioevali di Ovidio," in Miscellanea Ceriani: Raccolta di scritti originali per onorare la memoria di M.r Antonio Maria Ceriani, prefetto della Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milan: Hoepli, I9IO), 426.

32

ABANDONED WOMEN

(of this book) is that if it should happen that we are deserted by our girl, friends, we have an example in this work of how we can recall them to our love and vice . . versa].3 3 In this interpretation, the amorous rhetoric of abandoned women becomes a handbook for edification and education of abandoned men. 34 If the medieval access us consistently read the Heroides as a moral work, the application of that moral message to the epistles that follow tends to be less consistent. When commentators actually try to apply their black, and,white moral scheme to the gray situations of individual heroines, they sometimes encounter difficulties, as seen in the preface to Heroides 2 that Luca Rosa cites from a manuscript dating from the thirteenth century. In the epistle, the abandoned Phyllis writes to Demophoon, whom she weI, corned to her land and her bed. Though she repeatedly claims that Demophoon has promised to marry her, this presumed engagement is not good enough for the commentator, who clearly states, "cum maritum non haberet ipsum adamavit et inlegitime cum eo concubuit" [Since she did not have a husband, she fell in love with him and lay with him illegiti, mately].3 5 He concludes his introduction with the standard moralization of the text, but at the last minute seems to change his mind: Inter omnia est in hac (epistola) exemplum. reprehend ere mulieres turpiter vitiis adherentes sicut phillides. Vel commendare Phillidem de castitate habita erga de( mophoonte) quod illum solum dilexit cui promiserat. quapropter ortatur ilIum ut fidem sibi promissam servet commemorando sua beneficia et etiam iuramenta dicens 0 demophon. 36

[Among other things, there is an exemplum in this epistle: to chastise women who, like Phyllis, shamefully follow vices. Or to commend Phyllis for her fidelity to Demophoon because she loved him alone to whom she had promised herself. On account of which she exhorts him to maintain the promise he had made her, remembering her kindnesses and their oaths, say . . ing, "0 Demophoon."} 33. From Cod. Paris. 7994, printed in Fausto Ghisalberti, "Medieval Biographies of Ovid,"

Journal of the Warburg and Cortauld Institutes 9 (1946 ): 45-46. 34. In Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Troilus unwittingly uses the Heroides in precisely this manner. 35. Luca Rosa, "Su alcuni commenti inediti alle opere di Ovidio," Annali della Facolra di lettere e filosofia (Universita di Napoli) 5 (1955): 214-15, prints this commentary from Ms. Vaticanus Barbarinus Lat. 26. 36. Rosa, "Su alcuni commenti inediti," 215.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

33

As Rosa observes, the moral notions of the commentator seem to have gotten confused along the way: his final statements juxtapose the common moralization, which judges Phyllis as justifiably punished for having lost her virginity to a man whom she had not lawfully wed, with a more gener .. ous, "romantic" moral that excuses the sin of love in a woman who remained faithful unto death)7 Clearly, in this particular instance, the commentator seems to have more personal sympathy with Phyllis's plight than his moralizing framework would permit)8 Another thirteenth .. century commentary on this epistle, which omits any moralization, seems to take Phyllis's claims about her marriage to Demophoon seriously, for it renders the sentence we have seen in the other commentary with one very significant change: "que cum maritum non haberet eum adamavit et ille cum ea legitime [sic] concubuit unde maximum malum illi continget" [Since she did not have a husband, she fell in love with him, and he lay with her legitimately, whence the great .. est evil befell her])9 In general, medieval commentators tend to hold that Phyllis was not married to Demophoon and treat her as an example of stul. . tus amor-foolish love. 40 However, as these two examples show, the com .. mentators themselves can be confused by the ambiguity of Heroides 2. The commentators' difficulties with Heroides 2, and especially the will .. ful denial of the conventional moralitas in the Vatican commentary dis .. cussed above, reinforce the suspicion that Ovid's Heroides might be open to "misreading" by readers more involved with the poems' passionate sur.. face than in the conventional moralitas their schoolmasters insisted on finding in them. Indeed, the twelfth .. century Benedictine Conrad of Hir.. sau was well aware of such dangers. In his dialogue on various classical authors, the German monk makes it clear that he generally finds the study 37. Rosa, "Su alcuni commenti inediti," 2I6. 38. Chapter 4 discusses a similar conflict between a moralizing schema and the affective pull of individual women's laments staged in Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and Amorosa

Visione. 39. Rosa "Su alcuni commenti inediti," 216, quoting Ms. Parisinus 5I37. 40. See the accessus in Huygens, Accessus ad auctores, 30 and 3 I, which both specifically name

Phyllis as the example of this kind of love, as well as the verse argumentum affixed to this epistle cited in Heinrich Sedlmayer, "Prolegomena Critica ad Heroides Ovidianus," (Ph.D. diss., Uni, versity of Vienna, I878): 96, 98; which says that Ovid reprimands Phyllis "quia stulte amat." D. E. H. Alton, "Ovid in the Medieval Schoolroom," Hermathena 95 (I96I): 70-7 I , publishes a thir, teenth,century accessus to the Heroides that cites both Phyllis and Oenone as examples of stultus amor. adding, "stulticia enim est amare hospites sicut phillis, unde illud: Certus in hospitibus non est amor" [For it is foolish to love guests as Phyllis did, whence the saying, "In guests there is no certain love"].

34

ABANDONED WOMEN

of Ovid like looking for gold in a dung heap ("aurum in stercore"), and he warns readers away from the Heroides in particular: "quis eum de amore croccitantem, in diversis epistolis turpiter evagantem, si sanum sapiat, tol . . eret" [Who in his right mind could stand him cooing about love (and) behaving shamefully in various epistles?].4 1 For Conrad, the Heroides had more of dung than gold about them, and he clearly felt that all those love stories might have ill effects on young Christian minds, no matter how thoroughly they were moralized. Despite Conrad's reservations, the reading of the Heroides flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries-the period that Ludwig Traube dubbed the aetas Ovidiana-if the presence of the text in library catalogs and in surviving medieval school anthologies (the libri manuales) provides an accurate indication of its popularity among medieval readers.4 2 Accord . . ing to figures compiled by James McGregor, the Heroides occurs among the Ovidian works most frequently listed in medieval library catalogs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and in the thirteenth, it appears in cata . . logs as often as the Metamorphoses. Likewise, the presence of the Heroides in libri manuales, the anthologies of Latin texts taught in medieval schools, peaks in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 43 Such statistics do not nee . . essarily mean much taken all by themselves, but they underscore the point that throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, Ovid's works in general (and the Heroides in particular) were available to be read and studied, and in fact functioned as a sort of McGuffey's Reader of medieval Europe. In medieval schools, students were encouraged to write stylistic imitations of the classical authors. Such school exercises in turn led to more creative redeployments of Ovidian ideas, as medieval Latin poets-especially those in the "Goliardic" tradition-used Ovid's poetry as a model for their own amatory verse. 44 As was mentioned above, some medieval commentators viewed Ovid's Heroides as a guide to art of letter writing, and in the eleventh and twelfth century, various writers put this theory put into practice. Baudri of Bour . . gueil, his correspondent Constance, and the far more famous Heloise, to name just a few examples, all incorporated the words and spirit of Ovid's 41. Conrad of Hirsau, Dialogus Super Auctores, in Huygens, Accessus ad auctores, 114. 42. On the "aetas Ovidiana" see Ludwig Traube, Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, vol. 2, Ein . . leitung in die lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters (Munich: Beck, 1911), 113. 43. James McGregor, "Ovid at School: From the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century," Classical Folia 3 2 (1978): 50-51. 44. Wilkinson, Ovid Recalled, 378-81.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

35

heroines into their own epistolary exchanges. Although his works are con . . sidered rather obscure today, the eleventh . . century abbot Baudri of Bour . . gueil occupies a prominent place among the "Ovidian" poets of the Latin Middle Ages. 45 A manuscript now in the Vatican Library preserves 255 of his poems, which are full of homage to Ovid's amatory poetry.46 Baudri's interest in the Heroides manifested itself in the imitation Ovidian epistles between Helen and Paris that he composed, as well as in his own verse cor . . respondence. The epistolary exchange between Baudri and a young nun named Constance, in fact, takes its flirtatious tone from Ovid's epistle of Paris to Helen. 47 While Baudri's epistle to Constance sounds more like the letters of male lovers in the second part of the Heroides, Constance's reply contains allusions that link her rhetorical strategies with those abandoned heroines whose letters appear in the first part of Ovid's collection. 48 As Peter Dronke persuasively argues, Constance exploits the emotional range of the Heroides in her epistle: "The Heroides could suggest many ways of handling changes of mood, of expressing warmth and of taunting the man with coldness or neglect, flashes of blithe longing and stretches of being forlom."49 Constance Wright, moreover, sees in the young nun's let .. ter a mingling of Christian erotic discourse from the Song of Songs with the plaintive rhetoric of the Heroides as "Constance assumes the persona of both one of the abandoned heroines of Ovid's Heroides, mourning for her beloved, and of the religious languishing for the presence of Christ."5 0 In neither of these epistles do the moralistic commentaries on the Heroides 45. For an overview of Baudri's life and works, see Raby, Secular Latin Poetry, 1:337-48; and Gerald Bond, "locus amoris: The Poetry of Baudri of Bourgueil and the Formation of the Ovidian Subculture," Traditio 42 (1986): 143-19, revised as chapter 2 in The Loving Subject: Desire, Elo~ quence, and Power in Romanesque France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 4 2 - 69. 46. Baudri's works are edited in Karlheinz Hilbert, ed., Baldricus Burgulianus Carmina (Heidel~ berg: Carl Winter Universitatsverlag, 1979)' 47. On the Paris--Helen epistles, see Gerald Bond, "Composing Yourself: Ovid's Heroides, Bau-dri of Bourgueil, and the Problem of Persona," Mediaevalia 13 (1987): 89-93; on his exchange with Constance, see Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984),84-91; Bond, "Composing Yourself," 97-103; and Constance S. Wright, "Vehementer Amo: The Amorous Verse Epistles of Baudry of Bourgueil and Constance of Angers," in The Influence of the Classical World on Medieval Literature, Architecture, Music, and Cul~ ture: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. Fidel Fjardo--Acosta (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992), 154-66. 48. See Dronke, Women Writers, 87-90, for the allusions to Ariadne, Laodamia, and Pene-lope. 49. Dronke, Women Writers, 88. 50. Wright, "Vehementer Amo," 66.

36

ABANDONED WOMEN

appear to exert any particular influence; as Bond notes elsewhere about Baudri's other verse epistles, his use of the Heroides shows a "Humanistic" spirit rather than the influence of the moralizing commentary tradition of the schools. 51 For these two medieval writers, then, Ovid's Heroides did not so much function as a handbook of moral instruction, but provided rhetorical models of "quo modo aliquis per epistolas sollicitaretur" [how someone is wooed by letters]. Likewise, Ovid's Heroides also served as a potent subtext in the much more famous epistolary exchange between the ill .. fated lovers Abelard and Heloise during the twelfth century, six centuries before Alexander Pope would enshrine the lament of the medieval nun in his own Heroides .. style epistle, Eloisa to Abelard. 52 Peter Dronke argues that the historical Heloise "writes her own Heroides," adding that her first two letters to Abelard express a heroine's affective statesvehement longing, the grief of abandonment, loving admiration and reproach of Abelard, even resentment of God, who has severed Abelard from her-a range wider and deeper than in the Epistles of Ovid.53 In examining the rhetoric of Heloise's epistles, Dronke and other scholars note numerous echoes of Ovidian amatory discourse. 54 Linda Kauffman, moreover, suggests general resemblances between Heloise's epistles and those of Ovid's Hypsipyle and Ariadne. 55 More specifically, Dronke argues that Heloise's first two epistles to Abelard contain subtle echoes of Briseis's abject complaint to Achilles in Heroides 3. Like Briseis, Heloise has been made to serve a new master against her will, when she would prefer to remain in amorous servitude to her original lord and master, Abelard. 56 While some medi~val commentaries condemn Briseis for foolishly loving the man who killed her family, others suggest that she should be com .. Bond, "locus amoris," 160. On Pope's influential epistle, see Lipking, Abandoned Women, 145-52. Dronke, Women Writers, 107. See Dronke, Women Writers, 115,118,119; Linda Kauffman, Discourses of Desire: Gender Genre, and Epistolary Fictions (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 69-70; Phyllis R. Brown and John C. Peiffer, II "Heloise, Dialectic, and the Heroides," in Listening to Heloise: The Voice of a Twelfth--Century Woman, ed. Bonnie Wheeler (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000), 143-60 . 55· Kauffman, Discourses of Desire, 70. 56. Dronke, Women Writers, 126-27. 51. 52. 53. 54.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

37

mended for her steadfastness in loving Achilles even after she has become Agamemnon's captive. 57 Likewise, medieval and modern readers have viewed Heloise's own story and letters in contradictory ways: should the Heloise of the letters be considered a fool and a hypocrite for persisting in loving the earthly husband who has contributed to her undoing instead of turning to her heavenly master, God? Or should she be celebrated as an example of amorous (and marital) fidelity? While D. W. Robertson argues for the former interpretation, he acknowledges that the latter, "romantic" notion of Heloise has been far more influential, inspiring the literary imag .. ination of succeeding generations. 58 Like the mythical Ovidian heroines whose rhetoric she appropriates, Heloise's personal story of frustrated pas .. sion would become a subject for scholarly dissection and disagreement, especially after it took on a literary life of its own. As this account of their verse correspondence suggests, Baudri, Con .. stance, and Heloise all assimilate the rhetoric of Ovid's lamenting hero .. ines into literary epistles that formed part of ongoing personal exchanges. In doing so, these medieval writers thus made use of Ovid's female literary personae to construct their own epistolary identities. But Ovid's Heroides also inspired imitations that are structurally more similar to their sources-poems set in the mythological past that were never read (or heard) by their intended addressee~59 For example, a little .. known poem by that most prolific of medieval writers, "Anonymous," shows an inspired rewriter of Ovid crafting his own Heroides .. style epistle from Deidamia to Achilles. Although the poet takes Statius's Achilleid as his source for details of the love story, his handling of this material shows how deeply he has assimilated the mood and tone of the Heroides, a model that Statius's poem itself invokes. The "Deidamia Achilli" author has noticed the generic affinities between the elegiac discourses that Ovid and Statius employ, and has turned Statius's Deidamia into a full .. fledged Ovidian 57. For the typically negative view of Briseis, see Oxford Canon Lat. Class I; and Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling 179. For a more positive view of Briseis, see Vat. Lat. 2732, where Briseis is "lauded for legitimate love" and Oxford, Balliol270.D.12 and Cambridge, Trinity College R. 318, where the "intention of the author is to commend her for her chastity." 58. For instance, compare the moralizing reading of Heloise and her epistles found in D. W. Robertson, Abelard and Heloise (New York: Dial Press, 1972), 119-35, with Dronke's more affec~ tive, sympathetic interpretation in Women Writers. 59. For instance, the Virgilian/Ovidian Dido inspired at least two anonymous medieval Latin poets to compose their own lamentations in the heroine's voice. See the analyses in Baswell, Vir~ gil in Medieval England, 187-89; and Peter Dronke, "Dido's Lament: From Medieval Latin Lyric to Chaucer," in Kontinuitiit und Wandel: Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire, ed. U.]. Stache, W. Maaz, and F. Wagner (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1986),364-90.

38

ABANDONED WOMEN

heroine-complete with an unanswered letter. And this anonymous poet was not the only medieval reader to read Statius's Achilleid through the lens of the Heroides; Dante Alighieri also drew a similar parallel between Statius's Deidamia and Ovid's Penelope (see chap. 2). The poem, "Deidamia Achilli," consists of some 130 lines in elegiac couplets; it is preserved complete in one manuscript (now in Paris) and in fragmentary form in two others at Oxford and Stockholm. Though the text of this letter was first published in 1879, it has received almost no scholarly attention. In a 1973 festschrift, however, Jtirgen Stohlmann pro .. vides an excellent introduction, critical edition, and commentary, dating the text to the eleventh .. century aetas Ovidiana, and situating it in the milieu of French Ovidian poets working during this period, including Bau .. dri of Bourgueil, Marbod of Rennes, Fulcois of Beauvais, and Guibert of Nogent. 60 As Stohlmann's extensive annotations to his edition indicate, the poem is practically an Ovidian cento; Deidamia's letter overflows with turns of phrase plundered from the Heroides as she laments Achilles' absence, upbraids him for his involvement with the captive Briseis, and begs him to return to her. While Baudri of Bourgueil's Ovidian imitations rework material already found in the Heroides, such as the letters of Helen and Paris, the anony .. mous author of this epistle takes a more inventive approach. In writing his Heroides imitation, this poet not only mimics Ovid's style, but follows Ovid's technique of reinscribing (perhaps even one might even say reform .. ing) the work of earlier authors by filling in the gaps left in their stories. Ovid's Heroides constantly remind his audience of alternate perspectives and voices-generally female ones-missing from epic and tragic litera .. ture; likewise, the "Deidamia Achilli" author creates a female voice and a perspective that subtly challenges and corrects the conclusion of the Achilleid, which focuses on Achilles and his quest for martial glory at the expense of the domestic sphere. Moreover, the author also playfully "cor.. rects" Ovid's Heroides themselves for only telling part of a story. In the Heroides, Ovid had retold the legend of Jason from the viewpoint of two women he has abandoned: his wife Hypsipyle and her successor, the bar .. barian Medea. This pair of epistles may well have suggested to the writer that something was missing from the Heroides, for Ovid only imagines the 60. Jiirgen Stohlmann, "'Deidamia Achilli.' Eine Ovid~Imitation aus dem II. Jahrhundert," in Literatur und Sprache im Europiiischen Mittelalter: Festschrift fur Karl Langosch zum 70. Geburts tag , ed. Alf Onnerfors et al. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 195-231. Since this poem is not widely known, Stohlmann's text is provided as an appendix to the book.

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

39

voice of Achilles' barbarian mistress Briseis, but not the feelings of his wronged and waiting wife, Deidamia, whom Ovid had only briefly men .. tioned in his Ars amatoria. The anonymous author of "Deidamia Achilli" thus responds to this perceived Ovidian omission by writing his own epis .. tIe; in effect, he imagines what Ovid might have written had he lived long enough to read Statius's Achilleid. Modern classicists may consider Statius's Achilleid a rather obscure text, but during the Middle Ages, this fragmentary epic attained a wide circula .. tion in anthologies used to teach students grammar (the libri manuales) and thus, this text reached the same audience of beginning Latin students as Ovid's Heroides. 61 The surviving portion of Statius's poem tells the story of young Achilles' sojourn on the island of Scyros, where his mother Thetis conceals him among the daughters of King Lycomedes in order to prevent him from fighting and losing his life in the Trojan War. Achilles lives for some years dressed as a girl, and takes advantage of this situation to engage in a love affair with Lycomedes' most beautiful daughter, Deidamia, who secretly bears his son. Achilles' masculine identity remains concealed until Odysseus and Diomedes, prompted by the seer Calchas, arrive on Scyros looking for the hero. They tempt him to reveal his true identity by talking of war and by putting a shield and sword among the more domestic gifts they have brought for Lycomedes' real daughters. Once Achilles chooses the weaponry over more conventionally "feminine" presents, his true gen .. der and his relationship to Deidamia become known to all. As a result, he marries Deidamia, spends a single night with her, and the next day, sails off to the Trojan War with Odysseus and Diomedes, never to return again. Clearly, Statius's own gestures toward the Heroides helped prompt the anonymous poet's decision to rework this Statian materia into the forma of an Ovidian epistle. 62 In the Achilleid, Deidamia remains almost completely silent: the single speech she makes occurs on her wedding night with

61. For a more complete discussion of the fortuna of Statius's Achilleid in the Middle Ages, see the sources cited in chapter 2, note 9. 62. See the excellent treatment of these similarities in G. Rosati's "Momenti e forme della for~ tuna antica di Ovidio: L'Achilleide di Stazio," in Ovidius redivivus: Von Ovid zu Dante, ed. Michelangelo Picone and Bernhard Zimmerman (Stuttgart: M. and P. Verlage fur Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1994), 43-62. Though I encountered Rosati's article after my own analysis was written, his discussion in the section titled "Le Heroides e Deidamia nel ruolo di relicta," 44-54, parallels some of my own conclusions about the Ovidian echoes in Statius's text. Rosati also points out interesting parallels between Deidamia's speeches and the epistle of Laodamia to her husband Protesilaus, the first Greek warrior killed in the Trojan War.

40

ABANDONED WOMEN

Achilles as she attempts to dissuade him from leaving her behind. 63 In the first section of this twenty .. five .. line speech, Deidamia laments the neces .. sity for Achilles' departure. Changing tack briefly, she orders him to go off to war. Then, hesitating, she imagines Achilles moving on to other amorous entanglements, including one with Helen of Troy, while she is mocked by Achilles' new household: "ast egomet primae puerilis fabula culpae / narrabor famulis aut dissimulata latebo" (Achill. 1.947-48: "But I shall be talked of to your serving women, the story of a young man's first fault, or disowned, I shall be forgotten").6 4 Deidamia's rapidly shifting rhetoric in this speech sounds very much as if she has prepared one of the Heroides for oral delivery: her concerns about Achilles, especially her fear that he will mock her before other women, strongly recall those of Penelope for Ulysses in the first of Ovid's Heroides: haec ego dum stulte metuo, quae vestra libido est esse peregrina captus amore potes. forsitan et narres, quam sit tibi rustica coniunx quae tan tum lanas non sinat esse rudes. fallar, et hoc crimen tenues vanescat in auras neve, revertendi liber, abesse velis!

(Her. 1.75-80)65 [While I foolishly worry about things like these, you may be captive to a stranger's love-I know you men. Perhaps you even tell how rustic a wife you have-one fit only to work the wool. I pray I am mistaken, and that my charge is slight as the breeze that blows, and that you are not free to return and choose to stay away.] 63· See Achilleid 1.93 I-55. 64. All quotations from the Achilleid are cited from the texts in J. H. Mozley, trans., Statius, voL 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928). In his edition, O. A. W. Dilke comments on 1.947: "Mozley renders 'henchmen' (famulus); but the sense is rather that Achilles will tell stories of Deidamia to the Trojan women who become his slaves (famulae)"-and presumably, I would add, his concubines. Meheust renders this line "ces femmes de venues tes servantes" and com, ments, "Ce sont les T royennes qui seront devenues les famulae d' Achille; parmi elles, Briseis, la captive a laquelle Achille ne renoncera pas sans peine." Certainly, in the medieval tradition, Achilles was known for his amorous exploits among the Trojan women, and presumably for this reason, Dante chooses to place him with the lustful in Inferno 5. On this line see the commentary in Statius, Achilleide, ed. Jean Meheust (Paris: Societe d'Edition "Les Belles Lettres," 1971), and Statius, Achilleid, ed. O. A. W. Dilke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954). 65. Texts from the Heroides are cited from those printed in the Loeb edition of Ovid, Heroides and Amores, 2d ed., trans. Grant Showerman, rev. G. P. Goold (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977).

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

41

Likewise, in the final lines of her speech, Deidamia evokes the threat of her husband living in amorous captivity. She begs Achilles: "hoc solum, pariat ne quid tibi barbara coniunx, / ne qua det indignos Thetidi captiva nepotes" (Achill. 1.954-55: "Grant this one request, that no barbarian wife should bear you a child, that no captive woman should give unworthy grandsons to Thetis"). Here, Deidamia's words brim with dramatic irony: Statius (and his audience) are only too aware of the story of Achilles' rela .. tionship with the captured princess Briseis, the incident that sets the Iliad in motion, and of Ovid's Heroides 3, in which that same "barbara coniunx" will herself lament Achilles' faithlessness. In the final lines of book I of the Achilleid, Achilles makes this pro forma promise to Deidamia, as the nar .. rator laconically comments: "inrita ventosae rapiebant verba procellae" (Achill. 1.960: "The fickle breezes swept away his empty words"). Ironi .. cally, in the next book of the Achilleid, Achilles himself will be swept away by the winds, never to return again. In his fictional letter , the poet of "Deidamia Achilli" imagines the story four years later, when Deidamia's prophetic fears have been realized: apparently, she has already been hearing rumors about Achilles and Bri .. seis. Appropriately enough, the letter contains many reminders of the winds, sea, and ship that took both Achilles and his empty promises away, as the poet picks up various motifs from Statius and develops them further. In lines 89-90, Deidamia sadly articulates the Statian association of the fickle lover and the wind. She exclaims: "0 levis, Aeacida, plus multo fronde caduca / Plusque levis vento plusque tumente freto!" [0 grandson of Aeacus, you are much lighter than falling branches and more mobile than the wind, more fickle than the swelling sea]. Recalling Achilles' departure in line I I, she envisions his "felicia vela" [auspicious sails], but revises her impression in the following line, "Sed non et nobis prospera vela satis" [But they were not fortunate sails for me]. Continuing his echoes of the sailing motif, the poet has Deidamia twice refer to herself as a sinking ship, a poignant reminder of the departure scene in Statius's Achilleid, where Deidamia mentally sets sail with her husband: "coniunx oculisque in car .. basa fix is / ibat et ipsa freto, et puppem iam sola videbat" (Achill. 2.25-26: "His wife, with her eyes fixed on the canvas sailed upon the sea herself, for she alone saw the vessel"). In lines 53-54 of Deidamia's epistle, her metaphorical ship has run into trouble: she comments, "et venti mi deseruere secundi / Iamque bibunt medio naufraga vela freto" [The winds from behind have abandoned me, and now the shipwrecked sails drink in the middle of the sea]. Close to the end of the poem, the poet again

42

ABANDONED WOMEN

invokes the ship metaphor, as Deidamia laments in lines 123-24, "Mutato subitis cedit ratis aequore ventis, / Hoc nisi succurras, victa subibit aquas" [The ship gives way when the sea is changed by sudden winds; there, unless you help, the vanquished ship will go under the waters]. In this way, the poet expands and develops Statius's hints into a recurring motif that expresses Deidamia's woe and provides an objective correlative to the alteration in Achilles' affections. Even some of the most unlikely lines of "Deidamia Achilli" can be traced to the poet's strategy of developing Statius's imagery to indicate the passage of time and of love. In lines 5 I-52, Deidamia denounces Achilles for his faithlessness, using a metaphor that may well bring a smile to read .. ers: "At si vera fides, tractabile pectus haberes / Nec raperet tauram bos aliena meum" [But if your faith were true, you would have a yielding heart, and a foreign cow would not take away my bull]. Odd as they may seem, these lines evoke the very simile Statius used to describe Achilles' first sight of and desire for Deidamia in the Achilleid: ut pater armenti quondam ductorque fururus, cui nondum totu peraguntur cornua gyro, cum sociam pastus niveo candore iuvencam aspicit, ardescunt animi primusque per ora spumat amor, spectant hilares obstantque magistri.

(Achill. 1.313-17) [As when he who will soon be the father and the leader of a herd, whose horns have not yet come full circle, perceives the comrade of his pasture, a heifer of snowy whiteness, his spirit takes fire, and he foams at the mouth with his first passion; the herdsmen, glad at heart, watch him and obstruct him.] Now that "heifer" has been replaced by a "foreign cow," even as the "pater armenti quondam ductorque futurus" has now grown into a fully adult bull with other interests-much to Deidamia's dismay. Moreover, the poet reinforces his Statian allusion with another Ovidian echo: in Heroides 5, as Oenone laments the faithlessness of Paris, she reflects on Cassandra's ear .. lier warning to her: "Graia iuvenca venit, quae te patriamque domumque / perdat! io prohibe! Graia iuvenca venit!" (5.117-18: "A Greek heifer comes to ruin you, your homeland, and your house! Ho, keep her far! A Greek heifer comes!"). The anonymous poet's deliberate echo of Cassan ..

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

43

dra's mad and rather comic description of the usurping Helen in "Dei .. damia Achilli" illustrates the poet's assimilation of Ovid's witty excesses, as he captures that combination of pathos and levity that so perplexes (and so interests) critics of the Heroides. Although some of the motifs and expressions in "Deidamia Achilli" clearly flow from Statius's Achilleid, its tone and verbal texture remains dis .. tinctly Ovidian, as Stohlmann's extensive catalog of parallel lines from other letters from the Heroides reveals. In fact, one might say that among the ideas embodied in this Ovidian cento is the reiterative nature of aban .. donment, as the grieving Deidamia experiences approximately the same situation in nearly the same words as the women who have gone before her. 66 In particular, the poet invites comparisons to two of Ovid's Heroides: the epistle of Briseis, the woman whom Deidamia feels has taken her husband captive, and the epistle of Penelope, the wife of the man who took Deidamia's husband away from Scyros. In the opening lines of the letter, Deidamia begs her absent husband to wri te to her: Legitimam nuptam si dici fas sit amicam Haec tibi casta suo mittit arnica viro. Si legis, Aecide, mittentis verba puellae, Perlege missa tibi! Mitta legenda michi, Mitte legenda tuo cara cum coniuge nato! Mittere vel noli verba, sed ipse venit ("Deidamia Achilli," 1-6)

[If it be proper for a lawful wife to be called a mistress, a chaste mistress sends this to you, her master . If, descendent of Aeacus, you read these words of your mistress's sending, read well the words that have been sent to you! Send me something to read! Send words to your son and your dear wife! Or, do not send words, but come yourself!] In these lines, the poet echoes and artfully expands upon Penelope's open.. ing plea to Ulysses: "Haec tua Penelope lento tibi mittet, Ulixe; / nil mihi rescribas attinet: ipse veni" (Her. I. I -2: "Your Penelope sends these words to you, tardy Ulysses; do not write back to me-come yourself!"). At the 66. See Kauffman, Discourses of Desire, 42, for a discussion of the repetitive structure of desire, seduction, and abandonment in Ovid's Heroides.

44

ABANDONED WOMEN

same time, her meditation on whether she should properly called "amica" or "legitima nupta" deftly recalls the opening of Briseis's letter, as she debates whether its is proper for her, a slave, to complain of Achilles: "Si mihi pauca queri de te dominoque viroque / fas est, de domino pauca viroque querar" {Her. 3.5-6: "If it is right to complain a little about you, my master and beloved, I shall complain a little"}. Moreover, the poem's first line, with its juxtaposition of the idea of a "legitima nupta" {a legiti . . mate wife} with an "arnica" {mistress} prefigures the denunciation of Bri . . seis that will take up the second part of the poem, as Deidamia sees that her own husband has become entangled in precisely the situation that Penelope had feared in Heroides I: he has actually become captive to a "stranger's love." As she laments in lines 81-82, "Tu nunc captiva frueris plus captus arnica / Et iacet in viduo Deidamia thoro" [You, more captured than she, delight in your captive mistress / and Deidamia lies in a widowed bed]. Like Penelope, who tells Ulysses that she lies in a "viduo ... lecto" {Her. 1.81: "widowed bed"}, Deidamia experiences the "viduo thoro" of abandonment. Still, in Deidamia's case, the phrase rings all too tragically true: unlike Ulysses, who brought him to the Trojan War, Achilles never will return safely home, and his wife will be left in a "widowed bed." In interweaving Statian motifs and Ovidian style, "Deidamia Achilli" serves as a meditation on the claims of a "legitima nupta" versus the "bar . . bara arnica," as Briseis is described in the poem's closing lines. Moreover, its implied comparison of Deidamia with the chaste and faithful Penelope promotes her cause against that of Ovid's Briseis. "Deidamia Achilli" thus functions as a corrective counterpart to the viewpoint of the "arnica" pro . . vided in the Heroides, as the poet subversively challenges Ovid's Heroides 3, much as Ovid had challenged previous authors. Finally, the poet's focus on the importance of wedded bliss over extracurricular arnor provides an interesting literary counterpart to the medieval commentaries on the Hero~ ides that emphasize the importance of "castus amor"-chaste marital love. The scholastic commentaries' schematic interpretation of the dazzling rhetoric of the Heroides sound hopelessly flat . . footed in comparison to the work of the eleventh . . century "Deidamia Achilli" author, who couches his much wittier commentary on Ovid's Heroides in the form of a poem that sometimes even seems to be trying to out . . Ovid Ovid. {Here, verses such as 77-78 spring to mind: "Cum michi sis primae, non soli, iunctus, Achille / Soli, non primo, sum tibi iuncta viro" ["While you, Achilles, have been joined to me first, but not only, I am joined to you as my only, not first, husband!"].} Nevertheless, beneath the delightful verbal play in this

Ovid's Heroides and the Latin Middle Ages

45

poem, which clearly demonstrates the poet's sustained study and sophisti .. cated command of classical literature, there lurks a more serious message about the value of fidelity and marriage. In this case, the moralizing schoolmaster's theme can be distinctly heard beneath the more baroque embellishments of this accomplished eleventh .. century classicist's inter .. textual fugue. The verse epistles of Baudri, Constance, Heloise, and the anonymous author of "Deidamia Achilli" convincingly demonstrate that Ovid's Hero . . ides provoked a variety of creative responses during the Latin Middle Ages that should be of great interest in their own right as well as for an under .. standing of how later poets approached these poems in their vernacular compositions. Nevertheless, a comprehensive history of the reception and transformation of Ovid's Heroides in the Latin literature of the Middle Ages still remains to be written. Even a survey would be far beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, I hope that this prolegomena to any future reception history of the Heroides in the Latin Middle Ages has demonstrated two things: first, that Ovid's epistolary collection was the object of careful study and imitation by medieval Latin writers and second, that the creative interpretive responses of medieval poets to Ovid's oeuvre could look vastly different from the flat .. footed didactic schema set forth in the schoolmasters' commentaries. Before turning from the transformations of the Heroides in Latin litera .. ture to the imaginative translations in the vernacular poetry of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer that will occupy the next few chapters, I should like to pause briefly to consider one more potential intermediate step: namely, more literal translations of the Heroides into medieval vernacu .. lars. While Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer were all able Latinists and would not have needed translations to read the Heroides, they may have used them in their research, and perhaps just as important, their audiences may have read them. No Italian translation of the Heroides would have been available to Dante; the first vernacularization of Ovid's epistles, a translation usually attributed to Filippo Ceffi, appeared about 1325, four years after Dante's death. 67 Nevertheless, the poet might have known an 67. For a discussion of Ceffi and a survey of vernacular translations of the Heroides in Italy, see Egidio Bellorini, Note sulle traduzioni italiane delle "Eroidi" d'Ovidio anteriori al Rinascimento (Turin: Loescher, 1900). According to a note in Maurizio Perugi, "Chiose gallo,romanze aile 'Eroidi': Un manuale per la formazione letteraria del Boccaccio," Studi di Filologia ltaliana 47 (1989): 104, Mas, simo Zaggia is preparing a critical edition of the fourteenth, century Italian translations of the Heroides under the auspices of the Accademia La Crusca. To the best of my knowledge, that edi--

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Old French prose translation of the Heroides that probably dates from the middle to late thirteenth century. 68 Although it was unavailable to Dante, Boccaccio easily could have seen a manuscript of Ceffi's translation, which is preserved in numerous manu . . scripts. Besides Ceffi's, Boccaccio could have known the Old French trans . . lation mentioned above either directly or indirectly.69 In addition, Egidio Bellorini's survey lists several partial translations in manuscripts that may have been extant during Boccaccio's lifetime. Like Boccaccio, Chaucer may have used Filippo Ceffi's translation of the Heroides; Sanford Meech has cited various passages that may attest to Chaucer's familiarity with it.7 0 Moreover, Chaucer could have encountered a later translation in ottava rima attributed to Domenico da Monticello. However, scholars do not know precisely when Domenico wrote his translation; the earliest extant manuscript is dated 1416, well after Chaucer's death)I Therefore, in the chapters that follow, I shall generally assume that the poets were working directly from Ovid's text, though in the case of Boccaccio and Chaucer I may refer to a passage from Ceffi's translation that seems to explain a departure from an Ovidian model.

tion has not yet appeared, and until it does, the most recent edition of the translation attributed to Ceffi is Giuseppe Bernadoni, ed., Epistole Eroiche di Ovidio Nasone Volgarizzate nel Buon Secolo della Lingua (Milan, 1842). 68. See Leopold Constans, "Une traduction fran<;aise des Heroides d'Ovide au XIIIe siecle," Romania 43 (19 14): 177-98. Constans's discussion of the dating of this text comes to no firm con~ elusions, but he suggests a date toward the latter half of the thirteenth century in his discussion on PP·193-94· 69. Maurizio Perugi has suggested that the poet may have known a manuscript miscellany pre~ served in the Biblioteca Laurenziana that contains a glossed Italian translation of four of the Hero-ides made from the Old French translation mentioned above, as well as other vernacular works relating to the Troy story. In an exhaustive study of this manuscript and its glosses, Perugi demon~ strates that the compilation emerged from the cultural milieu of Angevin Naples and concludes from indications in Boccaccio's earlier poems that the poet was likely to have used a manuscript similar to this one during his Neapolitan sojourn. See Perugi, "Chiose gallo~romanze," 135-42. 70. Sanford Brown Meech, "Chaucer and an Italian Translation of the Heroides," PMLA 45 (1930): 110-28. 7 I. On this translation and the problems of dating it and identifying its author, see Bellorini, Note sulle traduzioni italiane, 4I-57. Edwards, "Study of Six Characters," 5 suggests that this trans~ lation might have been available to Chaucer but finds no concrete evidence for its use.

~

Two ft

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses Fraud, Rhetoric, and Abandoned Women

n Inferno 26, one of the most famous cantos of Dante's Commedia, Vir-gil explains why Ulysses and Diomedes have been condemned to burn eternally within their two--horned flame, saying:

I

Piangevisi entro l'arte per che, morta, De'idamla ancor si duol d'Achille, e del Palladio pena vi si porta.

1. Quotations from Dante's Commedia are cited from the text established by Giorgio Petroc~ chi, ed., La Commedia secondo I' antica vulgata, 4 vols. (Milan: Mondadori, 1966-67), as reprinted in Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles S. Singleton, 3 vols. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970-75). The translation of the Inferno is that of Robert and Jean Hollander (New York: Doubleday, 2000); translations of the Purgatorio and Paradiso are from Sin~ gleton. To find one's bearings in the mare aperto of criticism on Inferno 26, Anthony Cassell, "Ulisseana: A Bibliography of Dante's Ulysses to 1981," Italian Culture 3 (1981): 23-45, is invalu~ able. More recently, Massimo Seriacopi, All' estremo della "Prudentia." L'Ulisse di Dante (Rome: Zauli, 1994), 155-91, gives an extensive bibliography on the canto.

47

48

ABANDONED WOMEN

[There they lament the wiles for which, in death, Deidamla mourns Achilles still, and there they make amends for the Palladium.] Dante's mention of Deidamia and Achilles in this terzina alludes to the story Statius tells about Ulysses and Diomedes' encounter with them on the island of Scyros in his Achilleid-the same text the anonymous Ovid . . ian poet of "Deidamia Achilli" discussed in chapter I found so fascinating. Read in this context, Dante's invocation of the sad tale of Deidamia's abandonment should lead his reader to ponder the human cost of Ulysses' heroic exploits, especially when Ulysses later mentions that he has left his own wife and family behind in order to pursue his ill . . fated voyage. As John Freccero observes in his influential reading of this canto, Dante's portrait of Ulysses functions as a "Christian critique of epic categories, a critique of earthly heroism from beyond the grave."2 As this chapter will demonstrate, Dante's depiction of Ulysses' final voyage specifically calls into question the rhetorical strategies employed by the epic hero, as Giuseppe Mazzotta points out in his interpretation of this canto. 3 In his imaginative account of Ulysses' last journey, Dante embeds interesting parallels to the events that Statius narrates in the Achilleid; the parallels between the two texts suggest that the reader would do well to be skeptical of the Greek hero's high . . flown but self. . serving rhetoric. Further . . more, Dante's brief description of Deidamia's suffering at the loss of Achilles reminds the reader of the part of Ulysses' story that the hero omits-namely, Penelope's feelings at being left behind by her husband. Dante's allusion to the Achilleid draws attention to Ulysses' poor treatment of his wife and suggests that Dante condemns Ulysses as much for his aban . . donment of his own family as for the social destruction wrought by his fraudulent rhetoric. The bare fact of Dante's allusion to Statius's Achilleid in Inferno 26 has been noted in commentaries over the years; some commentaries have also cited and summarized the plot of the Achilleid. Yet in the vast number of pages specifically devoted to Inferno 26, this story has only rarely been mentioned-and then usually in a brief detour en route to the Dantist's 2. John Freccero, "Dante's Ulysses: From Epic to Novel," in Freccero, Dante: The Poetics of Conversion, ed. Rachel Jacoff (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986 ), 139.

3. For a persuasive account of Dante's depiction of the dangers of rhetoric in this canto, see Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979), 66-106.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

49

"real" goal of wrestling with the critical problems attendant upon Ulysses' watery demise. 4 Similarly, scholarly work on Dante's engagement with Statius's epics generally has chosen to confront this issue where it seems to be most pressing-in Purgatorio 21 and 22, where the poet first appears as a character within the Comedy rather than a literary presence outside of it.5 Nevertheless, as the lists of references in Moore's Studies in Dante and the Enciclopedia Dantesca illustrate, Dante's poetic engagement with Sta . . tius begins well before the redeemed Roman makes his earthshaking entrance. 6 Bainard Cowan's examination of the allusions to the Thebaid scattered throughout the Inferno shows how Dante draws an analogy between Thebes, wrenched by bloody internecine war, and the sinful dis . . order of Hell. 7 Although they are often overlooked, Dante's allusions to the Achilleid in both Inferno and Purgatorio provide similar parallels that enrich and comment upon the main narrative. For modern readers, Statius tends to be a little . . known, little . . studied author, confined to the academic purgatory of second . . rate hacks writing to flatter their tyrannical rulers. 8 When modern classicists do comment on his poetry, they tend to concentrate either on his Silvae, which were unknown during the Middle Ages, or on the Thebaid, his twelve . . book depiction of the fratricidal war between Eteocles and Polynices. The 4. Giorgio Padoan, "Ulisse 'fandi fictor' e Ie vie della sapienza: Momenti di una tradizione (da Virgilio a Dante)," reprinted in Il pio Enea e l' empio Ulisse: Tradizione classica e intendimento medievale in Dante (Ravenna: Longo, 1977), 173-75, provides one of the earliest and fullest dis, cuss ions of the allusion to the Achilleid in Inferno 26. Mark Musa, "Filling the Gap with consiglio frodolente," Italian Culture 3 (1981): 12-15, and "Virgil's Ulysses and Ulysses's Diomedes," Dante Studies 96 (1978): 188, draws attention to Dante's knowledge of Stat ius's Achilleid, as do (briefly) John Scott, "Inferno XXVI: Dante's Ulysses," Lettere Italiane 23 (1971): 157; Ruggiero Stefanini, "Inferno XXVI," Lectura Dantis 6 (1990): 340; and J. H. Whitfield, "Dante and Statius: Purgatorio XXI-XXII," in Dante Soundings: Eight Literary and Historical Essays, ed. David Nolan (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981), I IS. 5. See E. Sacchi, "Dante e Stazio," Giornale dantesco 8 (1900): 449-65; Giorgio Brugnoli, "Stazio in Dante," Cultura Neolatina 29 (1969): I 17-25; Paolo Baldan, "Stazio e Ie possibili 'vere rag ion che son nascose' della sua conversione," Lettere Italiane 38 (1986): 149-65; Christopher Kleinhenz, "The Celebration of Poetry: A Reading of Purgatory XXII," Dante Studies 106 (1988): 21-41; G. Cecchetti, "The Statius Episode: Observations on Dante's Conception of Poetry," Lec, tura Dantis 7 (1990 ): 96- I 14· 6. Edward Moore, "Scripture and Classical Authors in Dante," in Studies in Dante, 1st ser. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896),243-55; Ettore Paratore, "Stazio, Publio Papinio," Enciclopedia Dantesca, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia ltaliana, 1976),423-25. 7. Bainard Cowan, "Dante's 'Novella Tebe,'" Comparatist 6 (J982): 16-23. 8. For a commentary on the slighting treatment accorded Stat ius by many modern classicists, see the introductory remarks in Frederick M. Ahl, "Statius's Thebaid: A Reconsideration," Auf stieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 2.32.5 (1986): 2804-11.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Achilleid, the beginning fragment of an epic treatment of the hero's life left unfinished at Statius's death in A.D. 96, generally receives short shrift. Yet, during the Middle Ages, scholars apparently frequently read and com .. mented upon this work; its inclusion as one of six basic Latin texts in the medieval Liber Catonianus, a compilation used in medieval schools to teach grammar, would have ensured it a fairly widespread circulation between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. 9 The version of the Achilleid studied in the medieval schools was usually divided up into five books, and, as with many other works, each "book" acquired its own verse argu .. mentum. 10 However, the older and better manuscripts of the Achilleid on which modern editors base their editions preserve the work in its appar .. ently original two .. book form: the first book treats the career of Achilles up to his decision to join Ulysses and Diomedes in their expedition to Troy; the second, a fragment of some 160 lines, treats the departure of the three warriors from Scyros. I I Based on the statement of his Statius in the Purgatorio, Stazio la gente ancor di la mi noma: cantai di Tebe, e poi del grande Achille; rna caddi in via con la seconda soma

(Purg.21·9 1-93) [Men yonder still speak my name, which is Statius. I sang of Thebes, and then of the great Achilles, but I fell on that way with my second burden.] one could argue that Dante knew the "two .. book version" of the Achilleid, since Statius's "falling" under his "second burden" might be understood to signify Dante's awareness that the book exists in its present fragmentary form because Statius died during the composition of its second book. Nev .. ertheless, one could avoid this lectio difficilior by following some early and modern commentators in interpreting "seconda soma" as simply referring 9. For the fortuna of Statius in the Middle Ages, see Luigi Valmaggi, "La fortuna di Stazio nella tradizione letteraria latina e bassolatina," Rivista di Filologia e di Istruzione Classica 21 (1893): 4°9-62,481-554. For the inclusion of Statius in the Liber Catonianus, see M. Boas, "De librorum Catonianorum historia atque compositione," Mnemosyne, n.s. 42 (1914): 17-46; C. Jeudy and Y. F. Riou, "L' 'Achille ide' de Stace au Moyen Age: Abreges et Arguments," Revue d'Histoire des Textes 4 (1974): 143-79; and Paul M. Clogan, The Medieval Achilleid of Statius (Leiden: Brill, 1968),2, reviewed by Robert Dale Sweeney, Classical World 63 (1970): 173. 10. See Willi Schetter, "Merkverse zur Fiinfbucherausgabe der Achilleis des Statius," Philologus 113 (1969): 306-10, for a discussion of the argumenta affixed to the medieval book divisions. I I. Meheust, ed., Achilleide, xlvii.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

5I

to the Achilleid as the second of the two works mentioned in this terzina. In any event, Dante's assertion that the Achilleid is unfinished became the subject of scholarly debate in the half;century after his death; according to a letter from Francesco Nelli to Petrarch written about I36I, their learned friend Forese Donati defended Dante's claims against the then;prevailing view that Statius's poem was complete. I2 No matter which manuscript tradition one believes Dante to have known, it is safe to assume that Dante knew the Achilleid firsthand, knew it well, and would expect the same of an audience of his contemporaries. As Wetherbee observes: [M]any scholars have treated the Statius cantos as if Statius' own poetry were as much as a fiction as his conversion. But it would be pos; sible to show that the Dantean Statius of the Purgatorio is derived from a reading of the Thebaid and Achilleid as direct, as extensive, and as uncontaminated by allegorization as the readings of the Aeneid and the Pharsalia that produced the Dantean versions of Virgil and Cato. I3 In reading Dante, even a seemingly casual poetic allusion cannot be regarded lightly. And thus, to understand Dante well, a reader must try to become the ideal reader constructed by his text by examining not only his poetry, but that of his auctores. Only then will the full richness of Dante's "arte allusiva" reveal itself. I4 By this, I do not mean that we should engage in Quellenforschung for its own sake-with respect to Dante's canto of Ulysses, critics have sometimes seemed to wish to multiply entities beyond necessity, digging up various source;texts about Ulysses that Dante may not have even read rather than analyzing and trying to understand those that we know he did. Instead, as Wetherbee says of Chaucer, we need to view Dante as a poet reading and engaging with the works of other poets;

12. See Giuseppe Billanovich, Petrarca letterato (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1947), 162 and letter 27 in Henry Cochin, Un ami de Petraque: Lettres de Franceso Nelle aPetraque (Paris, 1892),285-86. Petrarch's reply to Nelli's request for his opinion on the subject does not survive, but based on a statement in the letter, Cochin concludes that Petrarch considered the Achilleid a finished work. Paratore's Enciclopedia Dantesca entry on Statius mistakenly conflates the Forese Donati mentioned in Nelli's letter (on whom see Enciclopedia'Dantesca, 2:563) with the Forese Donati of Dante's own generation who appears in Purgatorio 23. 13. Winthrop Wetherbee, "Poeta che mi guidi: Dante, Lucan, and Virgil," in Canons, ed. Robert Van Hallberg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 147. 14. See the discussion in Giorgio Petrocchi, "Arte allusiva," in Pagine stravaganti, 2 vols. (Flo, renee: Sansoni, 1968),2:275-82.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

in order to do that, we must first enter into a dialogue with the texts that Dante knew, admired, imitated, and loved. I 5 With that object in view, I shall be summarizing and commenting on Statius's Achilleid in the following pages, with a special emphasis on themes, images, and words that seem relevant for a Dantist's reading of Inferno 26. But before confronting this poetic intertext directly, I would like to explore how Dante places this "background narrative" within the reader's frame of vision by first examining the passage alluding to the Achilleid contained in Inferno 26 and then considering Dante's self.. citation of this passage in the Comedy. Narratively speaking, the allusion to Statius's Achilleid in Inferno 26.62-63 falls within Virgil's reply to Dante's question about who is inside the "horned flame" that he has spied from the stone bridge stretching over the chasm of the eighth bolgia of Malebolge. Posing the question, Dante asks chi

e 'n quel foco che vien Sl diviso di sopra, che par surger de la pira dov'Eteocle col fratel fu miso?

[Who is in the flame so riven at the tip it could be rising from the pyre on which Eteocles was laid out with his brother?] As Cowan suggests, Dante's mention of the ferocious end of Oedipus's sons serves to emphasize the theme of strife and dissension-strife and discord for which Dante holds Ulysses and Diomedes responsible, since they have promoted it with their fraudulent behavior. In this terzina's reference to Eteocles and his unnamed rival, Polynices, one might also a find parallel with Ulysses, who speaks within the canto, and his silent partner, Diomedes. Furthermore, the parallel between Ulysses and Eteocles might also extend as far as their fraudulent behavior-in the Thebaid, Eteocles arranged the secret ambush of his brother's embassy in book 2. Even if the reference to Eteocles does not call up precise parallels between the Theban brothers and the two Greek warriors, such a vivid image from the Thebaid should send readers back to its source in Statius. And thus, when Virgil explains the reasons for Ulysses' and Diomedes' 15- Wetherbee, Chaucer and the Poets,

10.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

53

punishment, we are prepared to catch the allusion to another Statian epic, the Achilleid: Rispuose a me: "La dentro si martira Ulisse e DYomede, e cosl insieme a la vendetta vanno come a l'ira e dentro della lor fiamma si geme l'agguato del caval che fe la porta onde uscl de' Romani il gentil seme. Piangevisi entro l'arte per che, morta DeYdamla ancor si duol d'Achille, e del Palladio pena vi si porta." "S' ei posson dentro da queUe faville parlar," diss'io, "maestro, assai ten priego e ripriego, che'l priego vaglia mille, che non mi facci de l'attender niego fin che la fiamma cornuta qua vegna; vedi che del disio ver'lei mi piego!"

[He replied: "Within this flame find torment

Ulysses and Diomed. They are paired in God's revenge as once they earned his wrath. In their flame they mourn the stratagem of the horse that made a gateway through which the noble seed of Rome came forth. There they lament the wiles for which, in death, Deidamza mourns Achilles still, and there they make amends for the Palladium." "If they can speak within those flames, " I said, "I pray you, master, and I pray againand may my prayer be a thousand strongdo not forbid my lingering a while until the twin~forked flame arrives. You see how eagerly I lean in its direction. "] I quote Dante's reply to his master as well as Virgil's statement not just to note the allusion to the Achilleid contained in Virgil's reference to Dei . . damia, but also to observe the verbal texture of the whole passage, which

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Dante later recalls (literally per Ie rime) at the crucial point in Purgatorio where Statius reveals his identity:

21

Stazio la gente ancor di la mi noma: cantai di T ebe, e poi del grande Achille; ma caddi in via con la seconda soma. Al mio ardor fuor seme Ie faville che mi scaldar, de la divina fiamma onde sono allumati pili di mille; de l'Eneyda dico, la qual mamma fummi, e fummi nutrice, poetando: sanz' essa non fermai peso di dramma. E per esser vivuto di la quando visse Virgilio, assentirei un sole pili che non deggio al mio uscir di bando.

(Purg.

21.91-102;

emphasis added)

[Men yonder still speak my name, which is Statius. I sang of Thebes, and then of the great Achilles, but I fell on that way with my second burden. The sparks which warmed me from the divine flame whereby more than a thou . . sand have been kindled were the seeds of my poetic fire: I mean the Aeneid, which in poetry was both mother and nurse to me--without it I had achieved little of worth; and to have lived yonder when Virgil lived I would consent to one sun more than lowe to my coming forth from exile.] The italics in the quotation suggest some of the ways in which the Purga . . torio passage is Dante's self. . citation of Inferno 26. The exact recapitulation of the Achille . . faville . . mille rhyme scheme, the references to Thebes and Achilles, the images of seeds and fire, and finally, the burning desire with which Dante prays to talk to Ulysses and with which Statius longs to have met Virgil demonstrate that the similarities between these two passages are not merely fortuitous. Statius's direct naming of himself and his epics in the Purgatorio 21 passage makes the verbal cues in the earlier passage read like Dante's attempt to code Statius's signature upon it-in a sense, one could think of the Purgatorio passage as Statius's self. . quotation rather than Dante's. The parallels between these two passages and their implica . . tions for Dante's understanding of Statius and Virgil become especially fas . . cinating when read in conjunction with another passage: Dante's farewell to Virgil in Purgatorio 30, where the mamma. .fiamma . . dramma rhyme

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

55

scheme of the Purgatorio 21 passage recurs in conjunction with images of flame, weeping, and ships that should remind the reader (yet again) of the powerful poetry of Inferno 26. However, I would like to bracket the issue of the Dante . . Statius . . Virgil relationship for the moment, with the intention of returning to it after examining in more detail the presence and function of Statian allusion within Inferno 26. Now that Dante's hints have set the reader hot on the trail of the vesti . . gia Statii in Inferno 26, I wish to turn to Achilleid itself to see what themes, images, and words Dante might have taken from that miniature epic and chosen to incorporate into his text. While it is impossible to guess what the thematic emphasis of the Achilleid would have been had Stat ius man . . aged to finish it, the two . . book fragment that he left focuses on the hero's early career-in effect, a bildungsroman about the social and sexual edu . . cation of Achilles until he puts forth on the open sea with Ulysses and Diomedes, sailing off to meet his destiny in the Trojan War. As Severin Koster has argued, the early part of the work might better be dubbed a "Thetiad," since it centers on the attempts of Achilles' mother to stave off his fate by concealing him from the Greek warriors who so ardently desire his company. 16 A more recent study of the Achilleid by Daniel Mendelsohn suggests that the first book should be read as a record of Thetis's maternal anxiety, "her doomed effort to retain control over her son's life in order to thwart the martial, 'paternal' influence that will ultimately claim it."17 When Thetis sees the Trojan fleet carrying Helen off to Troy, she fears for her son and urges Neptune to sink the ships, which he refuses to do. Left to her own resources, the goddess devises a plan. And interestingly enough, Thetis's strategy for keeping her son away from the masculine, martial world that threatens his life is to turn him into a fictive woman, dressing him as a girl, teaching him the gender . . marked behaviors expected of him in his womanly garb, and introducing him into the company of the daugh . . ters of King Lycomedes ofScyros in his new sociosexual identity. Achilles, whose education to date has been concerned more with mauling lionesses than with working wool, at first resists his mother's attempt to feminize him. Ironically, he accedes to the deception only because he feels the awakening of his masculine sexual identity-seeing Lycomedes' beautiful 16. See Severin Koster, "Liebe und Krieg in der 'Achilleis' des Statius," Wurzburger Jahrbucher

fur die Altertumswissenschaft, n.s. 5 (1979): 199· 17. Daniel Mendelsohn, "Empty Nest, Abandoned Cave: Maternal Anxiety in Achilleid I,"

Classical Antiquity 9 (1990): 29 6.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

daughter, Deidamia, he reacts like any Ovidian lover {and for that matter, like most of the love . . struck heroes of medieval literature): 18 hanc ubi ducentem longe socia agmina vidit, trux puer et nullo temeratus pectora motu deriguit totisque novum bibit ossibus ignem. nec latet haustus arnor, sed fax vibrata medullis in vultus atque ora redit lucemque genarum tingit et impulsum tenui sudore pererrat.

(Achill. 1.3°1-6) [When he saw her far ahead of her train of attendants, the wild youth untouched by passion stood spellbound and drank in a new fire within his bones . Nor does the love he has drunk lie hidden, but the flame, pulsating in his inmost being, returns to his face and colors his cheeks, and its power roams over his body with a light sweat.] Thus aroused, Achilles coyly agrees to his mother's scheme in order to get closer to the woman whom he desires. Statius several times calls attention to the element of fraud and decep . . tion in Thetis's plans. In order to convince the centaur Chiron to part with Achilles, who has been entrusted to his care, the goddess makes up a story about evil portents and rites that must be performed to exorcise them, as the narrator comments, "sic ficta parens" (Achill. I. 141: "So spoke his mother, with lying words"). Later, when Thetis has transported Achilles to Scyros and is trying to convince Achilles not to scorn feminine disguise, the narrator intervenes again, asking, "Quis deus attonitae fraudes astumque parenti / contulit?" (Achill. 1.283-84: "What god gave the despairing mother fraud and cunning?"). Once Achilles has given in to his mother's pleading (and to Deidamia's charms) and accepted the female disguise, Thetis gives her son a few pointers on concealing his "ambiguus ... sexus" [ambiguous sex] and tells him to be careful, lest "incepti pereant mendacia furti" (Achill. 1.342: "the crafty cunning of our enterprise should be lost"). Finally, when Thetis has managed to convince Lycomedes to shelter her "daughter," the narrator again intervenes with a comment on Thetis's fraud: "Accedit dictis pater ingenioque parentis / occultum Aeaci . . 18. For the suggestion of Sapphic, Catullan, Virgilian, and Ovidian modes of behavior in this passage, see Giuseppe Arico, "L' 'Achille ide' di Stazio," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 2.3 2 .5 (19 86 ): 293 8 .

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

57

den-quis divum fraudibus obstet?- / accipit" (Achill. 1.363-65: "The father accedes to her words and receives Achilles, disguised by his mother's craft-who can resist when the gods deceive?"). The main action of Sta . . tius's epic as it stands presupposes deception on the part of several differ . . ent characters; its climax will occur when Thetis's ruse to save her son runs up against the even craftier ingenium of "dirus Ulixes." Statius now shifts the scene to a catalog of troops and of preparations for war, and naturally, "conciliisque armisque vigil contendat Ulixes" (Achill. 1.472: "Ulysses, sleepless in counsel and deeds of arms, joins in"). Despite this formidable asset, the Greek side cannot go on without Achilles. Once Calchas's divination reveals the cross . . dressed hero's hiding spot, Diomedes convinces Ulysses to join him in seeking Achilles. Diomedes assures his Ithacan comrade that if he keeps his sharp wits about him, they are sure of success "tu tantum providus astu / tende animum vigilem fecundumque erige pectus" (Achill. 1.542-43: "if you keep alert the cunning and foresight of your watchful mind, and arouse your fertile craft"). Meanwhile, back at Scyros, Achilles has been engaging in cunning exploits of his own: "At procul occultum falsi sub imagine sexus / Aeaci . . den furto iam noverat una latenti / Deidamia virum" (Achill. 1.560-61: "But far away in stolen secrecy Deidamia alone learned of the manhood of Aeacides that lay hidden beneath the show of an assumed sex"). Gradually ingratiating himself with Deidamia, Achilles wants to tell her the truth about his sexual identity, but finds that she shies away, though she clearly feels attracted to this deep . . voiced "maiden." Of course, truth will out, and "Tandem detecti timidae Nereidos astus" (Achill. 1.592: "Finally, the fear . . ful Nereid's cunning was revealed"). Participating in the rites of Bacchus, Achilles takes advantage of the still night in order to take sexual advantage of Deidamia: Sic ait; et densa noctis gavisus in umbra tempestiva suis torpere silentia furtis vi potitur votis et toto pectore veros admovet amplexus; vidit chorus omnis ab alto astrorum et tenerae rubuerunt cornua Lunae. illa quidem clamore nemus montemque replevit

[Thus he speaks, and in the thick darkness of the night, rejoicing that the unstirring silence gives timely aid to his secret deeds, he gains by force his

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ABANDONED WOMEN

desire, and with all his strength he strains her in a real embrace; the whole chorus of stars beheld from on high and the horns of the moon blushed red. Indeed, she filled grove and mountains with her cries.] Thus, raped by Achilles, Deidamia can no longer have any questions about the sexual identity of Thetis's deep .. voiced "daughter." As Mendelsohn notes, the rape of Deidamia recalls Ovid's description of Peleus's attempts to force himself upon Thetis in Metamorphoses I I, which she foils by changing herself into different shapes. For Mendelsohn, Achilles' use of brute force to consummate his desire for Deidamia shows his defection from his goddess .. mother's sphere of influence and his identification with Peleus, his mortal father. 19 In his study of the Achilleid, Giuseppe Arico draws attention to another Ovidian subtext to this scene: Ovid's treat .. ment of rape as a form of seduction in his Ars amatoria 1.681-706, which brings in the story of Achilles' rape of Deidamia as an exemplum "proving" that women really do want to be raped, since they are too shy to take the sexual initiative for themselves. 20 But instead of rejoicing that she has been relieved of the burden of her virginity, as Ovid's version of the story would seem to suggest, Statius's Deidamia reacts to her violation by weep .. ing and moaning-to the accompaniment of Achilles' confident assur .. ances that she will bear the descendants of Jupiter. Deidamia feels hurt and confused, yet adhuc in corde manebat ille diu deceptus amor: silet aegra premitque iam commune nefas; un am placet addere furtis altricem sociam, precibus quae victa duorum adnuit. illa astu tacito raptumque pudorem surgentemque uterum atque aegros in pondere menses occuluit.

[Still there remained within her heart the love so long deceived. She stays silent in her grief and hides the crime that both now share together; she resolves to make her nurse alone a partner in deceit. Yielding to the prayers of both, she agrees. With secret cunning she conceals the rape, the swelling womb, and the burden of the months of ailing.] 19. Mendelsohn, "Empty Nest, Abandoned Cave," 305. 20. Arico, "L' 'Achille ide' di Stazio," 2944-46.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

59

In this passage, Deidamia's love for Thetis's "daughter" convinces her to keep silent about the crime that the goddess's son has committed against her. Deidamia somehow manages to transform violation into quasi . . domes . . tic bliss, through still more secrecy, cunning, and deception. In the Achilleid, Thetis's astutia has a ripple effect: first Achilles, then Deidamia, and finally Deidamia's nurse becomes involved in the game of conceal . . ment and disguise. At this point, the true champion of astutia, the "invisum ... Ulixem" who is Thetis's worst nightmare come true, sails into Scyros. He and Diomedes slink into town like crafty wolves, dissembling their true purpose of trying to flush out Achilles by claiming to be spying on the Trojans. Once they have gained access to the palace, Ulysses notices the not .. so .. feminine Achilles, and only Deidamia's solicitude prevents him from blow . . ing his cover, as Ulysses' skillful rhetoric stimulates his desire for war: 21 "non alias umquam tantae data copia famae fortibus aut campo maiore exercita virtus." aspicit intentum vigilique haec aure trahentem, cum paveant aliae demissaque lumina flectant, atque iterat: "quisquis proavis et gente superba, quisquis equo iaculoque potens, qui praevalet arcu, omnis honos illic, illic ingentia certant nomina: vix timidae matres aut agmina cessant virginea; a! multum steriles damnatus in annos invisusque deis, si quem haec nova gloria segnem praeterit."

(Achill. 1.792-802) ["Never were the brave given such an opportunity for high renown, nor had courage so wide a field of exercise." He sees him all attentive and drinking in his words with vigilant ear, while the rest are alarmed and turn aside their downcast eyes. And he repeats: "Whoever has pride in his forebears and ancestry, whoever has a powerful horse and javelin, whoever has superior strength with the bow, all honor awaits him there-there is the strife of mighty names: fearful mothers scarcely hold back or troops of virgin girls; ah! he who lazily neglects this new chance of glory will be doomed to barren years and the hatred of the gods. "] 2 I. Arico, "L' 'Achille ide' di Stazio," 2950, points out Deidamia's ultimately thwarted attempt to shield Achilles from betraying his disguise.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

In this speech, Ulysses' rhetorical display, his tailoring of his message to suit his audience's reaction, and his invocation of glory, fame, "virtus," and pride in high birth as reasons for action should make any Dantist reading the Achilleid feel a shock of recognition-here, we see the Ulysses whom Dante condemns to burn in Inferno 26, where he uses nearly the same rhetorical strategy to persuade his small company to join him in his "folle volo" to death and destruction. Despite Ulysses' persuasiveness, he does not manage to trick Achilles into revealing his disguise. It takes Ulysses' stage management of the gift exchange the next day to do that, a ruse that leads the narrator to exclaim: "heu simplex nimiumque rudis, qui callida dona / Graiorumque dolos var .. iumque ignoret Ulixem!" (Achill. 1.846-47: "Alas! those simple and untaught people, who did not know about the cunning gifts, nor Greek fraud, nor Ulysses's many wiles!"). Besides referring to the situation at hand, the comment on gifts and Greek fraud also seems aimed at remind .. ing the reader of what would come to be the most famous fraudulent gift in Ulysses' career: the Trojan horse. Indeed, the Statian narrator's exclama .. tion actually forms a rather close verbal parallel to Laocoon's exhortation to his fellow Trojans in Aeneid 2: o miseri, quae tanta insania, cives? creditis avectos hostis? aut ulla putatis dona carere dolis Danaum? sic notus Ulixes? quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentis.

(Aen. 2.42-44,49)22 [0 wretched citizens, what insanity is this? Do you think the enemy has sailed away? or do you believe any gifts from the Greeks are free from treach .. ery? Is that the Ulysses you know? . . . Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts.] The clever gifts Ulysses uses to make Achilles blow his cover lead the young hero to his fatal destiny, just as surely as the wooden horse leads to the downfall of Troy. Like the Trojans, Achilles gets so excited about the gift Ulysses sets before him that he throws his caution to the winds. He 22. Greg Hays first called my attention the verbal similarity between Achilleid 1.846-47 and this passage from the Aeneid, an allusion Dilke also notes in his commentary (Dilke, ed., Achilleid, 13 2 ).

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61

inclines toward the spear and shield and shouts for joy: "nusquam mandata parentis, / nusquam occultus amor, totoque in pectore Troia est" (Achill. 1.856-57: "Not the mandates of his mother, nor his hidden love, but Troy alone fills his breast"). His desire to go to war causes him to forget not only his promises to his mother but even his love for Deidamia-here, too, the Dantist reading the Achilleid must pause a bit over these words and remem .. ber Ulysses' statement in Inferno 26.94-99 that his family ties could not overcome his longing for adventure out in the world. 23 At this point in the poem, Statius's Ulysses has triumphed. He has out .. witted the stratagem of "dolosam ... Thetim" (Achill. 1.873-74: "guileful Thetis") and has won Achilles to his side, with a blast of trumpets and a blaze of heat and light. But even as Achilles stands in triumph, Statius underlines the human cost of his martial glory: ast alia plangebat parte retectos Deidamia dolos, cuius cum grandia primum lamenta et notas accepit pectore voces, haesit et occulto virtus infracta calore est.

(Achill. 1.885-88) [But in another chamber Deidamia wept for the discovery of the fraud; as soon as he heard her loud lament and recognized the voice that he knew so well, he hesitated, and his spirit was broken by his hidden passion.] Reading this passage, we can clearly see the source for Dante's portrait of the despairing Deidamia in the lines: "Piangevisi entro l' arte per che, morta / De'idamia ancor si duol d'Achille" (Inf. 26.61-62: "There they lament the wiles for which, in death / Deidamla mourns Achilles still"). Ulysses and Diomedes, who once made Deidamia weep when they exposed her fraud, now weep for the fraud they committed in order to get Achilles to come with them-such is the nature of contrappasso in Dante's Inferno. The pas .. sage even has some slight verbal similarities in the alliteration in the letter d contained in the phrase "Deidamia dolos," a phrase recapitulated in the sound (though not the sense) of Dante's "Dei'damla ancor si duol." Once Achilles has uncovered the secret of his sexual identity by stand .. ing naked before the crowd, he makes further revelations, telling Lycomedes of his liaison with Deidamia and displaying the son who is the product of their sexual union. In baring his soul (as well as his body) to 23. Cf. Inf. 26.94-99, quoted below.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Deidamia's angry father, Achilles even promises that he will lay down his newly gained arms and remain on Scyros with his new wife if Lycomedes so wishes. Lycomedes' anger at his new son .. in .. law fades quickly, however, and he does not insist upon this condition. Thus, Achilles and Deidamia spend only one night together as a married couple before the bridegroom departs for the war against Troy. Deidamia again gives herself to weeping, as she imagines (correctly, it turns out) that Achilles will not return from his Trojan adventure. She exclaims over the "dulcia furta dolique" (Achill. 1.938: "those stolen sweets and cunning fraud!") and worries that "abripitur permissus Achilles" (Achill. 1.939: "Achilles is given to me only to be torn away"). Deidamia's rhetoric in her speech recalls that of other abandoned women: in her orders to Achilles to go off and pursue his high destiny, she sounds like Virgil's Dido without the bitter sarcasm; in her worries and fears for her absent lover, she resembles Ovid's Penelope. In fact, her concern that Achilles will mock her before other women clearly echoes the language of Penelope's epistle to Ulysses (see the discussion of Deidamia's speech in chapter I). But whether or not Statius wished to recall a specific aban .. doned woman's speech or letter in this passage, it seems fairly clear that he expected his readers to be aware of Deidamia's use of standard rhetorical topoi that Ovid and other classical poets put into the mouths or writings of their grieving, angry, or desolate deserted women. Certainly, both the anonymous author of "Deidamia Achilli" and the much more famous Dante Alighieri noted those generic similarities as they read the Achilleid and invoked Deidamia in their own fictions. Book 1 of the Achilleid closes with Achilles comforting Deidamia, swearing promises to her that he ultimately cannot keep, as "inrita ven .. tosae rapiebant verba procellae" (Achill. 1.960: "The fickle breezes swept away his empty words").2 4 Book 2 opens the next morning as Achilles departs with Ulysses and Diomedes. Statius paints a moving picture of Dei .. damia's sorrow as she watches the men sail away:

T urre proeul summa Iaerimis eomitata sororum eommissumque tenens et habentem nomina Pyrrhum 24. As Meheust notes in his edition of the Achilleid (99), this particular line actually alludes to another abandoned woman, Ariadne, since Statius here imitates Catullus's description of The~ seus's empty promises to Ariadne: "Irrita ventosae linquens promissa procellae" (Catullus 64.59). However, since Catullus's works were lost until the fifteenth century, Dante himself could not have been aware of this connection.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

63

pendebat coniunx oculisque in carbasa fix is ibat et ipsa freto, et puppem iam sola videbat. ille quoque obliquos dilecta ad moenia vultus declinat viduamque domum gemitusque relictae cogitat: occultus sub corde renascitur ardor datque locum virtus. (Achill. 2.23-30)

[Atop a faraway tower with her weeping sisters around her, his wife leaned out, holding her precious charge, who bore the name of Pyrrhus; with her eyes fixed on the canvas she herself sailed upon the sea, she alone still saw the vessel. He, too, turned his gaze aside to the beloved walls; he thinks upon the widowed home and the sobs of the woman he had left behind: the hidden pas~ sion glows again within his heart, and martial ire gives up its place.] This pathetic scene marks the last time that Statius describes Deidamia in the poem, and his memorable picture of Deidamia weeping with her sisters as she watches Achilles' ship dwindle in this distance must have imprinted itself in Dante's memory. In Purgatorio 22, Virgil tells Statius that some of the characters whom he celebrated in his poetry are now in Limbo; he lists a number of Statius's sorrowing women, concluding his catalog with the line "e con Ie suore sue De·idamia" [and Deidamia with her sisters]. Clearly, this description of Deidamia deliberately echoes the final farewell between Achilles and Deidamia in Achilleid 2; she is remembered throughout the Commedia in her role as a weeping woman, deserted by her spouse. 25 As Achilles looks back to shore, Ulysses senses the hero's wavering mind and tries to get him talking, perhaps to distract him from thoughts of what (and whom) he leaves behind. But Achilles refuses to tell his life story, and instead asks Ulysses to relate the beginning of the war. The wily

25. See Purg,

22.109-14:

Quivi si veggion de Ie genti tue Antigone, DeIfiIe e Argia e Ismene S1 trista come fue. Vedeisi quella che mostro Langia; evvi Ia figlia di Tiresia, e T eti, e con Ie suore sue De'idamia.

[There of your own people are seen Antigone, Deiphyle, Argia, and Ismene sad still as she was, There she is seen who showed Langia; there is the daughter of Tiresias and Thetis and Deidamia with her sisters']

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Ithacan does so, concluding with a peroration that stirs Achilles' martial (not to mention his marital) feelings: "nos Phryga semivirum portus et litora circum Argolica incesta volitantem puppe feremus? usque adeo nusquam arma et equi, fretaque invia Grais? quid si nunc aliquis patriis rapturus ab oris Deidamian eat viduaque et sede revellat attonitam et magni clamantem nomen Achillis?" illius ad capulum rediit manus at simul ingens impulit ora rubor: tacuit contentus Ulixes.

(Achill. 2.78-85) ["Should we endure a Phrygian eunuch fluttering around the harbors and shores of Argos with his incestuous shiP? Are our men and horses so utterly vanished? Are the seas so impassable to Greeks? What if someone now were to carry off Deidamia from her native seacoast, and tear her from her lonely chamber, fearful and crying out the name of great Achilles?" His hand flew to the sword hilt, and a dark flush surged over his face: Ulysses was silent and content.] In this passage, Ulysses demonstrates his skill in rousing Achilles' strong feelings of sexual jealousy and aggressiveness-note the sexual undercur . . rent in Achilles' flush and clutching of his (phallic) sword. By making Achilles imagine how he would react if Deidamia were threatened or car . . ried off and drawing a rather strained parallel with the situation of Helen, Ulysses cleverly manages to direct Achilles' protective instincts toward the war effort. Swayed by Ulysses' smooth tongue, Achilles never seems to realize that Deidamia would be in far less danger of being carried off if he stayed with her at home instead of sailing off to Troy. Ulysses' rhetoric cer . . tainly sounds eloquent, but it lacks substance-and here, once again, Sta . . tius's verbally adept Ithacan and his stylish "little speeches" seem an alto . . gether likely model for Dante's Ulysses. Now Diomedes asks Achilles to tell of his upbringing, and this time, the stirred . . up young hero does so in some detail. Interestingly enough, Achilles ends his tale with the words "scit cetera mater" (Achill. 2. 167: "the rest my mother knows"). The phrase recalls the maternal anxieties of Thetis in book I and underlines the fact that Thetis has been conspicu . . ously absent both from Achilles' narrative and from the action of the

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

Achilleid since the middle of book

65

Despite Thetis's hopes of influencing her son, she has clearly lost the battle to keep Achilles away from the mar . . tial sphere. Both Statius's epic and Achilles' speech break off at this point, with the result that the "ending" of the Achilleid is, in a sense, contained in the "cetera" that Thetis has known from the beginning-the goddess's intuition of her son's doom. As one reads the Achilleid closely, the reasons for Dante's allusion to it in Inferno 26, the eighth bolgia of the pit of fraud become clearer: first of all, Statius makes fraud a major theme of the Achilleid: Thetis employs fraud in bono, in an attempt to save her son; Ulysses' and Diomedes' fraud, on the other hand, brings Achilles to the war that will kill him. Second, the poem presents Ulysses in the same unflattering light that Virgil and Ovid do, with a special emphasis on the rhetorical skill of the Greek hero, which also plays such a large role in Ovid's portrait of the hero in Metamorphoses 13. 26 Third, the Achilleid maintains a sharp focus on the human cost of Achilles' heroic exploits, specifically on Deidamia's pain. Deidamia's situ . . ation closely parallels that of Penelope, and even contains verbal echoes of Ovid's presentation of Penelope as abandoned wife in Heroides I. Finally, the Achilleid shows Achilles sailing off and leaving behind his new father . . in . . law, wife, and baby son in search of warlike adventure, as Ulysses leaves behind his aged father, Penelope, and Telemachus to seek experience. This last similarity may be the most important in terms of the structure and interpretation of Dante's presentation of Ulysses' final voyage in Inferno 26. Certainly, there are other parallels to Ulysses' "picciola orazion" that have been adduced by commentators and scholars: Singleton suggests Aeneas's speech to his men in Aeneid I, Caesar's speech to his men in Pharsalia I, and Teucer's speech to his sorrowing companions in Horace's seventh ode. 27 However, Ulysses' speeches to Achilles in the Achilleid, and particularly the shipboard speech of Achilleid 2.50-84, offer more interesting echoes than any of these other classical texts. Through . . out the Achilleid, Ulysses' speeches to Achilles have emphasized the themes of living up to one's lineage and earning glorious renown, just as Dante's Ulysses urges his men to consider their high origins and to seek I.

26. See Stanford's presentation of the Latin traditions regarding Ulysses in chapters 9 and 10 of W. B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme: A Study in the Adaptability of a Classical Hero (Oxford: Blackwell, 1954), 128-45; as well as Padoan, "Ulisse 'fandi fictor'''; and Terence P. Logan, "The Characterization of Ulysses in Homer, Virgil, and Dante: A Study in Sources and Analogues," Dante Studies 84 (1964): 19-46. 27. These parallels are enumerated in Singleton's commentary on Ulysses' speech. See Aeneid 1.198-2°3, Pharsalia 1.299ff., and Horace, Odes 1.7.25-26.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

virtue and knowledge. Furthermore, in the shipboard scene of Achilleid Achilles, like Ulysses' tired, aged crew, wavers in his resolve:

2,

ille quoque obliquos dilecta ad moenia vultus declinat viduamque domum gemitusque relictae cogitat: occultus sub corde renascitur ardor datque locum virtus. sentit Laertius heros maerentem et placidis adgressus flectere dictis.

(Achill. 2.27-30) [He, too, turned his gaze aside to the beloved walls; he thinks upon the wid ..

owed home and the sobs of the woman he had left behind: the hidden passion glows again within his heart, and martial ire gives up its place. The heroic son of Laertes perceives him grieving, and draws near to influence him with gen .. tle words.] When Achilles' ardor for home and hearth burns bright, his warlike virtus is dimmed, unlike Dante's Ulysses, whose domestic attachments do not outweigh his ardore to gain experience, and who urges his men to follow "virtute e canoscenza." Statius's Ulysses is cast from the same mold, and when he sees Achilles looking back, he employs his rhetorical skill to take command of the situation. At first, Statius's Ulysses does not make a speech to Achilles but instead praises the hero for his high destiny and asks him to narrate the tale of his origins. Achilles refuses, and instead, Ulysses tells him of the beginning of the Trojan War, ending with the peroration picturing Deidamia's abduction that so inflames Achilles' ire: "illius ad capulum rediit manus ac simul ingens / impulit ora rubor: tacuit contentus Ulixes" (Achill. 2.84-85: "His hand flew to the sword hilt, and a dark flush surged over his face: Ulysses was silent and content"). The behavior of Dante's Ulysses clearly resembles that of Statius's character; in both cases the hero uses his rhetorical skill to dupe a gullible audience: Li miei compagni fec' io Sl aguti, con questa orazion picciola, al cammino, che a pena poscia li avrei ritenuti.

(Inf. [With this brief speech I had my companions so ardent for the journey I could scarce have held them back.]

26.121-2 3)

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

67

Though Ulysses' reference to the "littleness" of his finely crafted speech has been interpreted as a manifestation of the hero's modesty in the face of tremendous obstacles, the word "picciola" should be read in the context of the opposition between alti and picciola developed throughout Ulysses' dis; course: as T eodolinda Barolini puts it, "[W]hatever it serves his purpose to discount is called 'small,' while whatever he desires is 'high.' "28 In these lines, Ulysses stresses the strong reaction to his "little" speech, and it does not seem too far;fetched to see in him the image of Statius's Ulysses, silently congratulating himself on his ability to play with Achilles' emo; tions to attain precisely the reaction he desires. Statius's Ulysses convinces Achilles to sail away to the war that will lead to his death, just as Dante's Ulysses persuades his crew to persevere in the disastrous voyage that will kill them all. Dante's allusion to the Achilleid focuses on the human cost of Ulysses' fraud, of "l'arte per che, morta, / De'idamla ancor si duol d'Achille." Dante, like Statius before him, remembers the sorrow of Achilles' bereft wife, which has not ended in spite of her own death. 29 This image of female loss, of Deidamia tearfully holding her son as she and her sisters watch Ulysses sail away with her Achilles, should remain with the reader as Ulysses glosses over the human cost of his final voyage in the vaunting words of his speech: ne dolcezza di figIio, ne la pieta del vecchio padre, ne '1 debito amore 10 qual dovea Penelope far lieta, vincer potero dentro a me l'ardore ch'i' ebbi a divenir del mondo esperto e de Ii vizi umani e del valore.

[Not tenderness for a son, nor filial duty toward my aged father, nor the love lowed Penelope that would have made her glad, 28, For the first view, see Guido Di Pino, "11 Canto di Ulisse," Italianistica 10 (1981): 17, which argues that "Dalla 'compagna picciola' alIa 'picciola vigilia' fino a questa 'orazion picciola' l'agge~ tivo, replicato nel giro di soli venti versi (102-22), denuncia il calcolo di una retorica attenuativa che intende esaltare la dismisura tra la precarieta della condizione e dei mezzi dei navaganti e la grandezza misteriosa dell'impresa." For the second quotation, see T eodolinda Barolini, Dante's Poets: Textuality and Truth in the Comedy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984),233. 29. We may even presume that Virgil has had the story from Deidamia firsthand, since he later states in Purgatorio 22 that she is one of the inhabitants of Limbo.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

could overcome the fervor that was mine to gain experience of the world and learn about man's vices, and his worth.] While Ulysses rushes past these familial obstacles to his high destiny, the reader of his speech should linger over them, recalling that each of the sins Virgil had earlier attributed to Ulysses and Diomedes in his explanation to Dante of the reason for their damnation involves the destruction of com~ munity)O Virgil informs Dante the pilgrim that Ulysses' fraud has destroyed the family of Achilles and the larger human community symbol~ ized by the earthly city of Troy. Here, Ulysses himself reveals how he has disregarded his own familial obligations, obligations ironically under~ scored by his use of worlds like "pieta" and "debito amore" to describe them. Penelope should have been made happy by Ulysses' love, he tells us; but his voyage takes him away from her. Dante certainly knew Ovid's Heroides, and perhaps he imagined Penelope as Ovid did, sorrowful and yearning for her absent husband's return. But unlike the Ulysses of the classical period, Dante's medievalized Ulysses may have never come home after the Trojan War)I The career of his Ulysses would then parallel that of Achilles, who sails away, never to be seen by his family again. In Inferno 26, we do not hear of the pain of Ulysses' family, for that suffering is some~ thing that the hero himself, unmindful of domestic obligations, does not see, does not consider, and does not narrate. The epic mode in which Ulysses speaks cannot confront the social cost of individual heroism. Dante's comic mode, however, implicitly questions the price of epic adventure. By alluding to the Achilleid, a text that exposes Ulysses' high~ sounding rhetoric as a tactic for gaining his own ends rather than the com~ mon good, Dante makes his readers suspicious of his Ulysses' self~presenta~ tion. And by embedding the history of an abandoned woman in his

30. See Lawrence Ryan, "Ulysses, Guido, and the Betrayal of Community," ltalica 54 (1977): 227-49· 31. Dante's Ulysses states in his speech to Dante and Virgil that his fatal voyage took place after he had departed from Circe (Inf. 26.90-91: "Quando / mi diparti' da Circe"), which would make it one of the hero's adventures on his way home from the Trojan War. Dante may have been confused about the chronology of the Homeric hero's exploits in the Odyssey, which he could not have known directly, and assumed that the hero's stay with Circe occurred on a voyage under~ taken after a return home to Penelope. Alternatively, he may have deliberately set out to revise the traditional accounts of the hero. The question cannot be settled definitively, but I tend to take the view that Dante's Ulysses was never reunited with his wife and family.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

69

narrative just before Ulysses recounts his last voyage, Dante subtly points out the underlying structure of abandonment and loss in Ulysses' "folle volo" that the hero's epic speechifying so artfully suppresses.

~

Excursus

~

Dante, Alter Achilles, Alter Aeneas Dante's Ulysses has probably attracted so much attention from crItICS because he is attractive and dangerous at the same time-a judgment that accords with the feelings of Dante the pilgrim, as he leans precariously for .. ward to hear the flame speak. Dante critics frequently read Ulysses as a figure for the poet, who is himself dangerously implicated in the project of leading others (perhaps astray?) by his verbal ingegno. Indeed, many critics have noted that when Dante the pilgrim descends into the pit of Fraud, Dante the poet's self.. reflexive gestures come thick and fast, as he tries to differentiate his Comedy, a truth that has the face of a lie, from the Geryon .. like lies that have the face of a just man.3 2 But if Dante the pilgrim is, in a sense, a redeemed alter Ulixes, saved by divine grace and allowed to climb the mountain of Purgatory that the Greek hero can only catch sight of, he is also an alter Achilles. 33 In order to see how Dante develops this identification, it is useful to review his refer .. ences to this classical hero in the Comedy. The reader first meets Achilles as a shade in the first circle of the Inferno, that of the lustful, when Virgil points him out in a catalog of celebrities from the Trojan War: "Elena vedi, per cui tanto reo tempo si volse, e vedi '1 grand Achille che con amore al fine combatteo. Vedi ParIs, Tristano"; e pili di mille ombre monstrommi e nominommi a dito, ch'amor di nostra vita dipartille.

32. For instance, see Teodolinda Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: Detheologizing Dante (Prince' ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992),48-73. 33. Robert Hollander, Allegory in Dante's Commedia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), 122-23; and Hugh Shankland, "Dante AUger and Ulysses," Italian Studies 32 (1977): 30-31, both note verbal similarities between Dante the pilgrim's entrance to Purgatory and Ulysses' speech in Inferno 26.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

["See Helen, for whose sake so many years of ill rolled past. And see the great Achilles, who battled, at the last, with love. See Paris, Tristan," and he showed me more than a thousand shades, naming as he pointed, whom love had parted from our life.J In the following lines, Dante expresses his "pieta" for the "donne antiche e' cavalieri," though he ends up asking to speak to Francesca rather than one of these more famous shades from classical antiquity. Here, Dante pre . . sents a view of Achilles consistent with stories about the hero presented in medieval romances, which held that after leaving his wife and family behind, Achilles dallied with the captive Briseis and met his death because a promised tryst with Polyxena turned out to be a trick.3 4 Later, in the Inferno, as Dante descends to the circle of the violent, he encounters another reminder of the Greek hero, the centaur Chiron. This passage recapitulates the rhyme scheme of the earlier Achilles reference with only a slight alteration-sortille for departille:

E quel di mezzo ch' al petto si mira e il gran Chiron, il qual nodr1 Achille; quell' altra e Folo, che fu sl pien d'ira. Dintomo al fosso vanno a mille a mille, saettando qual anima si svelle del sangue pili che sua colpa sortille.

(Inf. 12.70-75, emphasis added) [The middle one, his gaze fixed on his chest, is the great Chiron, he who raised Achilles. The other one is Pholus, who was so filled with wrath. Around the moat they go in thousands, shooting arrows at any soul that rises higher from the blood than guilt allows. J In this particular reference, Dante invokes classical stories about Achilles rather than medieval ones. Here, he reminds his audience of the version of Achilles' upbringing related by Statius in the Achilleid in which the youth is entrusted to Chiron's care. 34. See Singleton, ed., The Divine Comedy, vol.

I.,

pt.

2,

p. 80.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

7I

Interestingly enough, Dante uses the word "nodrl" to describe Chiron's role in nurturing Achilles. The Italian nodrire is a derivative of the Latin nutrire, a word primarily associated with the act of suckling and only sec . . ondarily with the idea of education. Dante's use of this term to suggest Chiron's role as Achilles' metaphorical nursemaid is here reinforced by his description Chiron as looking down at his own breast. In his commentary on this line, Singleton suggests that Chiron's bowed head "serves to direct the reader's gaze to the creature's breast, where its two natures, human and bestial, are joined" and points out two further breast. . references in the fol . . lowing lines, one in which Dante refers to the "petto, / dove Ie due nature son consorti" [breast / where his two natures joined], the other in which Dante mentions the "destra poppa" [right breast] of Chiron)5 In the first reference, Dante does not spell out as clearly as Singleton what these two natures are: could he be suggesting that Chiron embodies not only man and beast, but somehow combines masculine and feminine attributes in his role as Achilles' nurse? Dante's use of the word "poppa" tends to rein . . force this idea-in Italian, poppa is not a neutral word to describe the torso, but typically used to describe the female breast in idioms referring to nursing and weaning. The idea of a man functioning as a nurse and "mamma" will, of course, play an important role later in the Comedy as the reader learns more about poetic nourishment. Achilles next appears in the Comedy in Inferno 26, the reference to the Achilleid that has already been discussed. Here again, Dante employs the hero's name in the rhyming position, along with mille and faville. Later, in Inferno 3 I, a passage in which Dante compares Virgil's tongue to the leg . . endary spear belonging to Achilles and his father that could both harm and heal, Dante mentions Achilles without using his name as a rhyme, dif. . ferentiating this passage from earlier references to the hero. In this allu . . sion, Dante appears to rely on medieval legends about Achilles' spear, which could be the cause "prima di trista e poi di buona mancia" (Inf. 3 I .6: "first of a painful, then a welcome, gift"), a description suggesting that Achilles' heroic potential may function in bono or in malo. In the next, and perhaps the most interesting, incarnation of the Achilles theme in the Comedy, Dante the pilgrim is directly identified with the ancient hero in an epic simile. Purgatorio 9, in which this simile falls, begins with Dante falling asleep. Then, in a passage containing a series of verbal reminiscences of Inferno 5, Dante relates his dream of an 35. See Singleton, ed., The Divine Comedy, vol.

I,

pt.

2,

p.

192.

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eagle who swoops down on him precisely as Jove in the guise of the eagle snatched Ganymede up to heaven. Awakening as he imagines the eagle bringing him up to the fire, Dante compares himself to Achilles: Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse, Ii occhi svegIiati rivolgendo in giro e non sappiendo la dove si fosse, quando la madre da Chiron a Schiro trafuggo lui dormendo in Ie sue braccia, la onde poi Ii Greci il dipartiro; che mi scoss' io sl come da la faccia mi fugg1 '1 sonno e diventa' ismorto, come fa l'uom che, spaventato, agghiaccia. Dallato m'era solo il mio conforto e '1 sale er' alto gia pili che due are, e '1 viso m' era a la marina torto.

[Even as Achilles started up, turning his awakened eyes about him and not knowing where he was, when his mother carried him off, sleeping in her arms, from Chiron to Skyros, whence later the Greeks took him away; so did I start, as soon as sleep fled from my face, and I grew pale, like one who is chilled with terror. My comfort was alone beside me, and the sun was already two hours high, and my face was turned to the sea.] In this extended simile, an adaptation of the story narrated in Achilleid 1.242-5 I, the roles assigned to the players are clear: Dante, who finds him . . self in an unfamiliar place where he looks out over the sea, resembles the young Achilles; Virgil, who comforts Dante and explains what has hap . . pened to while the pilgrim slept, is cast in the role of Achilles' mother Thetis, who soothes her troubled son. In the Achilleid, Thetis brought Achilles to Scyros in an attempt to save him; here, Virgil has accompanied Dante the pilgrim through Hell and now to Purgatory in order to save his life. Of course, Thetis's mission tragically fails: Dante's simile, on the other hand, replaces her failure with Virgil's success. Here, Dante the pilgrim represents a saved Achilles, one whom the temptations of Ulysses have not lured from safety. And appropriately enough, Dante places this simile pre . . cisely at the point where his pilgrim enters the realm of Purgatory, the mountain that Ulysses tried to reach in Inferno 26 but could not.

Statius's Achilleid and Dante's Canto of Ulysses

73

This simile's portrait of Virgil playing mother Thetis to Dante's Achilles also brings to mind the questions about gender roles raised by Chiron, whom we had earlier seen functioning as a masculine nurse to Achilles in Inferno I2. In Purgatorio 2I, when Statius appears on the scene, Dante again affirms the identity of Virgil as a masculine mother figure: Sta .. tius calls Virgil's Aeneid both "mamma" and "nutrice"-now Virgil's motherliness has been transferred to his poem, which has been a wet nurse to Statius's own poetic works, the Thebaid and Achilleid. At this point, Sta .. tius describes Virgil's influence in terms of ardor, seeds, sparks and flames-language that, as mentioned above, recalls Inferno 26. Statius's introduction of himself as the poet who sings of the "grande Achille" marks the hero's final appearance in the poem; once the author who celebrates Achilles enters on the scene, Dante seems to have no more need of his character. Similarly, once Statius has performed his function of providing a crypto .. biography for Dante in the form of a Christian poet saved by an inspired misreading of Virgil, he too becomes largely invisible in the poem. Nevertheless, Dante continues to explore the issue of poetic influence and of his own relationship with Virgil in terms of the images of motherhood and fire established by Statius. This metaphorical nexus becomes most apparent in Purgatorio 30, as Dante says farewell to Virgil, who is called a "dolcissimo patre" soon after Dante has compared him to a "mamma" in a simile. In this passage, Dante recapitulates the mammal fiammaldramma rhyme scheme from Purgatorio 2I, where Statius had used these words to describe his relationship with Virgil. At this point, Dante reinscribes Statius's discourse to refer to his own relationship with Virgil. Moreover, he charges the scene even more highly by having his pilgrim invoke Dido's comment on discovering her love for Aeneas to Virgil, "conosco i segni de l'antica fiamma" [Purg. 3°.98: "I know the signs of the old flame"], at the very moment when he turns back to find that his guide no longer accompanies him)6 Dante now (briefly) figures himself as Dido, abandoned by Virgil, and, in another interesting gender inversion, laments the loss of Virgil just as Virgil's Orpheus had lamented for his wife, Eurydice)7 As Rachel Jacoff suggests, these lines also invoke Statius's allu .. 36. See Peter S. Hawkins, "Dido, Beatrice, and the Signs of Ancient Love," in The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante's Commedia, ed. Rachel Jacoff and Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993), 112-29, for a discussion of the significance of Dante's rewriting of the line "adnosco veteris vestigia flammae" from Aeneid 4.23. 37. Cf. Purg. 30.49-51 and Singleton's note linking the passage to Virgil's Georgics 4.5 2 5-2 7 (Singleton, ed., The Divine Comedy 2, pt. 2, p. 741).

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ABANDONED WOMEN

sion to the Georgics at the end of the Thebaid, in which Atalanta bewails the loss of "the Arcadian" Parthoenopaeus with a similar triple anaphora on the dead warrior's name. This passage, with its dense intertextual matrix, thus functions not only as a farewell to Virgil's text, but also as a final nod to Statius in his role as poetic mediator for Dante.3 8 But Dante the pilgrim is not allowed to wallow in his feelings of aban, donment for long: Beatrice swiftly rebukes him, calling him to his senses and telling him that "pianger ti conven per altra spada" (Purg. 30.57: "you must weep for another sword"). Here, Beatrice clearly alludes to the sword with which the abandoned Dido kills herself.3 9 After Beatrice's scolding, the roles of these two characters suddenly reverse. While Dante cast him, self as a Dido figure before, he now becomes the abandoner rather than the abandoned. Beatrice takes up Dido's part, accusing her Dante, her Aeneas, of forsaking her-forgetting her after her death and pursuing false images of good. Unlike Aeneas, who does not weep at Dido's condemnation of him in Aeneid 4, Dante the pilgrim, the alter Aeneas of Christian comedy rather than Virgilian tragedy, bursts into tears. His weeping for Dido, as it were, causes her to forgive him in a redeemed Christian rewriting of the Aeneid. 40 Here, we have the age,old story of the abandoned woman, but unlike the narratives of Dido or Deidamia, it does not end in tears of pain, but in tears of joy, as the prodigal lover returns to his "antico amor."

3B. See Rachel Jacoff, "Intertextualities in Arcadia," in Jacoff and Schnapp, The Poetry of

Allusion, 130-44. 39. Kevin Brownlee, "Dante, Beatrice, and the Two Departures from Dido," MLN loB (1993): 5· 40. See Brownlee, "Dante, Beatrice," 7-9, on Dante's corrective inversion of his Virgilian model.

~

Three

~

Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus Duplicity and Desire

n the final book of Statius's Thebaid, as Theseus of Athens rides into bat .. tIe against Creon of Thebes, the poet encapsulates both the present appearance and the past history of the hero in a brief vignette:

I

at procul ingenti Neptunius agmina Theseus angus tat clipeo, propriaeque exordia laud is centum urbes umbone gerit centenaque Cretae moenia, seque ipsum monstrosi ambagibus antri hispida torquentem luctantis colla iuvenci altemasque manus circum et nodosa ligantem bracchia et abducto vitantem cornua vultu. terror habet populos, cum saeptus imagine torva ingreditur pugnas; bis Thesea bisque cruentes caede videre manus: veteres reminiscitur actus ipse tuens sociumque gregem metuendaque quondam limina, et absumpto pallentem Gnosida filo.

(Thebaid, 12.665-76) I. The text of the Thebaid is from University Press, I928).

J. H. Mozley,

75

trans., Statius,

2

I

vols. (Cambridge: Harvard

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ABANDONED WOMEN

[But in the distance Theseus, son of Neptune, dwarfs the ranks with his huge shield, and bears upon its boss the hundred cities and hundred walls of Crete, the prelude to his own renown, and himself in the windings of the monstrous cave twisting the struggling bull's shaggy neck, binding him fast with sinewy arms and gripping with both hands, avoiding the horns with his head drawn back. The people are terrified when he goes to battle beneath that grim image; they see Theseus in double shape and his hands twice drenched in gore; he himself remembers his former deeds, the band of comrades and the once . . dreaded doorway and the pale face of the Cnossian maid as she followed out the thread.] Through these vivid descriptions of Theseus, of the shield's representation of Theseus defeating the Minotaur, of the crowd's reaction to this double vision, and of the Athenian hero's own thoughts, Statius meditates on the workings of representation, as his poetic art depicts life reflecting on art reflecting life. Even as the doubled image of Theseus ("bis Thesea bisque cruentes / caede videre manus") strikes terror in his enemies, it provokes unease in the reader of Statius's poem, for Theseus's inscribed double does not simply remind the reader of his courage in defeating the Minotaur; it also recalls the hero's duplicity, bringing to Theseus's mind and to the reader's attention that "pallentem Gnosida"-Ariadne, whom Theseus abandoned on the isle of Dia after she had helped him slay the Minotaur and escape from Crete. 2 Statius (like Theseus himself) chooses not to dwell upon the ghostly figure of the Cretan princess, and rapidly shifts the narrative's focus to Creon after this description. Nevertheless, this brief glimpse into the hero's mind makes the reader uncertain about Theseus's motivations, his trustworthiness, and what he chooses to suppress or to for .. get about his own past. 3 Though it overtly presents Theseus as a hero, Statius's tour de force double description hints at the hero's dark alter ego, and in this respect, 2. See Frederick M. Ahl, "Statius' 'Thebaid': A Reconsideration," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt 2.32.5 (1986): 2895-96, who also points out that Theseus is "stained by the rape

and murder of Amazons" and cooperates in Pirithous's attempt to rape Proserpina. 3. For a more positive account of Statius's Theseus, see Giorgio Padoan, "Teseo 'figura redemptoris' e il cristianesimo di Stazio," in Il pia Enea; and David Vessey, Statius and the Thebaid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 309. Padoan presents medieval commentaries that support a view of Theseus as a figure of divine clemency, while Vessey portrays Theseus as "the embodiment of mercy and justice" in Statius's dark poem and sees the image of the Minotaur on his shield as a symbol of "the unnatural violence which Theseus is about to bring to an end."

Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus

77

the passage can serve as the symbol of a narrative strategy that both Boc . . caccio and Chaucer exploit in their Theban tales. In Statius's Thebaid, Boccaccio's Teseida, and Chaucer's Knight's Tale, Theseus is represented as a man of action who tries to correct and channel the aggressions of the fratricidal Theban royal family. While he seems an exemplary ruler in these narratives, especially when contrasted to the unruly Thebans, all three authors include in their portrayals of Theseus hints of the desire and double . . dealing lurking in his heroic past. Statius accomplishes this end by recalling Theseus's past through his offhand mention of Ariadne, who anxiously waits for Theseus to escape from the labyrinth. In mentioning Ariadne, Statius evokes the pain and suffering of a particular abandoned woman, and by analogy, that of other women who suffer as a result of epic adventuring. As Winthrop Wetherbee suggests in his persuasive interpre . . tat ion of this passage, "[T]he pale figure of Ariadne is a counterpart in Theseus's own story to the many suffering women whose lives have been blighted by the heroic enterprise of the Theban war."4 In contrast to Statius, Boccaccio avoids linking his T eseo to the Cretan exploit and its unfortunate aftermath and takes pains to situate the story of Palamon and Arcite at a time well before Minos began sacrificing Athen . . ian youths to his wife's monstrous offspring. Though Boccaccio's portrayal of "buon T eseo" generally strikes a positive note, he nevertheless gestures at the hero's darker side by referring repeatedly to Teseo's earlier abduction of the young Helen within the text and its glosses, as well as by embedding allusions to Dante's Ulysses within Teseo's speeches. Dante's allusion to Statius's Achilleid in Inferno 26 associates Ulysses with the abandonment of Deidamia and reminds the reader of the hero's own forsaken wife (see chap. 2). Boccaccio certainly noted the presence of both of these aban . . doned women in Dante's text-in fact, his Amorosa Visione contains mov . . ing portraits of Deidamia and Penelope that I will be discussing in chapter 4. By having his own Teseo echo the rhetoric of Dante's Ulysses, Boccac . . cio links his hero with another Greek ruler whose success comes at the expense of women and who has left behind a wife in pursuit of adventure. Chaucer certainly would have seen the links between Boccaccio's Teseo and Dante's Ulysses, and may well have noted the common role of abandoned women in both heroes' pasts. Chaucer, however, would not 4. See Winthrop Wetherbee, "Romance and Epic in Chaucer's Knight's Tale," Exemplaria (1990): 3 13-

2

78

ABANDONED WOMEN

have been able to depend upon his audience's knowledge of Dante's Ital .. ian classic; in his portrait of Theseus, he therefore reverts to Statius's more direct allusive strategy of implicating the hero in the conquest of the Minotaur, and hence, in the abandonment of Ariadne. By placing the abandoned Ariadne in the wings of the Knight's Tale, Chaucer calls upon his reader to remember the alternate version of Theseus's past presented in Ovid's Heroides, as well as the poet's own House of Fame and Legend of Good Women-the latter work apparently published after Chaucer had written "al the love of Palamon and Arcite / Of Thebes, thogh the story ys knowen lite" (LGW F 419-20) but probably before the poem had been incorporated into the Canterbury Tales. The Knight's Tale, which makes doubles and rivalry a major motif, thus invokes the conflicting versions of Theseus's past-his dark doubles-found in Chaucer's other works. In reminding his readers of the repressed, competing versions of Theseus's story, Chaucer provides a literary counterpart to the Theban drama acted out in the Thebaid, the Teseida, and the Knight's Tale. Moreover, Chaucer's interest in this form of "doubleness" manifests itself in his ere .. ation of a past history for the Theban knight Arcite as "double in love and no thing pleyn" in Anelida and Arcite; Arcite, it seems, also has an aban .. doned woman lurking in his own past. In order to understand the transformation of Theseus, it is best to begin, as David Anderson's title suggests, before the Knight's Tale, with Boccac .. cia's imaginative miniaturization of Statius's epic. Anderson's book per .. suasively argues that Boccaccio's Teseida centers on the amorous rivalry of Palamone and Arcita in order to provide a counterpart to Statius's Polynices and Eteocles, whose tragic rivalry lingers in the background of Boccaccio's tale. Anderson suggests that, in plotting the story of Palam one and Arcita, Boccaccio took a cue from the alternate ending for the Thebaid that Statius projects in book 6.513-17, which depicts what might have happened if only Polynices had died of his injuries at the racecourse, instead of recovering and making war on his brother. s Unlike Polynices, Boccaccio's Arcita does die from the wounds he sustains at the tournament in the Teseida, which leads to deathbed reconciliation and, for a time at least, an end to the age .. old Theban strife. The comic resolution of Theban history in Boccaccio's Teseida comes about partly because of the actions of its title character, who manages to convert the private, murderous duel between the two brothers into a ceremony of state, with the victor granted 5. David Anderson, Before the Knight's Tale: Imitation of Classical Epic in Boccaccio's "Teseida" (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 108-9.

Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus

79

an alliance with Athens via marriage. Like Statius's Theseus, Boccaccio portrays T eseo as the only person who can bring a modicum of order to the disordered, conflicted world of the Thebans. 6 Yet this order comes at the price of female autonomy. Though Teseo downplays this aspect of the sit . . uation, Emilia clearly does not really want to marry either of the Theban brothers. At the end of the Teseida, Teseo attains his political ends by foreclosing a woman's choices, and unsettling hints throughout the poem suggest that the hero has previously exploited women precisely in this way. Interestingly enough, however, Boccaccio's Teseida suppresses both T eseo's Cretan adventure and his betrayal of Ariadne. Boccaccio chooses to alter the chronology of Theseus's career given in the Thebaid, deferring the hero's exploits in Crete to an unspecified time after the history of Pala . . mone and Arcita related in the Teseida. In Chaucer and the Subject of His . . tory, Lee Patterson argues that this chronological distancing of the Teseida's story from the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur helps further Boccaccio's "celebratory purpose" because it manages to eliminate any ref. . erence to the abandonment of Ariadne. 7 While Patterson correctly notes that Boccaccio does not directly refer to the Minotaur and Ariadne in the Teseida, he nevertheless plants allusions to this story in the text that become more and more difficult for a careful reader of the text and glosses to ignore. While Boccaccio never mentions the Minotaur in the Teseida, he does give King Minos of Crete a gratuitous bit part in the poem's action. 8 As the forces of Palamone and Arcita parade into Athens in book 6, Boccac . . cio describes Minos marching in Arcita's train:

Vegnono Minos re di Creti, e Radamante e Sarpedone Quivi nell'arme con solenne stuolo il gnosiaco re della dittea isola, gia d'Europa figliuoIo, 6. For favorable judgments of Teseo as the embodiment of reason and justice, see, for example, Guido Di Pino, "Lettura del 'Teseida,'" Italianistica 8 (I979): 26-27, 36; Victoria Kirkham, "'Chiuso parlare' in Boccaccio's Teseida," in Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch: Studies in the Italian Tre~ cento in Honor of Charles Singleton, ed. Aldo S. Bernardo and Anthony L. Pellegrini (Binghamton: State University of New York Press, I983), 326-27; Janet Smarr, "The Teseida, Boccaccio's AIle, gorical Epic," Northeast MLA Italian Studies I (I977): 29-35; Janet Smarr, "Boccaccio and the Stars: Astrology in the Teseida," Traditio 35 (I979): 3 I 5-I6. 7. Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, I99I), 24I. 8. Patterson, Subject of History, 24I, notes that Minos's appearances in the poem cause chronological problems.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

vi venne, che ancora non avea del suo bello Androgeo sentito il duolo;

(Teseida, 6.46)9 [King Minos of Crete and Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon came. With a

solemn troop of armed men, the Cnossian king of the Dictean island, son of Europa, came there, for he had not yet felt grief for his handsome Androgeus .] Here, the narrator both establishes Minos's identity and stresses to the audience where he is temporally in his story. A few stanzas later, Boccaccio again carefully explicates the temporal sequence of events by saying that Minos was so dignified that e furvi assai che poi non disser rea ne biasimarono il focoso amore di Silla, all or ch' ogni altro la dicea degna di morte per 10 padre ucciso, se rimembrando quale e' l'avean viso.

(Teseida, 6.50) [And there were many who afterwards would not call Scylla guilty nor blame her for her fiery love when everyone else said that she deserved death for her slain father, once they remembered within themselves what they had seen there.] In this passage, Boccaccio refers to the story of Scylla's love for Minos, a tale told by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and summarized in the gloss to this stanza. Since this episode takes place while Minos besieges Megara, before he has conquered nearby Athens and imposed a tribute of Athenian youths to be sacrificed annually to the Minotaur, Boccaccio's allusion to the story of Scylla and his explanation of it in his gloss once again help the reader position the story of Palamon and Arcite relative to the sequence of events in other legends about Theseus. 1o Though many of the heroes 9. All quotations from the Teseida are from Giovanni Boccaccio, Teseida delle Nozze d'Emilia, ed. Alberto Limentani (Milan: Mondadori, 1964), and are cited by book and stanza number. The translation is my own, though I have consulted that of Bemadette Marie McCoy, The Book ofThe~ seus (New York: Medieval Text Association, 1974). 10. Susan Noakes, Timely Reading: Between Exegesis and Interpretation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988) 90-93, stresses the importance of chronology in the Teseida and argues that many of Boccaccio's glosses to the Teseida work to reorder the temporal structure of the events narrated in the text.

Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus

8I

included in Boccaccio's catalog of warriors in book 6 also appear in Sta .. tius's Thebaid, Boccaccio's usual source text, Minos does not. Conse .. quently, Anderson argues that Boccaccio includes Minos in the catalog and highlights Scylla's betrayal of her father Nisus in order to underline one of the main points of the Thebaid and the Teseida-that uncontrolled desire for a person or thing, like Scylla's for Minos, can result in the fall of a city. II Nevertheless, Boccaccio might have a further motive for including this allusion to Minos in the T eseida. By insistently and ostentatiously linking him to Athens in the stanzas cited above, Boccaccio actually seems to draw attention to what the reader might otherwise manage to forget while trying to untangle the web of allusions to the history of Thebes-namely, the most famous story associated with Theseus. Boccaccio's veiled allusions subtly remind the reader of Theseus's relationship to Minos, his defeat of the Minotaur, and his subsequent behavior toward Ariadne. Moreover, Boccaccio's decision to focus attention repeatedly on Minos in his poem does not constitute the only unsettling allusion to Theseus's Cretan adven .. tures in the Teseida. While rallying his men to join him in the fight against Creon in book 2, Boccaccio's Teseo boasts that he is not planning to die in Thebes so that Demophoon will inherit his realm (Teseida, 2.47).12 Demophoon, a gloss helpfully reminds the reader, "fu figliuolo di Teseo," but this gloss does not add that Demophoon was traditionally held to be the son of Theseus by his marriage to the Cretan princess Phaedra, Ariadne's sister-an event that should have been placed after, rather than before, the events narrated in the Teseida. Boccaccio's glossing persona thus teases the reader into remembering details that call the poem's own altered chronol .. ogy into question. I3 Piero Boitani claims that these references to Theseus's story "do not contribute in any way to the formation of Theseus's charac .. ter"; for Boitani, the retelling of Teseo's past (and future) in the glosses is merely an example of Boccaccio "showing off his erudition."I4 Yet ignoring Anderson, Before the Knight's Tale, 127. Patterson, Subject of History, 241, also notes the chronological discrepancy that this allu~ sion introduces. 13. The gloss to Teseida 3.25 provides another illustration of this strategy; there, in glossing a reference to Aesculapius, Boccaccio relates the legend that the physician brought Theseus's son Hippolytus back from the dead when the young man "fuggendo l'ira del padre" [fleeing the wrath of his father] fell from his chariot and was torn to pieces. As elsewhere in the Teseida, the reader must supply the details of Phaedra's accusations against Hippolytus, a drama that the gloss only hints at. 14. Piero Boitani, Chaucer and Boccaccio (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Lan~ guages and Literatures, 1977), 23-2 4. I I.

12.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

such authorial hints denies depth to both Boccaccio as author and T eseo as hero. Patterson's reading of Boccaccio's Teseida similarly assumes that its eel .. ebration of "buon T eseo" tends to be straightforward and unironic and that Boccaccio's erasure of the Minotaur from Teseo's shield succeeds in effacing any recollection of this story from its audience. IS A closer look at Boccaccio's portrayal of Teseo, however, suggests that it is fraught with more ambiguity than Patterson's reading allows. Even leaving aside the problem of the chronology of Teseo's career, I would argue that Teseo's martial furor, his troubling amorous past, and his tendency to speak like Dante's Ulysses all suggest that there is more to this hero-and more to Boccaccio's poem-than critics have usually allowed. While Stat ius barely mentions this episode, Boccaccio devotes the entire first book of his Teseida to Theseus's war against the Amazons. Boc .. caccio explores Theseus's motivations at some length; the Teseida and its glosses tell us that the hero undertakes this war not only because of the Amazons' aggression against Athenian shipping interests but also because his own martial furor has been stirred up by hearing of Tydeus's brave defense of himself against the fifty warriors that Eteocles had sent to kill him: Vuole adunque dire l'autore che la fama di questa fatto pervenne a Teseo, il quale si tenea e era tenuto, in quegli tempi, de' valorosi uomini d'arme del mondo; per che pili ardore gli crebbe che femine oltraggiassero lui, essendosi Tideo difeso solo da cotanti uomini: e questo brievemente intende qui l' autore. (Teseida, gloss to I. 14. I)

[Therefore, the author wishes to say that news of this deed came to Theseus, who considered himself and was considered in those times to rank among the most valorous men of arms in the world; and for this reason he grew more angry that women should flout him, since Tydeus had defended himself alone against so many men; and this, briefly, is what the author means.] Boccaccio's gloss closely links Tydeus's exploit, a prelude to the fratricidal bloodletting of the Theban war, with Teseo's campaign against the Ama ..

IS. See Patterson, Subject of History, 241, on Boccaccio's "celebratory purpose."

Boccaccio's Teseo, Chaucer's Theseus

83

zons, an event that precedes Teseo's own involvement in the Theban war. In his glossing persona, Boccaccio makes the connection and leaves his readers to draw their own conclusions about its significance. Given the insistent allusions to the unfortunate history of the War of the Seven against Thebes throughout the Teseida, this juxtaposition suggests that Teseo's own anger may not differ very much from the Theban furor he later tries to suppress. If Teseo's motivations for the Amazonian campaign remain ambiguous, so does his victory. For one thing, making war on the Amazons places The . . seus in the unchivalric role of killing women-even if they are peculiar, unnatural women. Even worse for his heroic image, Teseo finds the task of fighting the Amazons more challenging than he had anticipated; he and his troops must retreat to the safety of their ship after their initial foray into Amazon territory. Still, Teseo and his men prevail in the end, impos .. ing their masculine order on what they view as unnatural Amazonian dis . . order. Nevertheless, the women warriors are subdued not by main force, but by the threat that T eseo and his men will tunnel beneath their defenses and penetrate their city unawares, a threat that clearly suggests the underlying sexual danger that the men pose to Amazon society. Once Ipolyta decides to surrender, Teseo rides to the Amazon palace to claim the city and his prize. Boccaccio describes his hero's victorious entry as follows: Egli era bello e d' ogni parte ornata di drappi ad oro e d'altri cari arnesi, per ogni cos a ricco e bene agiato; rna Teseo gli occhi non teneva attesi a cia guardar, rna il viso dilicato d'Ipolita mirando, con accesi sospir dicea: "Costei trapassa Elena, cui io furtai, d' ogni bellezza piena."

(Teseida,

I. 130)

[(The palace) was very beautiful and decorated on all sides with golden tapestries and other precious ornaments, rich and opulent in every way, but Theseus did not have eyes ready to see it. Rather, gazing on the delicate face of Hippolyta, he said, with an ardent sigh, "She surpasses Helen, whom I abducted, and who was filled with every beauty."]

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The reader receives this news with a bit of a shock. Theseus, who has just subdued the Amazons and taken their queen in return for peace, has apparently obtained women by force before. Boccaccio supplies details of the affair in his laconic gloss: Elena, sirocchia di Castor e di Polluce, fu prima rapita da Teseo che da Paris; poi essendo Teseo con Peritoo, suo amico, andato per rapire Proserpina (la ovvero in altra parte che fosse ito), la madre di Teseo rende Elena a' fratelli. (Teseida, gloss to 1.130.7)

[Helen, the sister of Castor and Pollux, was ravished by Theseus before she was ravished by Paris; then when Theseus went with his friend Perithous to ravish Proserpine (there, in that other place to which she had gone), The-seus's mother restored Helen to her brothers'] The understated tone of the gloss contrasts sharply with its content, which implies that Theseus has a habit of raping, ravishing, or otherwise carrying off women, hardly a characteristic that qualifies him for the elder states-man role that critics tend to project on him. In fact, such a tendency could be extremely dangerous politically, as the mention of Paris's abduction of Helen in the gloss to the stanza delicately insinuates. In case his reader had missed this casual remark about Teseo's back-ground, Boccaccio brings up the subject of his hero's problematic past yet again in the context of Teseo's pardon of Pal am one and Arcita: Ma pero ch'io gia innamorato fui e per amor sovente folleggiai, m'e caro molto il perdonare altrui, perch'io perdon pili fiate acquistai non per mio operar, ma per colui pieta a cui la figlia gia furtai; pero sicuri di perdono state; vincera il faUo la mia gran pietate.

(Teseida, 5.92) [Nevertheless, since I once fell in love and often committed follies for love, it is very pleasing to me to pardon others. For I have received pardon many times, not on account of my deeds, but through the mercy of him whose

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daughter I once stole. And so you can be certain of my pardon. My great compassion will triumph over this wrongdoing.] Boccaccio's gloss to this stanza repeats the story of Theseus's abduction of Helen quoted above. In these lines, T eseo looks back upon his past as a youthful mistake, one that makes him indulgent toward younger fools in love, but also wiser than they are. Still, given that T eseo has only recently captured Ipolyta and installed both the queen and her sister Emilia in Athens, a reader cannot help but view his strong assertions with a skepti-cal eye. Boccaccio's references to Teseo's abduction of Helen do not end there. In book 7, when Teseo declares that the fight for Emilia will be "com'un palestral gioco" [like a palestral game], the glossator helpfully launches into a lengthy explanation: Palestrale giuco era che gli uomini si solevano sopra Ie came vestire un cuoio strettissimo e morbido, nel quale niuno altro pertugio si vedea se non per me' gli occhi, accio che veder potesse, e per me' la bocca, accio che potesse spirare; poi cosl vestiti s'ugnevano tutti 0 d' olio 0 di sevo, e quindi si prendevano a guisa di coloro che fanno aIle braccia.... E in questa cotale giuoco entravano alcuna volta Ie donne; e Elena, anzi che fosse moglie di Menelao, essendo ancora pulcella, intrata in questa giuoco, come che molto chiusa fosse, pur fu conosciuta da Teseo e rapita da lui, come di sopra brievemente si toccO. (Teseida, gloss to 7.4.8)

[The palestral games were when the men used to cover their bodies with very tight, soft leather, in which there were no openings, except around the eyes, so that one could see, and around the mouth, so that one could breathe. When they were dressed in this fashion, they were rubbed all over either with oil or tallow and then they behaved like those who wrestle one another with their arms . ... And sometimes women entered in these games; and Helen, before she was the wife of Menelaus, while she was still a girl, entered in this game and because it was in a very enclosed place, she was recognized by Theseus, and she was ravished by him, as was mentioned briefly above.] Boccaccio's description of the fetishistic greased leather get--up that par . . ticipants wore at the palestral games sounds quite bizarre and has no basis

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in classical practice. 16 Boccaccio finishes off this already strange gloss by stating that this sexually charged atmosphere formed the backdrop for Teseo's rape of Helen. Clearly, he is up to something more than providing explanations of quaint ancient traditions-the reference to Teseo's prowess against Helen in the "unta palestra" recurs in book I I, as T eseo wins the contest held to honor the memory of Arcita (Teseida, I I.62). If the earlier "palestral games" were the occasion for Teseo's rape of Helen, the palestral games over which T eseo presides become the occasion of a fight over another beautiful woman. The Emilia~Helen analogy, implied here, is made explicit later, as the narrator describes Menelaus, who, "veg~ gendola in quelle ore, / la reputo S1 di bellezza piena, / che la prepose con seco ad Elena" (Teseida, 12.67.6: "Seeing her at that time he deemed her so full of beauty that in his mind he preferred her to Helen"). Besides insistently recalling Teseo's past as an abductor of women, Boc~ caccio's narrator casts a shadow on his hero by linking him with the Ulysses of Dante's Commedia. In Dante's Inferno 26, Ulysses had been asso~ ciated with the story of Thebes through an allusive description of the flame in which he and Diomedes bum eternally for their fraudulent coun~ sel. Questioning Virgil about the two~horned flame, Dante's pilgrim asks, chi e in quel foco che vien S1 diviso di sopra, che par surger de la pira dov' Eteocle col fratel fu miso?

[Who is in that flame so riven at the tip it could be rising from the pyre on which Eteocles was laid out with his brother?] Here, Dante evokes the powerful image of the divided pyre of Eteocles and Polynices from book 12 of the Thebaid, a haunting symbol of the fratrici~ dal fury that has doomed Thebes. Dante may have planted this reminder of the betrayal and destruction of one city to make the reader link Ulysses with the betrayal and destruction of another-Troy. Likewise, Boccaccio picks up on Dante's connection of Ulysses with Theban strife and embeds a series of verbal echoes of Dante's Ulysses in the stanzas detailing Teseo's words and actions as he decides to fight Creon and departs to sack Thebes. 16. Boitani, Chaucer and Boccaccio, 28, states that Boccaccio's source for this passage is a mys-tery. Boccaccio most likely misinterpreted a passage he found in a classical text.

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87

Once T eseo has agreed to march upon Creon for his refusal to allow funeral rites for the fallen Thebans, he rallies his troops with a speech full of verbal parallels to Ulysses' "orazion picciola" to his sailors in Inferno 26: Tanto e nel mondo ciascun valoroso, quanto virtute Ii piace operare; dunque ciascun di vivere ozioso si guardi che in fama vuol montare; e noi, accio che stato glorioso intra' mondan potessimo acquistare, venimmo al mondo, e non per esser tristi come bruti animaIi e 'ntra lor misti. Adunque, cari e buon commilitoni che meco in tante perigliose cose is tate sete in dubbie condizioni, per far Ie vostre memorie famose a Ie future nuove nazioni, ora Ii cuori all' opre gloriose vi priego dispognate, ne vi cagIia prender risposo d'avuta travaglia.

[Each person is as valiant as the worthy deeds it pleases him to perform; therefore let everyone guard himself from a life of idleness who desires to rise to fame. Thus, we came into this world so that we might achieve as glorious a state as possible in it and not to be wretched like brute animals and mixed with them. And so, dear and good fellow soldiers, who have been with me in so many dangerous ventures and doubtful situations as to make your memory famous among future new nations, now I beg you to prepare your hearts for glorious deeds. Do not concern yourselves about taking rest after the labor you have sustained. ] With its appeal to glory, its reminder of past struggles, and its admonition to behave as men rather than like animals, Teseo's lengthy exhortation rings changes upon Ulysses' much more compact speech to his crew. 17 Like Ulysses' companions, Teseo's men are swayed by his rhetoric and are only too eager to enter the fray; like Ulysses, who proudly announces that he 17. Cf. Inferno

26.112-21.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

left his aged father, his son, and his wife in order to seek adventure, Teseo does not allow family ties to interfere with his drive to destroy Thebes: Teseo adunque, sanza rivedere il vecchio padre 0 parente 0 arnico uscl d' Attene, ne Ii fu in calere d'IpoIita l'arnore dolce e pudico, ne altro alcun riposo, per potere gloria acquistar sopra '1 degno nernico.

(Teseida, 2.49) [Therefore, Theseus left Athens without seeing his old father again or any relative or friend. Nor was he interested in the sweet and chaste love of Hip . . polyta, or any other rest once he could win glory over a fitting enemy.] While Ulysses cannot conquer his longing to gain experience of the world, T eseo cannot conquer his longing to conquer. Through his description of Ulysses' self-centered disregard for his family ties and for the welfare of his men, Dante paints an unflattering picture of a renowned classical hero, and Boccaccio chooses to paint Teseo with precisely the same brush. 18 Moreover, as demonstrated in the last chapter, Dante's portrait of Ulysses clearly links him with two forsaken woman-Deidamia, whose abandon . . ment he causes, and his own wife Penelope, whom he leaves behind. Boc . . caccio definitely views Dante's Ulysses as an abandoner-he places his portrait of Penelope in the Amorosa Visione in a series of descriptions of abandoned women, and her lament there clearly echoes Ulysses' speech in Inferno 26 (see chap. 4). In the Teseida, therefore, Boccaccio's deliberate linking of his T eseo with Ulysses serves as a recognition of the role that abandoned women play in both of these heroes' pasts. Of course, one could object that Boccaccio sees Dante's Ulysses as an exemplary figure rather than an abandoner of women or a crafty speech .. maker who lures his crew to their doom, and that he consequently employs 18. Ronald Martinez, "Before the Teseida: Statius and Dante in Boccaccio's Epic," Studi sul Boccaccio 20 (1991-92): 212-13, points out that Boccaccio's use of the "morally dubious persua, sion of Dante's Ulisse" as a model for persuasive speaking in the Teseida calls into question the motives of various characters, thus creating a "poetics of doubt." Similarly, Eren Hostetter Branch, "Rhetorical Structures and Strategies in Boccaccio's Teseida," in The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics, ed. Leigh A. Arathoon (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris, 198 4), 154-56, argues that the allusions to Ulisse's speech in the "dicerie" of Ipolyta and T eseo in books I and 2 remind the reader of the "ambiguous value of rhetoric."

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89

Dantesque diction in order to accentuate Teseo's classical heroism. Or one could argue, as Boitani does, that such uses of Dantesque diction show that Boccaccio, "fascinated by the words of the great poet, separates them from their context and, blinded by the light of the tessera, inserts it into a mosaic completely different from the original."I9 For Boitani, the echoes of Ulysses' words "are disproportionate in the Teseida. Boccaccio uses them only in order to ennoble his text."20 Such a reading, however, gives Boccaccio little credit either as an attentive reader of the Commedia or as a poet sensitive to the nuances of his own language. Moreover, Boitani's argument simply ignores the other hints about Teseo's not particularly savory past scattered throughout the Teseida. If Teseo's previous involvements with women have not been entirely above reproach, how does this reflect upon the action of the Teseida? As I have suggested before, T eseo has little interest in what women wantEmilia must get married whether she likes it or not. The presence within the glosses of Ovid's story of Philomela and Procne, which details the rape of one sister by the husband of the other, may also provide a veiled com-mentary on the main action of a poem titled in full II Teseida delle Nozze d'Emilia-namely, Teseo's forcing of marriage upon the unwilling Amazon maiden. 21 In book 7, Emilia acknowledges her inability to resist Teseo as she prays to Diana, apologizing to the goddess: "e vedi ch'ad altrui son sug-giugata / e quel che i piace, a me convien di fare" (Teseida, 7.83.5-6: "See, I am subjected to another and it is necessary for me to do what pleases him"). A gloss helpfully informs the reader that the "altrui" to whom Emilia is subjugated is none other than her brother--in .. law Teseo, the sup . . posedly benevolent ruler of Athens. Nevertheless, toward the end of the Teseida, after she has seen the suffering that has resulted from Teseo's grand plans, Emilia tries to resist his subsequent schemes. After Teseo attempts to convince the unwilling Palamone and Emilia to marry, the narrator describes Emilia, who "Ie parole tututte ascoltava / con animo da nulla ancor piegato" (Teseida, 12.38.4-5: "listened to all their words with a mind that had not yet yielded"). Teseo speaks to her in the tyrannical tones of one accustomed to being obeyed: "Emilia, hai tu 19. Boitani, Chaucer and Boccaccio, 39. Boitani, Chaucer and Boccaccio, 38. 21. See Teseida, 4.54 and 73, and glosses. Though Boccaccio alludes to the Philomela and Procne story in passages treating Arcite's desire for Emilia, the familial relationships among T ereo, Procne, and Philomela hint at possible tensions among T eseo, Ipolyta, and Emilia. See also Ahl, "Statius' 'Thebaid,'" 2892-94, on the presence of this myth in Thebaid 12. 20.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

udito? / Quel che io vo' farai sia fornito" (Teseida, 12.38.7-8: "Emilia, have you heard? You will see to it that what I want is done"). This time, Emilia does not silently go along with Teseo's wishes. Rather, she makes a speech communicating her desire to remove herself from the marriage market entirely by becoming a servant in Diana's temple. Teseo, of course, has no interest in this particular proposal-brushing her off with a curt "Questo dire e niente" (Teseida, 12.43.1: "This talk means nothing"), the benevo . . lent duke tells her to put on a happy face and a nice dress, because she will marry Palamone. Significantly, this speech is the last one Emilia makes in the poem. While the narrator and others have plenty to say about her in the following stanzas, she never again becomes a speaking subject; Teseo has managed to shut up the voice that contradicts him. Thus silenced, Emilia goes along with the men's merrymaking, but not without misgiv . . ings: E Ipolita il simil fatto avea e l'altre donne e anche Emilia bella a cui a forza ancora cia piacea, rna non poteva piu, e pera ella faceva quel che'allor Teseo volea.

(Teseida, 12.46) [And Hippolyta did the same, and the other ladies, and even beautiful Emilia, whom it still only pleased perforce. But she could endure no more, and therefore, she did what Theseus wanted.] As with Philomela, once Emilia is compelled to comply with her brother . . in . . law's wishes, her own voice is heard no more. She is married to Pala . . mone with pomp and circumstance, and we are told that Palamone remains in "gioia e in disporta" in Athens, now that he possesses her who pleased him most (Teseida, 12.83.4.) The feelings of the "noble and cour . . teous" lady whom he so happily possesses are nowhere expressed. Given the previous marital record of "wild and ruthless" Scythian women, how . . ever, one wonders if Emilia's apparent compliance might one day erupt into violence against her spouse. By the end of the Teseida, Boccaccio's protagonist appears more com . . plicated and more shifty than the "buon Teseo" whom the Teseida's narra . . tive voice so blithely lauds, and the story's "happy ending" seems less cel . . ebratory than it might at first appear. What does Chaucer make of Boccaccio's Teseida when he transforms it into the Knight's Tale?

Boccaccio's T eseo, Chaucer's Theseus

9I

Chaucer's streamlined version of the story largely eliminates Boccaccio's descriptions of Theseus's exploits against the Amazons and Thebes in order to focus on Theseus's mediation between Palamon and Arcite. Chaucer's tighter focus on the conflict between the two young warriors suits the Knight's masculine ethos, which tends to downplay the female characters in the story, making them little more than pawns. Unlike Boc .. caccio, who expressly addresses the Teseida to his lady Fiammetta, Chaucer constructs a fictive audience in the Canterbury Tales mostly composed of men. Hippolyta, portrayed as a powerful ruler in book I of the Teseida, becomes a decoration for Theseus's chariot in the Knight's retelling; Emelye, who was something of a flirt in Boccaccio's story, becomes a lovely blank screen upon which the male characters (and, at one point, even the narrator) proj ect their own desires. 22 Just as the Knight's Tale centers on the character of Theseus, so, too, a good deal of criticism on the tale has devoted itself to explicating his role. In the last generation, Chaucer scholars have often viewed as Theseus as a symbol of order, a good man who deals with the disordered odds and ends of life with dignity and with ceremony, dispensing pardons and justice. 23 Others have questioned whether the order that Theseus upholds through licit violence is really so benign, or whether he is simply a man who cloaks his desire for domination and political machinations in pleasant .. sounding philosophy, forcing other people to make a virtue of necessities that he has imposed on them. 24 Still others suggest a middle path: Theseus, capricious 22. For example, see the description of Emelye's disrobing to take a ritual bath in the Temple of Diana in the Knight's Tale, 2284-88, where the narrator of the story somewhat salaciously comments that "it were a gam to heeren al" the details of this particular rite. 23. See the influential essays by William Frost, "An Interpretation of Chaucer's Knight's Tale," Review of English Studies 25 (1949): 289-304; and Charles Muscatine, "Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer's Knight's Tale," PMLA 65 (1950): 911-29. Many critics, following Frost and Muscatine, have emphasized Theseus's role as virtuous ruler and bringer of order. See, for instance, R. H. Green, "Classical Fable and English Poetry in the Fourteenth Century," in Criti~ cal Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute (New York: Colum~ bia University Press, 1960), I 28ff.; Boitani, Chaucer and Boccaccio, 143-47; Alaistair Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), 121-31; R. H. Nicholson, "The~ seus's 'Ordinaunce': Justice and Ceremony in the Knight's Tale," Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 192-213; John Finlayson, "The Knight's Tale: The Dialogue of Romance, Epic, and Philosophy," Chaucer Review 27 (1992): 131-32; Barbara Nolan, Chaucer and the Tradition of the Roman Antique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 26 1-68. 24. See David Aers, Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980), 174-95; Henry Webb, "A Reinterpretation of Chaucer's Theseus," Review of English Studies 23 (1947): 289-96; Kathleen Blake, "Order and the Noble Life in Chaucer's Knight's Tale?" Modem Language Quarterly 34 (1973): 3-19; Robert Hanning, "The Struggle between Noble Designs and Chaos," Literary Review 23 (1980): 514-41; Terry Jones, Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary (New York: Methuen, 1984), 194-212.

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and tyrannical at the poem's beginning, shows moral development as the story progresses. 25 Those who argue for the first view certainly have good reason: Theseus looks rather appealing compared to the pettiness and lustfulness of Pala .. mon and Arcite, and he has a sympathetic narrator on his side. Neverthe .. less, as the Knight's Tale progresses, the attentive reader begins to see that Theseus also has a past, which, if not as fratricidal and deadly as that of the Theban cousins, is nonetheless fraught with duplicity and betrayal. The .. seus's behavior thus comes to seem more motivated by self.. serving desires than the idealistic reading of the first group of critics would allow. Critics who take a middle .. of.. the .. road stance on Theseus correctly point out that by the end of the poem, Theseus no longer angers so easily and that he has taken to solving problems by calling parliaments rather than staging bat .. tIes. However, these readings do not usually pay much attention to The .. seus's dealings with women, which remain as problematic at the end of the story as they were at the beginning, when he subdued them with violence. From the beginning of the Knight's Tale, the narrator presents Theseus as a victorious leader, who "has conquered al the regne of Femenye" ( KnT 866). Theseus, who seems to have no particular compunction about killing Amazons, nonetheless feels stirred by the Theban widows' tale of unburied soldiers, and out of pity, we are told, decides to conquer Thebes. He marches off, under various martial signs: The rede statue of Mars, with spere and targe So shyneth in his white baner large That aIle the feeldes glyteren up and doun; And by his baner born is his penoun Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete The Mynotaur, which that he wan in Crete. Thus rit this duc, thus rit this conquerour ... (KnT 975-81) To the reader familiar with the Teseida, Chaucer's description strikes a jar.. ring note, for as discussed above, Boccaccio carefully dissociates Theseus from the slaying of the Minotaur and the abandonment of Ariadne. 25. See, for example, Robert Haller, "The Knight's Tale and the Epic Tradition," Chaucer Review I (1966): 82ff.; Merle Fifeld, "The Knight's Tale: Incident, Idea, Incorporation," Chaucer Review 3 (1968): 97-98; John Reidy, "The Education of Chaucer's Duke Theseus," in The Epic in Medieval Society, ed. Harald Scholler (Tilbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1977),394.

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Chaucer lifts the detail of the "penoun / Of golde ful riche, in which ther was ybete / The Mynotaur" from the description of the doubled image of Theseus in Thebaid 12.665-76, the citation with which this chapter began. Through this allusion to Theseus's past, Chaucer seems to invite the reader to step outside the Knight's Tale and remember the "olde stories" that he had told in his own past, stories detailing Theseus's abandonment of Ariadne and elopement with her sister, Phaedra. 26 Even though Chaucer's Knight manages to elide Theseus's past in much of his narration, he does not efface it completely. Theseus himself reminds the reader of his past in his jocular "God of Love" speech in which he both mocks and pardons Palamon and Arcite for "al this hoote fare." He says of love: A man moot ben a fool, or yang or ooldI woot it by myself ful yore agon, For in my tyme a servant was loon. And therefore, syn I knowe of loves peyne And woot hou sore it kan a man distreyne, As he that hath been caught ofte in his laas, I you foryeve al hooly this trespaas ...

(KnT I8I2-18) In this speech, Chaucer's version of Teseida 5.92 (cited above), Theseus speaks like an older, wiser man remembering his own youthful indiscre . . tions. One might guess that Theseus recalls his kidnapping of the young Helen of Troy (and possibly also his rape of her, an incident that the let . . ter of Oenone to Paris in Ovid's Heroides slyly insinuates) mentioned in Boccaccio's version of this speech. As when reading the parallel speech in Boccaccio's Teseida, the skeptical reader asks whether Theseus has really changed as much as he implies-after all, he has recently carried off another woman, Hippolyta, by force of arms, and has brought her and her sister back to Athens as his prize. Perhaps Theseus's desires have not actu . . 26. Green, "Classical Fable," 134, argues that the Minotaur symbolizes Theseus's defeat of lust; however, such a simple, moralistic reading rules out the darker resonances of the story that Chaucer himself acknowledges in his other works. In his chapter on "Thesian polity" David Wal~ lace develops an interpretation of the Knight's Tale that also draws attention to the hidden con~ nections between Theseus's past abandonment of Ariadne and his present behavior; my chapter however, was written before Wallace's book appeared. See David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) 104-24, especially 110-1 4.

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ally changed all, but only his capacity to control them to attain political ends. Instead of merely carrying off Hippolyta, as he had Helen, Theseus marries the Amazon queen and thereby ensures the end of unrest in Scythia. When desire coincides with political convenience, Theseus seems ready to take advantage of the situation. By marrying Emelye to one of the eager Theban cousins and by eliminating the other suitor in the deadly battle for her hand, Theseus effectively prevents both Palamon and Arcite from staking competing claims to their patrimony and assures his continued rule over the conquered city of Thebes. This strategy may sound overly Machiavellian for "noble Theseus," but if one remembers him as the calculating opportunist who promised to marry a woman who saved his life and instead left her stranded on a rocky coast, such behavior does not seem quite so incongruously out of character. Indeed, in his portraits of Theseus in the House of Fame and the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer much more explicitly calls upon his reader to impute base motives to the Athenian hero.27 The story of Theseus is one of the narrator's digressions in the House of Fame as he contemplates a series of engraved images illustrating the plot of the Aeneid. After describ .. ing Dido's betrayal by Aeneas, the narrator recommends that his reader peruse Virgil or read Ovid's Heroides to find out more. After enumerating several other forsaken women and their abandoners from the Heroides, the narrator pauses for 2 I lines (HF, 405-26) to recall the story of "fals" The .. seus. In this skeleton outline, the narrator emphasizes Ariadne's "pite" on Theseus and the promises he has sworn to her. Theseus repays her not only by leaving her "slepynge in an ile / Desert allone," but also by taking her sister Phaedra with him, a detail that Chaucer may have taken from Machaut, the Ovide moralise, or Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione. 28 27. Frost, "Interpretation," 290, argues that the Theseus of the Knight's Tale and the Theseus of the Legend of Ariadne should be kept quite distinct since the "circumstances of the two stories are not compatible with each other if the two are taken as relating episodes in the life of the same man." While Frost's chronological point is well taken, the discrepancies he points out do not pre~ elude making more allusive connections between the two stories. Melvin Storm, "From Knossos to Knight's Tale: The Changing Face of Chaucer's Theseus," in The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville: Uni~ versity of Florida Press, 1990),228, more reasonably suggests that "when he composed the Knight's Tale, Chaucer has his earlier works in mind and was aware that many of his audience would have familiarity with those works as well and could draw upon them for illumination of the more recent." 28. See the notes to the Riverside Chaucer and David Wallace, Chaucer and the Early Writings of Boccaccio (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 16. Gower also includes Theseus's substitution of Phaedra for her sister in the version of the Theseus and Ariadne story he tells in book 5 of the

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If Theseus's character sounds rather dubious from the details given in the House of Fame, the hero looks even worse in the Legend of Ariadne, recounted in the Legend of Good Women. In Ovid's Heroides, the main source for Chaucer's treatment of "Adriane," the deserted princess's histri .. onics become travesty. Florence Verducci, who dubs Heroides 10 "Ovid's purest parody," argues that Ovid's Ariadne shows as much concern for her own posturing as she does about losing Theseus. 29 She maintains that Ovid achieves a comic effect in this epistle through his insistent gesturing toward the genuine tragedy and pathos found in Catullus's portrayal of the abandoned heroine. However convincing Verducci's claims may be to modern classicists, we must remember that Chaucer and his medieval audience lacked the works of Catullus and thus would be unable to detect the Ovidian alteration of Catullus's tone that Verducci perceives as humorous. 30 Still, in some ways, Chaucer's "Adriane" does follow in Ovid's satirical tradition, as Robert Worth Frank Jr.'s reading of the story suggests. The central portion of the Legend of Ariadne makes a mockery of the reader's genre expectations for romance, with its eponymous heroine's careful mapping out of the matrimonial bargain Theseus must enter into in return for her help, a bargain that culminates in her attempt to make a match between her sister Phaedra and Theseus's unnamed son. 3I In this part of Confessio Amantis. Interestingly enough, Gower follows up the tale of Theseus and the two Cre.tan sisters with that of T ereus and the Athenian sisters Philomene and Procne. In book 8, Gower comments again on Theseus's unfaithfulness when the narrator sees him among the companies of lovers. 29. Verducci, Ovid's T oyshop, 246ff. 30. Edgar Shannon, Chaucer and the Roman Poets (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924),370, deems it "quite possible" that Chaucer knew Catullus, and claims that one detail of his portrayal of the abandoned princess fits better with Catullus's version than any of Chaucer's known sources: namely, the narrator's statement that the gods were angry with Theseus because of his treatment of Ariadne. Shannon's claim seems tenuous at best, since Chaucer could have easily drawn this conclusion from information available in his known sources. If Chaucer had read Catullus 64, one would expect to see more distinctive traces of the work in his depiction of Ari.adne. Considering that the Verona codex of Catullus's poems was only rediscovered in 1300 and the two oldest extant copies were made in Italy about 1375, it is rather doubtful that the Roman poet's works received much circulation during Chaucer's lifetime. Of course, it is possible that Chaucer could have seen a manuscript of Catullus during a visit to Italy, but such an argument cannot be persuasive unless supported with some definite textual parallels between the two poets-which it is not. For the transmission of Catullus in the Middle Ages see L. D. Reynolds, ed., Texts and Transmission (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983),43-45. 31. Robert Worth Frank Jr., Chaucer and the "Legend of Good Women" (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 114ff. Presumably, the son Ariadne refers to is Hippolytus; by mention.ing his existence, Chaucer slyly invokes the Ovidian tale of attempted incest and betrayal related

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the tale, Ariadne sounds comically bourgeois for a classical heroine. Still, by the end of the tale, the gentle comedy turns to genuine pathos. By rep .. resenting Ariadne's complaint in direct discourse, rather than employing Ovid's sometimes cumbersome and artificial device of letter writing, and by cutting out the histrionics of Ovid's heroine, Chaucer makes his "Adri .. ane" a figure to more to be pitied than laughed at. Actually, Chaucer stresses the concept of "pitee" in both his versions of the Ariadne story. In the House of Fame, Ariadne had "pite" on Theseus, and in the Legend of Good Women, after she overhears Thesus's sorrowful lament, she is moved to exclaim, "How pitously compleyneth he his kin" (LGW 1980) and decides to help him. In the end, though, the narrator and the gods rather than Theseus show "pite" on the sorrowful Ariadne (LGW 2184, 2222). The Knight's Tale, interestingly enough, contains two scenes in which an unpitying Theseus is moved to compunction. In the first scene of the tale, as Theseus speaks to the Argive widows, where the words "pitous" and "pitee" recur insistently as the women try to con .. vert his anger into an offer of assistance (KnT 912-64). Later, when The .. seus encounters Palamon and Arcite fighting in the wood, he is furious, but the efforts of kneeling, weeping women again ensure that "pitee ren .. neth soon in gentil herte" (KnT 1761). Theseus's initial lack of compunc .. tion in these scenes may be an ironic allusion to his past, when others were more apt to pity him than he was them. For the narrator of the Legend of Ariadne, pity leads to remembrance, a key theme in various versions of the classical story. As Verducci points out, in Catullus's treatment of Theseus, the hero's main shortcoming is precisely his failure to remember: Theseus is "immemor" both of Ariadne and, due to her curse, of his promise to his father to change his sail from black to white.3 2 As a result, his father kills himself and Theseus becomes the ruler of Athens. In Ovid, Ariadne does not curse her absentminded lover, but at one point in her complaint she imagines his selective memory at work: ibis Cecropios portus patriaque receptus cum steteris turbae celsus in are tuae et bene narraris letum taurique virique sectaque par dubias saxea tecta vias in Heroides. Nevertheless, one cannot be too sure about this identification, for it would reverse the usual chronology of Theseus's career found in classical sources as well as in the Knight's Tale. 32. See Verducci, Ovid's Toyshop, 261, discussing the portrait of Ariadne.

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me quoque narrato sola tellure relictam! non ego sum titulis subripienda tuis.

(Her. 10.125-30) [You will return to the harbor of Cecrops; but when you have been received back home, and have stood in pride before your thronging followers, glori~ ously telling of the death of the man~and~bull and of the halls of rock cut out in winding ways, be sure you also tell of me, abandoned on a solitary shore-for I must not be stolen from the record of your honors.] Here, Ariadne pictures Theseus editing her out of his narrative of the past. Chaucer's narrator in the Legend of Good Women seems intent on righting (or writing) this wrong, wishing to tell her story "for to clepe ageyn unto memorye / Of Theseus the grete untrouthe of love" (LGW 1889-90). Ari . . adne, forgotten on the island, tries in vain to put up a sign for her lover, "that he shu Ide it weI yse / And hym remembre that she was behynde" (LGW 2203-4). Theseus, of course, does not remember, for he does not want to remember, and perhaps in this facet of his character, the Theseus of the Heroides and Legend of Good Women most resembles the character portrayed in the Knight's Tale. In the Knight's Tale, Theseus has done precisely what Ovid's Ariadne predicted-gone home to Athens, memori . . alized his Cretan exploit by making it into his banner, and conveniently omitted any indication of Ariadne's assistance or of her subsequent fate. Even if Theseus cannot remember the past that Chaucer represented in the Legend of Ariadne, the reader of the Knight's Tale should be reminded of the Legend because of certain details that the two stories share. As John Livingston Lowes pointed out nearly a century ago, parts of Theseus's speech to Ariadne in the Legend of Good Women appear inspired by inci . . dents in the career of Boccaccio's Arcita.3 3 In the Legend, Theseus promises to disguise himself and become Ariadne's servant in return for her help. In the Knight's Tale and the Teseida, Arcite never promises such service to Emelye, but he nonetheless puts this plan into action. In the Legend of Good Women, Theseus says that he has been in love with Ari . . adne for seven years, a claim about which the reader must be duly skepti . . 33. John Livingston Lowes, "The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women Considered in Its Chronological Relations," PMLA 20 (1905): 802-10. Lowes's article maintains that the Legend of Ariadne precedes the Knight's Tale and suggests that the Legend shows Chaucer experimenting with an imaginative transformation of Boccaccio's Teseida even before his large~scale adaptation of it.

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cal, especially given his subsequent behavior. On the other hand, Palamon and Arcite actually do yearn for Emelye for seven years. Besides these similarities of detail, we can also detect certain structural similarities between the web of relationships that Chaucer constructs in the two tales. In The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer adds Phaedra to his source text, so that Theseus becomes amorously linked to two sisters; in the Knight's Tale, he is linked to both Hippolyta and her sister Emelye. In The Legend of Good Women, Theseus marries the elder sister and abandons the younger; in the Knight's Tale, Theseus again marries an elder sister, but this time he disposes of the younger sister with a good deal more cere .. mony. In her discussion of the Knight's Tale, Elaine Tuttle Hansen has speculated about the meaning of Theseus's relationship to Emelye: Emily, as Hippolyta's younger sister, represents an extra female whom Theseus himself cannot marry, but whose sexuality-clearly deadly to at least one knight, and symbolically threatening to the bonds that unify aristocratic men-must be contained by marriage. (Does the story of Theseus's mythic involvement with another pair of sisters, Phaedra and Ariadne, which Chaucer tells in the Legend of Good Women, have any bearing on a reading of the Knight's Theseus? If it does, Emily's meaning in relation to Theseus and the problem of male rivalry is more complicated than I have suggested here. )34 If Hansen's parenthetical question is answered in the affirmative, how does Theseus's past history change or complicate Emelye's meaning in relation to him? I would suggest that if one views Theseus as a guilty man who is attempting to erase the memory of past mistakes, Emelye represents a return of what he has been trying so hard to repress. By remembering, repeating, and working through this problem in the Knight's Tale, The .. seus attempts to lay to rest the ghost of the "pallentem Gnosida"-though not without considerable strife. Theseus gets rid of Emelye, the "extra woman" in the Knight's Tale, far more pleasantly than he rid himself of Ariadne, and at much greater trouble to himself. Yet in one respect, the two women's fates are similar: neither gets to make any choices about her own future. In both cases, Theseus writes the scripts that determine their fates. Theseus, however, may not be the only character in the Knight's Tale 34. Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Uni~ versity of California Press, 1992), 220.

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with a record of betraying women. Chaucer's unfinished Anelida and Arcite, as the fragment has been titled, gives a manifestly unflattering por . . trait of the warrior Arcite. This short poem represents Chaucer's most through imitation of Boccaccian and Ovidian narrative technique. In the Teseida, Boccaccio imported a love story of his own invention into the framework of classical epic provided by Statius's Thebaid, much as Ovid did in the Heroides. 35 Likewise, in Anelida and Arcite, Chaucer interpolates yet another amorous history (apparently of his own invention), into the framework of Boccaccio's Teseida. Chaucer's poetic fragment fills in the blank spaces of Boccaccio's Theban tragicomedy, perhaps in order to ratio . . nalize Arcite's death as poetic justice for his earlier faithlessness to the Armenian queen.3 6 In Anelida and Arcite, we see "another Arcite," this one with betrayal in his amorous past, much as the Legend of Ariadne shows "another Theseus." As Lee Patterson persuasively argues, Anelida and Arcite centers on dou . . bleness and duplicity. Double in structure, the poem moves from a male . . dominated martial world to the feminized realm of Venus in Anelida's complaint. Its plot neatly opposes Anelida and Arcite "in the apparently straightforward and unqualified terms of her singleness of purpose set against his duplicity."37 Arcite, who is "double in love and no thing pleyn" (AA 87), swears to his lady that if he does not win her, he would "dyen for distress / or from his wite he saide he wolde twynne" (I 02). But Arcite, like Theseus in the Legend of Ariadne does "twynne" from his love, accusing her of "doublenesse" (AA 159) in order to cloak his own. For, the narrator tells us, Arcite is like the biblical Lamech, "that began / To loven two, and was in bigamye" (AA 153-54). Anelida responds by writing the false Arcite a Heroides . . style letter; having sent it, she goes to the temple of Mars, at which point the story breaks off, tantalizingly unfinished.3 8 In his discussion of Anelida and Arcite Alcuin Blamires points out that Chaucer has his heroine transgress some of the normative "rules" for car . . rying on courtly love relationships presented in texts such as Ovid's Ars 35. See Edgar Shannon, "The Source of Chaucer's Anelida and Arcita," PMLA 27 (1912): 478-79, on Chaucer's invention of the story. 36. Michel D. Cherniss, Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite: Some Conjectures," Chaucer Review 5 (1970): 20, reads Arcita's betrayal of Anelida as Chaucer's way of "justifying" Arcita's death in Boccaccio's Teseida. Cf. Judith Perryman, "The 'False Arcite' of Chaucer's Knight's Tale," Neophilologus 68 (1984): 128, who argues that '''false Arcite' of the Knight's Tale is a clumsy assimilation by Chaucer of his own earlier work, bringing over something of the same conception where it has no proper place." 37. Patterson, Subject of History, 63-65. 38. See Shannon, "Source," 478-79, on the Ovidian influences on Anelida's complaint.

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amatoria, among them the idea that the lady must pursue a strategy of daunger-of keeping her lover on a string.3 9 By her honest avowal of her love for Arcita, Blamires argues, Anelida has usurped a role traditionally given to the male lover in courtly narratives, and Chaucer's presentation of her as heroine seems to imply some considerable restlessness with received literary paradigms, as though Chaucer were seriously disaffected with the firm conventional separation between male (humble, suppliant) and female (sovereign, reserved) roles in courtship which medieval courtly writers generally upheld. 40 Like Blamires, Jennifer Summit discusses Anelida's decision to inhabit a traditionally male gender role, though she focuses her attention on Chaucer's decision to construct his heroine as a woman writer who follows in the footsteps of the lost female author "Corynne" invoked by the narra . . tor as a source in the poem's opening stanzas (AA 21).41 As Summit argues, Anelida's Complaint serves to point out the way that women writ . . ers in Chaucer's works become identified with a position of loss that ensures that they come across as "self. . cancelling, excluded, marginal and powerless," a position that all but insures that their discourse will be com . . mended to "literary. . historical oblivion," much as Chaucer's fragmentary Anelida and Arcite itself has been neglected and marginalized by literary critics. 42 If the story had continued, Anelida might well have decided to curse her false lover at the altar of Mars, much as Dido curses Aeneas; had Chaucer chosen to continued his narrative in this way, he might have done so in an attempt to explain Arcita's defeat in the Knight's Tale. Unfortunately, we can only speculate on the shape the plot of this poem might have taken, since Chaucer does not finish the tale of this abandoned woman. Nevertheless, with its clear allusion to Ovid's Heroides and its determination to prevent Queen Anelida's story from being "devoured out of oure memorie" (AA 14), the fragmentary narrative cannot help but remind its reader of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, and of its narrator's 39. Alcuin Blamires, "Questions of Gender in Chaucer, from Anelida to Troilus," Leeds Stud . .

ies in English 25 (1994): 88-94· 40. Blamires, "Questions of Gender," 92,94. 41. See the discussion of the poem in the first chapter of Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380-1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000),39-48. 42. Summit, Lost Property, 47,48.

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determination, in the Legend of Ariadne, "to clepe ageyn unto memorye / Of Theseus the great untrouthe of love" (LGW 1889-90). By insisting on remembering and memorializing the unpalatable incidents that Theseus, Arcite, and even the narrator of the Knight's Tale wish to forget, the nar .. rators of the Legend of Ariadne and of Anelida and Arcite give their reader access to an alternative, more shadowy version of the heroic male aristo .. crats portrayed in the Knight's Tale. Chaucer's Knight's Tale shows characters weighed down by historynot only the Theban history that the Knight .. narrator wants us to see, but the history of betrayed, abducted, and abandoned women that he does not. Like his main character, Theseus, the Knight as narrator wants to preserve the male power structures of chivalry, and to do so, he must limit the dis .. ruptive potential of women, by shutting them up and shutting them (and their stories) out. 43 In the Knight's Tale, both Emelye and Hippolyta are practically voiceless, compared to the speaking subjects that the reader of Boccaccio's Teseida encounters. Just as Theseus tries to hold the murder .. ous Theban cousins at bay, so the Knight tries to push aside the spectral, alternative versions of Theseus and Arcite that haunt the reader familiar with Chaucer's other works. By trying to elide Theseus's amorous back .. ground, the Knight attempts to hide the extent to which Theseus's own past behavior implicates him in the drama of desire and exploitation of women that he seeks to control at the end of the Knight's Tale. 44 The Knight largely succeeds in his program, but curiously, he neglects to efface the disturbing memorial of Theseus's past contained in the representation of the Minotaur that he marches under. The sign of the Minotaur-bestial man and mannish beast-ironically becomes a fitting symbol for its con .. queror: the doubled, potentially duplicitous Theseus that Chaucer evokes in the Knight's Tale and in his other works.

43. Perhaps this aspect of the Knight's narrative strategy explains why Chaucer decides to have his Wife of Bath tell a story about how a knight, sentenced to death for raping a woman, receives a reprieve from Queen Guinevere and her ladies, provided that he can find out "what thyng it is that wommen moost desiren." The Wife's fairy tale of masculine reeducation and female power functions as an implicit critique of the Knight's Tale, whose narrator and protago-nist do not particularly care about what women want and are even less interested in giving them "maistrie" over themselves, let alone over their husbands. 44. As Winthrop Wetherbee argues, in the Knight's Tale, "an optimistic depiction of chival-ric heroism is tempered by a lurking awareness of other, darker aspects of life which are inherent in its classical subject matter, but which the chivalric program that governs it tends always to sup-press or marginalize" ("Romance and Epic," 305).

~ Four ~

Abandoned Women and the Dynamics of Reader Response Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and

Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta

n his Teseida, Giovanni Boccaccio adjusted the traditional chronology of Theseus's career, and in so doing, he avoided direct references to his hero's abandonment of Ariadne. Ariadne is more notable for her absence than her presence in the Teseida-an absence at which Boccaccio's glosses continually hint and that Chaucer notes in his own adaptation of the poem (see chap. 3). However, in two of Boccaccio's subsequent narratives, the Amorosa Visione and the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, abandoned women no longer manifest themselves as ghostly presences hovering on the margins of the main action; they become important (if not central) characters, and their stories are recounted directly and dramatically. In the Amorosa Visione, classical tales of abandoned women and their faithless lovers figure prominently in the ekphrastic descriptions that comprise the first part of the poem, while the Fiammetta ostensibly unfolds the story of its abandoned heroine in her own words, which include ample allusions to classical mythology in general and Ovid's Heroides in particular. Though Ovid's Heroides serve as the major classical source for Boccaccio's depic . .

I

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tions of these women, like Dante, Boccaccio also draws upon Statius's Achilleid for his portrait of the abandoned Deidamia. Boccaccio wrote both the Amorosa Visione and the Fiammetta after the Teseida, and these poems even more clearly dramatize Boccaccio's interest in and sympathetic engagement with figures of abandoned women. In both of these works, the narrator sees heroic narratives from the point of view of the women who have been left behind and left out. Such experimenta .. tion with alternative viewpoints in these later works may help explain the Teseida's ambiguous portrait of Teseo-rather than simply regarding Teseo as an exemplary character, Boccaccio had already begun to consider that Ariadne, Ipolyta, Helen of Troy, or Emilia may have thought of the Athenian hero and his exploits from a rather different perspective. In the Amorosa Visione, the heroines whose sad histories had been allusively evoked in Dante's Inferno and Boccaccio's Teseida now become the center of attention. In particular, Boccaccio's treatments of Deidamia and Pene .. lope in this poem support the view that he understood their allusive pres .. ence within Dante's Inferno 26; moreover, his linking of Theseus with both Ariadne and Phaedra in these narratives shows that he was well informed about the Athenian hero's troubled amorous history and likely expected readers of the Teseida to be aware of it as welL Both Robert Hollander and Janet Smarr have argued for "ironic" inter.. pretations of the Amorosa Visione and the Fiammetta, carefully distinguish .. ing Boccaccio's views on love from those of his fallible narrators or roman .. ticizing critics. I For Hollander and Smarr, the stories of Fiammetta and her classical precursors dramatize the submission of reason to desire and docu .. ment the tragic consequences of carnal love. Their interpretations place Boccaccio's portrayals of abandoned women in much the same light as medieval school commentaries placed the Heroides, interpreting many of the letters as negative exempla written in order to warn their readers of the dangers of "stultus amor"-foolish love. For Hollander and Smarr, the sto .. ries about abandoned women in these narratives should be understood as negative by the reader outside the text, no matter how the fictive reader/narrator within the text interprets them-and indeed, they can .. sider the fictive reader/narrator's refusal to see the negative valence of these stories as generating the irony that pervades these texts. However the reader outside these texts may react to or interpret Boc .. 1.

See Robert Hollander, Boccaccio's Two Venuses (New York: Columbia University Press,

1977), 77-9 1; 202-19; and Janet Levarie Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta: The Narrator as Lover (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 101-48.

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caccio's abandoned women, the narratives themselves clearly document the emotional impact that these representations have on their fictive read . . ers, viewers, and auditors, the model readers constructed within the text, to borrow a concept from Umberto Eco. 2 Indeed, in the course of the Amorosa Visione and the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, Boccaccio explores the issue of how readers respond to and identify with stories of female abandonment. Just as Augustine describes how he wept for Dido, so too, Boccaccio illustrates how the pathos in classical stories of abandoned women moves his fictive readers-even if the reader outside the text con . . cludes with the older Augustine that it may be more appropriate for these souls to weep for themselves. In showing how his fictive readers react to stories of abandoned women in these two works, Boccaccio reifies his own response to Ovid's Heroides, the major source and model for the stories he tells. Boccaccio's exploration of reader response picks up an Ovidian theme, for the majority of the let . . ters in the Heroides are predicated on the desire to elicit a very specific response: Ovid's forsaken heroines compose their letters in the hope of constructing ideal readers out of their faithless lovers, a lover/reader who will have pity on them and who will behave in the way their texts beg him. The male addressees in Ovid's Heroides may not even read these laments, let alone respond to them. In his narratives, however, Boccaccio imagines the kind of sympathetic readers that Ovid's heroines wish for and drama . . tizes an affective response to their laments. In examining Boccaccio's portraits of abandoned women in these two narratives, I shall begin with the Amorosa Visione, which Boccaccio com . . posed first. In contrast to their views of the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, critics frequently tend to dismiss the Amorosa Visione as a youthful failure, in which Boccaccio demonstrates his inability to write Dantesque allegor . . ical/autobiographical poetry depicting a lover's progress nearly as well as his master. David Wallace bluntly asserts that it "is one of [Boccaccio's] least successful compositions."3 Critics including Sapegno and Branca have described the poem as an episodic work, full of contradictions, as Boccaccio's "bourgeois spirit" and sensuality prove incompatible with the

2. See Eco's chapter "Intentio Lectoris," in I Limiti dell' Interpretazione 15-37; Eco's work on model readers here and in his Lector in Fabula have greatly influenced my approach to Boccaccio's poems. 3. Wallace, Early Writings of Boccaccio, 13.

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spiritual ideal of love espoused by the stilnovisti. 4 On the other hand, Smarr and Hollander contend that these apparent contradictions in the text stem from Boccaccian irony. They view the poem as an ironic commentary on the folly of the narrator's pursuit of carnal rather than celestial love, his subjection of reason to desire. Taking a slightly different tack, Sylvia Huot argues that Boccaccio deliberately creates this complexity and ambiguity, but suggests that Boccaccio's poem may be read as an interrogation of Dante's Commedia rather than simply an indictment of the narrator. 5 As this survey suggests, no critical consensus has emerged on the value and the meaning of this poem, which has generated relatively little discussion compared with Boccaccio's other opere minore. While the allegorical conception, poetic form, and much of the descrip .. tive language of the Amorosa Visione derive from Dante, the inspiration and major source of its excursions into the realm of classical mythology are the works of Ovid. As Vittore Branca writes, If in Boccaccio's previous works the Latin poet appears constantly, both loved and studied, it is only in this poem, as later in the Fiammetta, that Boccaccio follows him, imitates him, translates him as though he were his insuperable teacher, particularly in his role of singer of the passionate and tender souls of girls in love. 6 Boccaccio certainly draws much material from Ovid's Metamorphoses in the course of the poem. Yet, as Branca's reference to the "passionate and tender souls of girls in love" indicates, Ovid's Heroides were Boccaccio's model for the lengthy portraits of abandoned women the Amorosa Visione. Despite Branca's extensive documentation of Boccaccio's debts to the Heroides, surprisingly little attention has been paid to this aspect of the

4. See Natalino Sapegno, Il Trecento, Storia letteraria d'ltalia, 3d ed. (Milan: Vallardi, 1966), 313-14; and Vittore Branca, introduction, trans. Margherita Frankel, in Amorosa Visione, trans. Robert Hollander, Timothy Hampton, and Margherita Frankel (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986), xviii. All citations of the Amorosa Visione and English translations are taken from this text. 5. See Sylvia Huot, "Poetic Ambiguity and Reader Response in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione," Modern Philology 83 (1985): 121-22. 6. Branca, introduction, xvi-xvii, slightly altered. I have translated Branca's original "fan~ ciulle" as "girls" rather than as "maids"; some of these women lament precisely because they are no longer maidens.

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poem. 7 Therefore, as a preface to a discussion of the larger issues that arise from Boccaccio's depictions of abandoned women in the Amorosa Visione, it may be helpful to review the events of this relatively obscure poem and the various appearances of Ovidian stories of abandoned women within them. The Amorosa Visione begins with a series of acrostic sonnets that address the work to the poet.. narrator's lady, "Maria," his "Cara Fiamma," who is generally identified with the mysterious Fiammetta who figures so promi . . nently in Boccaccio's other works. After the acrostic sonnets, the narra . . tive portion of the Amorosa Visione opens with a dream encounter between the narrator and a female guide whose ambiguous attributes have provoked a good deal of disagreement among Boccaccio scholars, who tend to iden . . tify her either with Reason or with the Celestial Venus. 8 The guide promises to lead the lover to "somma felicita" [the highest felicity], a prospect to which he eagerly accedes. Nevertheless, the pair have not gone far when the narrator wishes to take a different path than the guide rec . . ommends, one that leads through a wide gate and, she warns, to "cose vane" (AV 3.8: "vain things"). Though the narrator claims to understand that the things he will find are "leggieri" (light), his thirst for knowledge impels him to explore. The guide in turn warns him that such knowledge does not come cheaply and urges him to follow her. Two young men, how . . ever, emerge from the portal and try to pull the narrator with them. Though the guide protests, the narrator decides to enter, and she reluc . . tantly agrees to accompany him on his detour. Though the portal clearly alludes to that of Dante's Inferno, the place the narrator discovers beyond it is considerably more pleasant. He finds himself in a large room painted with vivid images even more lifelike than Giotto's paintings, and there he gazes at tableaux depicting various types of worldly goods-wisdom, worldly glory, riches, and love. The wall depicting the "Triumph of Wisdom" includes images of philosophers, intellectuals, and poets, culminating with a scene of Dante being crowned with laurel. Next, the narrator shifts his gaze to a wall devoted to the "Glo . . ria del popol mondano" [Glory of worldly folk], which is mostly filled with 7. Hollander, Boccaccio's Two Venuses, 77-7B, suggests that Boccaccio's portrayal of Achilles' loves and other set pieces in the triumph scenes should be understood as Boccaccio's cultivation of a "humanist" style, "a task which Boccaccio seizes with some parvenu zeal and certainly with great genuine emotion," but Hollander does not investigate these scenes any further. B. For discussions of the guide's identity see Hollander, Boccaccio's Two Venuses, Bo-BI; and Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, I02-4, I09.

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portraits of the great warriors and rulers from the biblical, Trojan, and Theban past. Most of the figures following Glory are male, but the narra .. tor's catalog does include a group of women, among them several aban .. doned women whose stories Boccaccio would have known from Ovid's Heroides. Toward the end of canto 8, the narrator briefly mentions two such heroines: Laodamia, whose grief at being left behind by her husband Protesilaus forms the subject of Heroides 13, and Deianira, who laments her abandonment by Hercules in Heroides 9. These two Ovidian women precede the most famous of all abandoned women: Dido, to whom the narrator devotes the beginning lines of canto 9. Upon seeing her image, the narrator has the impression that she speaks, much as Dante's pilgrim experiences the sensation of "visibil parlare" [vis .. ible speech] on viewing the sculptures in the terrace of Pride in Purgatorio 10. 9 In Dante's case it is clear that "Colui che mai non vide cosa nuova / produsse esto visibil parlare" (Purg. 10.94-95= "He who never saw any new thing, made this visible speech"); in the Amorosa Visione, however, the narrator's imagination alone makes Dido speak: Moveasi dopo queste quella Dido cartaginese, che credendo avere Ascanio in braceio vi teneva Cupido. Isconsolata giva, al mio parere, ehiamando in voei meste: "Pio Enea di me, ti priego, deggiati dolere." Aneora, eom'io vidi, in man tenea tutta smarrita quella spada aguta ehe '1 petto Ie passo, che me faeea, essendole lontan, nella veduta aneor paura, non eh'a lei eh'ardita fu dar di quella a se mortal feruta.

(AV 9.1-12) [After these ladies came that Dido of Carthage, who, believing that she had Ascanius in her arms, instead held Cupid. Disconsolate she went, in my opinion, calling out in sad words: ((Pious Aeneas, grieve for me, as you ought, I pray you." Confused, she still held, as I saw, in her hand that sharp sword with which she had transfixed her breast; even at a distance it made me 9. See Taylor, Chaucer Reads, his House of Fame.

22-23,

on Chaucer's similar use of this episode from Dante in

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fearful to see it-and her who was bold enough to give herself a mortal wound with it.} Only the phrase "al mio parere" reminds the reader that Dido's moving plea comes purely out of narrator's imagination, for the grieving woman that arouses such sympathy and fear in the narrator is, after all, simply an image painted on the wall. Boccaccio's poem dramatizes his narrator's imaginative re . . creation of, and reaction to, the story of Dido. The narra . . tor's investment in stories of abandoned women in general and the story of Dido in particular only grows more pronounced in the course of the poem as the speeches the narrator imagines for the sorrowing women become ever longer and more elaborate. The brief portrait of Dido combines ele . . ments of Ovid's and Virgil's treatments of the ill . . fated queen: The allusion to Dido's holding Ascanius/Cupid comes from the Aeneid, while her plain . . tive address to Aeneas evokes the gentler Dido of Heroides 7 who pleads with Aeneas to have mercy on her. Among the heroines who follow in Dido's footsteps in this canto, the narrator encounters the grieving Hypsipyle, distraught after being aban . . doned by Jason, while Medea, Jason's next cast . . off lover, follows right behind her. Upon seeing Medea, the narrator again pauses, imagining that the painted figure speaks a lament for her own credulity and Jason's trickery: con voce ancor parea dicere: "Omei, se io pili saggia alquanto fossi stata ne vinta fossi sl presto da amore, non sarei forse ancora suta ingannata."

(AV 9.27-30)

[With her mouth she still seemed to be saying: "Oh woe, if only I 1uul been a little wiser, and 1uul not been so quickly conquered by love, I would have been less deceived. "] While these lines do not directly cite or even paraphrase Medea's letter to Jason in Heroides 12, they clearly reflect the Ovidian Medea's sense that her too . . sudden love for Jason has led to her ruin: "tunc ego te vidi, tunc coepi scire, quid esses; / ilIa fuit mentis prima ruina mei" (Her. 12.31-32: "Then I saw you, then I began to know what you were; that was the first impulse to the ruin of my soul"). As with the other Ovidian heroines fea . .

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tured in this particular Triumph, the narrator will treat Medea's story at greater length later in the poem-the brief presentation of Laodamia, Deianira, Dido, Hypsipyle, and Medea in the Triumph of Glory seems like a warm .. up for the narrator, whose sympathy and emotional involvement with these figures will further deepen in the course of the poem. After concluding the Triumph of Glory with descriptions of historical and literary figures taken from Roman history, Arthurian romances, and French and Italian history, the narrator turns his attention to the wall whose paintings depict the Triumph of Wealth. He has much less interest in wealth than either wisdom or glory, and his treatment of its triumph is correspondingly brief. However, the narrator makes up for his earlier suc .. cinctness in his expansive descriptions of the characters who populate the Triumph of Love, a section of the poem that appropriately begins with a notice to the reader that "Volendo adunque d'esse pienamente, / almen delle notabili, parlare, / rallungar si convien l' opra presente" (AV 15.4-6: "Since I wish to speak of them-at least of the most notable-at full length, the present work must grow longer"). Not surprisingly, Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione incurs its greatest debts to Ovid in the course of the Triumph of Love. After plundering Ovid's Metamorphoses for his catalog of the loves of the gods and the tale of Pyra .. mus and Thisbe, the narrator turns to the Heroides for stories of abandoned women. He begins with Hypsipyle and Medea, whom he imagines as addressing pleas for mercy to the oblivious Jason. Both women's laments are loosely based on the letters Ovid has them address to Jason in Heroides 6 and 12, though Boccaccio includes few close verbal parallels. Neverthe . . less, Boccaccio clearly derives his depiction of Jason and the women who loved and lost him from Dante's portrait of Jason among the seducers in Inferno 18. There, Virgil points out the shade to Dante the pilgrim and describes Jason's exploits: Guarda quel grande che vene, e per dolor non par lagrime spanda: quanto aspetto reale aneor ritene! Quelli e Ias6n, ehe per euore e per senno Ii Colehi del monton privati fene. Ella passo per l'isola di Lenno poi ehe l'ardite femmine spietate tutti Ii maschi loro a morte dienno. Ivi eon segni e eon parole ornate

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Isifile inganno, la giovinetta che prima avea tutte l'altre ingannate. Lasciolla quivi, gravida, soletta; tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna; e anche di Medea si fa vendetta.

(Inf· 18.83-9 6 ) [See that imposing figure drawing near. He seems to shed no tears despite his pain. What regal aspect he still bears! He is Jason, who by courage and by craft Deprived the men of Colchis of the ram. Then he ventured to the isle of Lemnos , after all those pitiless, bold women put all the males among them to their death. There with signs of love and polished words he deceived the young Hypsipyle, who had herself deceived the other women. There he left her, pregnant and forlorn. Such guilt condemns him to this torment and Medea too is thus avenged.] In the Inferno, Jason stands firm against his hellish torment; in the Amorosa Visione, he also remains silent and unfeeling, though here the laments of the two women he has abandoned rather than his infernal pun .. ishment leave him unmoved. While Dante's Inferno explains that Jason's success as a seducer comes from his "parole ornate" [polished words], in the Amorosa Visione's Triumph of Love, Boccaccio focuses instead on the ornate words of the women he has left behind, as they beg him to stay. Here, Hypsipyle, who stayed silent in the Triumph of Glory, speaks for thirty .. two lines; Medea's plea to Jason is one line longer. The narrator's interest in these women and involvement in their stories has grown so much that their laments threaten to break through the fictional frame of the story; the reader can easily forget that the narrator does not actually see real figures talking, but only painted images. Still, some lines of Hypsipyle's speech do call attention to the fact that the viewer's imagination has produced this lament in response to what he sees: "In tal guisa tal doglia mi molesta / che dir nol posso, ma tu stesso pensa / quant'aver tal parriati, quale e questa" (AV 21.46-48: "In such

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ways sorrow pains me that I cannot tell of it; but you yourself ought to be able to imagine what that would be like"}. Ironically, the narrator himself rather than Jason imagines Hypsipyle's silent sorrow and puts words to it. Like Ovid's abandoned heroine, Boccaccio's Hypsipyle receives no pity from her forgetful lover; instead, the reader/viewer of her story gives her the sympathetic hearing she craves. Jason similarly spurns Medea (and her even longer lament): the narrator comments, "Non rispondeva a nulla di costoro / quivi Giansone" (AV 22. 1-2: "Jason did not respond to either of them there"). Jason's lack of involvement with Hypsipyle and Medea pro . . vides a stark contrast to the narrator's emotional interest in their plight. After telling the tale of Jason and his loves, the narrator touches briefly on the story of Theseus, Ariadne, and Phaedra. In this episode, the "buon Teseo" of the Teseida is nowhere to be found. The narrator describes The . . seus's liberation from the "Minotauro orribile e nefando" (AV 22.6: "hor. . rible and infamous Minotaur"), attributing his salvation to Ariadne's help. Afterward, the joyful hero sets sail with Ariadne and Phaedra, who also rejoice in escaping Crete. But soon, the successful hero becomes just another man who loves them and leaves them; as the narrator comments, "avendo gia l'animo pregno / del piacer d'Adriana, lei lasciare / vedea dor .. mendo" (AV 22.13-15: "Since his mind was already satiated by its pleasure in Ariadne, he seemed to be leaving her, asleep"). Ariadne wakes up, real .. izes what has happened, and begs Theseus to have pity on her. Meanwhile Theseus, who does not hear her, has sailed off with Phaedra because he finds her more attractive than her sister. Ariadne's pathetic cry occupies only a terzina, but is more than enough to remind the reader of the parts of the hero's past that were only hinted at in the Teseida. While Boccaccio's treatment of Ariadne seems rather attenuated, Dei .. damia, whom the narrator encounters in the following canto, engages the narrator's full imaginative sympathy. Watching Achilles being drawn away by Ulysses and Diomedes, Deidamia laments the loss of her husband in a thirty .. seven .. line speech. And interestingly enough, as Branca notes, this speech does not contain any close parallels to the lament of Deidamia in Statius's Achilleid, Boccaccio's source for this episode. 10 Rather, this lament is a lyrical tour de force, full of intricate verbal repetitions and sound patterns that suggest the reiterativeness of the genre of abandoned women's laments. The first three tercets of Deidamia's speech suffice to illustrate these patterns: 10. See Vittore Branca, ed., Tutte le opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, vol. 3, Amorosa Visione (Milan: Mondadori, 1974),67°.

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o di mia amara vita dolce vita, cuor del mio morto cuor, che tu abbandoni, di cui fia tosto, credo, 1a finita, in qual parte vuoi girl qual regioni cerchi tu pili graziose che 1a mia? Deh Dio, non creder a questi duo predoni! Deh non ti incresce di Deidamia? Deidamia, che pitt ch'ogni altra t'amo e cui '1 cuor mio pitt ch' altro sol disia! (AV

23.52-60,

emphasis added)

[Oh sweet life of my bitter life, heart of my dead heart, which you abandon, and which, I think, soon will come to an end, where do you want to go? What regions do you seek more gracious than my own? Oh God, do not believe in these two robbers! Oh do you not feel sorry for Deidamia? Dei, damia, who more than any other loves you, whom alone my heart desires more than any man.] In this passage alone, we see Boccaccio's insistent repetitions of whole words and syllables in the phrases "amara vita dove vita," "cuor del mio morto cuor" and the plays on the sound "Deh" and "Deidamia." Examples of anaphora and repetitive soundplay abound in this speech, in which Boccaccio tries to out .. Ovid Ovid. The density of recurring sounds in Dei, damia's speech serve as auditory signs of the repetitiveness of its content and rhetoric, which resemble that of speeches we have read before. In fact, the conclusion of Deidamia's lament closely echoes the end of Hypsipyle's, since Hypsipyle had earlier complained to Jason: Andastitene e me, come tu sai, pregna 1asciasti di doppio figlio10 e cia sprezzando assente te ne stai. Con 1agrime e sospiri e con gran duolo gran tempo stetti, dicendo, "Omai tosto ritornera Gianson col suo bel stuolo."

[You went away and, as you know, left me pregnant with twin boys; dis, daining all that, you remained absent. With tears and sighs and terrible grief I waited long, saying: "Soon now shall Jason return with his fine company. "]

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13

Only two cantos later, Deidamia reproaches Achilles in almost exactly the same words: Perche altrovi t'appresti dunque andarne? Di me t'incresca e del comun figliuolo ch'abbian, se non ti duolla propria carne. 10 so che tu vuoi gire al tristo stuolo ch'e intorno a Troia, ov'io dubito forte che morto non vi sii: che per gran duolo a me morte darei per la tua morte. (AV 23.82-88, emphasis added)

[Why do you prepare, then, to go off elsewhere? Feel pity for me and for the son we have in common, if you care not for your own flesh. I know that you want to join the sad armies around Troy, where I strongly fear you will die; then, because of great grief for your death, I would give myself to death.] In addition to the recurring rhyme words figIiuolo, stuolo, and duolo, the insistent repetition of the word morte emphasizes the sense that both Dei . . damia's lament and her subsequent fate reinscribe those of other aban . . doned women. I I Deidamia herself seems to realize that she is caught in a pattern of infidelity that extends beyond her own case: "Ahi lassa, or son cosl guiderdonate / tutte Ie mischinelle ch'aman voi, / che di subito sieno abbandonate?" (AV 23.70-72: "Ah, unhappy me, are then rewarded thus all the young girls who love men, so soon to be abandoned?"). The lament of Briseis, which follows her own, only confirms Deidamia's suspicion. Finally, as if to make the reiterative structures of female abandonment even more obvious, Boccaccio will repeat the figIiuolo/stuolo/duolo set of rhymes in yet one more abandoned woman's lament, that of Dido in canto 28. 12 It is as if Boccaccio wishes to emphasize that these women not only make the same mistake in loving a stranger; they are also doomed to read the same script-here, as in Ovid's Heroides, a script given them by an imaginative male writer. The sequence of events in cantos 23-24 also echoes that of cantos I I. The use of the words "duolo" and "morte" at the end of the lament also calls to mind Dante's allusion to the Achilleid in Inferno 26, discussed in chapter 2. 12. In his commentary on the Amorosa Visione, Branca mentions the reiteration of the fi-gliuololstuololduolo rhymes in Hypsipyle's and Deidamia's laments pointed out above, but he does not note its third appearance (Branca, ed., Amorosa Visione, 671).

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just as Jason ignores Hypsipyle and Medea in his preoccupation with Creusa, Achilles is too smitten with Polyxena to pay any attention to the complaints of either Deidamia or the sorrowing Briseis, whom Boccac . . cio pictures as kneeling before him. Like Deidamia's lament, Briseis's speech overflows with repetitive verbal structures and sounds; like Dei . . damia, Briseis calls attention to her stolen virginity, her devotion to Achilles, and the possibility that she will die on his account. In this lament, as in others given to Ovidian heroines, Boccaccio does not imitate the Heroides in his actual words; rather, he uses the general outline of the story for his own fugal variations on the themes of betrayal, jealousy, loss, and abandonment. In contrast to the lengthy Deidamia/Briseis/Achilles episode, the narra . . tor keeps his next description of an abandoned woman/faithless man pair. . ing quite brief. In canto 25 he devotes only a few lines to a description of Phyllis's lament to Demophoon; appropriately enough he only gives her "parole corte" [curt words] rebuking the forgetful hero for ingratitude in indirect speech. Like the narrator's similarly cursory treatment of Demophoon's father, Theseus, and the grieving Ariadne in canto 22, this episode functions as a brief interlude that sets off the next extended lament, that of Deianira in canto 26. Boccaccio marks off Deianira's lament as unusual in a number of ways. At seventy . . five lines, it is more than twice as long as any other abandoned woman's lament in the poem. Moreover, as Vittore Branca points out in his commentary, canto 26 is the only canto almost entirely devoted to a single lover's lament. 13 Finally, as Janet Smarr has noted, it falls at the center of the poem and is the only canto other than the last to exceed Boccaccio's usual length of eighty . . eight verses. 14 These formal aspects of the lament's presentation give Deianira's imagined speech a prominent place within the structure of the Amorosa Visione, and strongly suggest that it may have special significance. Deianira's complaint to Hercules clearly derives from Heroides 9, in which the forsaken heroine reproaches her husband for falling under the sway of lole. She complains that he has become effeminate: Hercules, who used to be renowned for his deeds of strength and valor, now occupies him . . self with spinning wool and allows a "vila feminella istrana" [AV 26.3°: 21-22:

13. Branca, ed., Amorosa Visione, 676. 14. See Janet Smarr, "Boccaccio and the Choice of Hercules," MLN 9 2 (1977): 147·

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15

"vile little foreign girl"] to lord it over him.15 Rather than focusing on what she has done for her ungrateful lover or her feelings of loss and grief, the usual pattern of abandoned women's laments, Deianira spends most of her lament reviewing Hercules' valorous deeds. She catalogs his labors in the hope of shaming her straying husband into giving up Iole by contrasting his illustrious past with his present unworthy behavior. In fact, rather than her own feelings, Boccaccio's Deianira seems primarily concerned about what everyone else says about Hercules: Non senti tu che'a ogni uomo e gia palese quel che la fama ora al contrario sona, di te, all' eccelse tue passate imprese? Unde, biasmando, ciaschedun ragiona che invece di colei tu fiji lana ed ella rappresenta tua persona.

(AV 26.22-27) [Do you not understand what is obvious to everyone, since your repute now bears the news which counters the glory of your earlier deeds? Wherefore, blaming you, each one says that it is you who spins wool-not her, indeed, that she has taken on your role.] In general, Deianira seems less upset that Hercules has a lover than that he has taken one less worthy of him than she, one whose usurpation of his masculine virtu prevents him from going out and earning more fame and glory. Boccaccio's characterization of Deianira in the Amorosa Visione reflects his source, Ovid's Heroides 9. As Harold Jacobson argues in his treatment of Ovid's epistle, Deianira's overwhelming emphasis on Her.. cules' exploits exposes her as an ordinary woman who "lives through and in her husband's greatness"; she identifies herself with Hercules to such an extent that she worries more that his love affairs injure his reputation than that they betray her. 16 Part of the pathos of the portrayal of Deianira in both Heroides 9 and the Amorosa Visione lies in her own self.. effacement15. Following the tradition of medieval commentary on Heroides 9, Boccaccio conflates the episode of Hercules' involvement with Iole with that of his subjection to Omphale; in Ovid, it was the latter for whom he wore women's clothing and spun. The introduction to the Italian transla~ tion of Heroides 9 ascribed to Filippo Ceffi also makes this mistake. See Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, 88; Bemadoni, ed., Epistole Eroiche, 82-83. 16. Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides," 240--42.

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she makes her self..-worth depend entirely on her husband's glory. In the final lines of Deianira's lament in the Amorosa Visione, she begs Hercules to come back to her, not because he owes it to her as her husband, but rather as a gift. Of course, the reader of the Amorosa Visione must bear in mind that the entire episode of Deianira's lament constitutes yet another of the nar .. rator's imagined speeches. In the painting the narrator describes, Her .. cules actually fixes his gaze on Iole. The narrator, rather than Hercules, focuses his attention on Deianira, making her jealousy and grief his main subject, and (with the help of Ovid's Heroides) he pictures events from her perspective. His overwhelming rhetorical response to Deianira's situ .. ation generates a corresponding sympathy in the readers of the Amorosa Visione, who are likely to be so carried away by the vivid images of Her .. cules' labors that they forget until the opening of the next canto that the character who pleads her case with such eloquence (and at such great length) is, after all, only a picture. Only the narrator's imaginative partic .. ipation brings her to life and makes her more than a two .. dimensional image painted on a wall. From the mythic exploits of Hercules, Boccaccio moves on to recount .. ing historical events. In the next canto, the narrator's gaze confronts a series of pictures that recount the events of the Trojan War, beginning with the judgment of Paris and the abduction of Helen. Three brief repre .. sentations of Ovid's abandoned women follow: Oenone, grieving at Paris's infidelity; Laodamia, pleading with a waxen image of her husband, Prote .. silaus; and finally Penelope, awaiting the return of her Ulysses. The Ian .. guage that the narrator uses in verbally depicting this last image abounds with Dantesque diction and clearly demonstrates that Boccaccio sees Ovid's Heroides as providing the part of the hero's story that Ulysses chooses not to tell in Inferno 26: Ov'era ancora verso lei rivolta Penelope aspettante il carD Ulisse, che dal fidel suo amor mai non fu sciolta. Nella qual io Ie luci avendo fisse, fra me pensava quanta fu il disire di que' che mai non cre' ch'a lei redisse. Ello, volendo del mondo esperire varie genti e cittati, passo il segno

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17

dal qual nessun mai pote in qua redire, invano usando forze, invan l'ingegno.

(AV 27.79-88) [Also there, turned in her direction, was Penelope, awaiting her beloved Ulysses; she never desisted from her faithful loving. When I fixed my eyes on her, to myself I thought how great her love must have been for him, who, I believe, would never return to her. He, desiring to have experience of the world's various peoples and cities, went beyond the boundary from which no one has ever been able to return, in vain employing force, in vain his cun . . ning.] Like Dante, the narrator depicts Penelope as an abandoned women, for he does not believe that Ulysses will ever return home from his voyage beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. As in Dante's Commedia, the reader can .. not tell whether Ulysses ever came home from the Trojan War. Though we know from Boccaccio's later works that he was familiar with the story of Ulysses' return home, he may have assumed here, as Dante hints, that the hero's deadly journey was an extension of his postwar wanderings. Nevertheless, even if we assumed that this Penelope has had the joy of a first reunion with her beloved husband, her continued patience will not be rewarded by a second one-her fate will be the anxiety and frustration of endless waiting captured in Ovid's epistle. In his treatment of Penelope, then, Boccaccio's narrator makes explicit the story of abandonment lurk . . ing behind Ulysses' stirring words in Inferno 26, a story that Dante was only able to hint at in his hero's own speech. In effect, Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione functions in relation to Dante's Inferno 26 much as Heroides I functions in relation to Homer's Odyssey, providing the view . . point of the bereft Penelope in her own words. The narrator's extensive catalog of abandoned women climaxes and concludes with the most famous figure of all: Dido. He had briefly described her in the Triumph of Glory, but now the Carthaginian queen compels his rapt attention. Even before he begins describing the images he sees, he discusses how a viewer ought to react to them: "Non so chi S1 crudel si fosse stato, / vedendo quel ch'io qui vidi mirando, / per pieta non avesse lagrimato" (AV 28.1-3: "I do not know anyone who could have been so cruel as not to have wept with pity seeing what I there gazed upon"). Like Augustine in the Confessions, this narrator will weep for

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ABANDONED WOMEN

Dido. But his tearful response to the paintings that depict the events of Virgil's Aeneid also reinscribes yet another moment of affective involve .. ment with "unsubstantial pictures" in the Aeneid itself: in book I, Aeneas weeps and sighs over the images of the Trojan War he gazes upon in Dido's temple, an episode that Chaucer would later echo in his own House of Fame. I7 In terms of literary history, this famous scene encapsulates Virgil's subversive response to the events narrated from the Greek point of view in Homer's Iliad: the weeping Aeneas "reads" the glorious events of the war in terms of Troy's tragedy. By recasting this moment in the Amorosa Visione, Boccaccio pays homage to Virgil, but he also alters Virgil's epic design, for his narrator "reads" the unfolding of Aeneas's high destiny through the lens of Ovid's Heroides 7 and understands it solely in terms of Dido's tragedy. After summarizing Dido's career and her involvement with Aeneas, the narrator gives a voice to her laments at his departure. Here, Boccaccio's heroine speaks with the tones of the Ovidian Dido of Heroides 7, remind .. ing Aeneas of the dangers he and his men will face and urging him at least to delay his departure. In another scene, the narrator describes her suicide and imagines one final lament: In at to ancor cosl dir mi parea: "0 funereo letto nel qual fui gia con Enea, u' tanta gioia avea, oh perche come qui ci avesti dui, due non ci tieni? Perche consentisti ch te giammai vedessi sanza lui?"

[By her gestures she still seemed to me to be saying: "0 sad bed in which I lay with Aeneas, where I took so much joy, oh why, since you once held two, don't you hold two now? Why did you consent that I should ever behold you without him?"] In Virgil's Aeneid, Dido had thrown herself upon her bed, but the dying words of Boccaccio's Dido actually echo Ovid's more plaintive Ariadne than Virgil's furious queen of Carthage. In Heroides 10, Ariadne grieves over her deserted bed, saying:

17. See the discussion of the House of Fame in the introduction.

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19

incumbo, lacrimisque toro manante profusis, "pressimus," exclamo, "te duo-redde duos! venimus huc ambo; cur non discedimus ambo?"

(Her. 10.55-57) [1 lie down, and dampening the bed with my outpouring of tears, 1 cry aloud: "We were two who pressed upon you-give back two! Both of us came here together; why do we not leave together as we came?"] Boccaccio's exchanging of one Ovidian heroine's words for another's occurs soon after he recapitulates the figliolo/stuolo/duolo rhyme from Hyp .. sipyle's and Deidamia's laments in Dido's earlier remonstrance with Aeneas. These repetitions and substitutions undermine the individuality of any given heroine: in their grief and sorrow, these women become a type-the relicta of Latin love elegy.I8 Their actions and even their words do not belong to them as individuals, but rather begin to overlap and blend with one another. As outlined earlier, Dido's last words tend to relate her to the other abandoned women who have gone before, but she remains unique in at least one respect. Though several other abandoned women in the poem (including Deianira) also went on to take their own lives, Dido is the only heroine accorded a death scene in the Amorosa Visione. As his sympa .. thetic gaze lingers over the details of Dido's self.-slaughter, the narrator gives the reader a vivid, almost blow .. by .. blow description of the afflicted queen's final moments. He concludes the episode by exclaiming, much in the manner of an abandoned woman himself, "ah troppo a bel principio invida sorte!" (AV 29.30: "Ah too invidious an end for so fair a begin .. ning!"). And thus, with his own lamentation over Dido's death, the narra . . tor concludes his treatment of abandoned women in the poem. Dido's death not only represents the final movement in Boccaccio's symphonic sequence of abandoned women; she also becomes the finale of the Triumph of Love, which the narrator brings to a close just a few lines after his farewell to Dido. To be sure, the narrative of the Amorosa Visione continues for another twenty . . one cantos after this, as the guide shows the narrator the Triumph of Fortune and she follows after him in his explo . . rations of a love garden where he meets his beloved lady. In these later sec .. 18. See Friederich Spoth, Ovids Heroides als Elegien (Munich: Beck, 1992), for a careful dis~ cussion of how Ovid's language in the Heroides employs and parodies the forms of earlier Latin love elegy.

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tions of the poem, the guide harshly criticizes the narrator's attraction to the various pictures he had seen in triumphs of Wisdom, Glory, Wealth, and Love. And of course, the narrator's moving depictions of abandoned women have all fallen within this earlier part of the poem. If we accept the guide's view that the earthly goods portrayed in the triumphs are "cose vane" [vain things], empty fantasies unworthy of the narrator's attention, we must conclude that the narrator's overwhelming interest in love in general (and Ovidian stories of abandoned women in particular) is thor .. oughly misguided. Certainly, Robert Hollander and Janet Smarr tend to read the poem in this fashion: for them, the narrator's foolish perversity manifests itself in his abiding attachment to these earthly goods and his corresponding disregard of his guide's wise judgment. Nevertheless, the reader of the Amorosa Visione should seriously ques .. tion whether the heavenly guide's condemnation of earthly goods ought to be taken as an authorial pronouncement. Curiously, Hollander and Smarr have nothing to say about the fact that the painted Triumph of Wisdom (which celebrates poets including Dante and Ovid) also appears in the section of the poem devoted to the worldly goods that the guide instructs the poet .. narrator to avoid. Poetry-including a poem about heavenly things like Dante's Commedia-thus falls into the category of vanities dis .. missed by the heavenly guide. True, the heavenly guide does not directly denounce poetry or the pursuit of wisdom as she expatiates on the muta .. bility of the goods of Fortune in cantos 3I through 35. But she does refer to all the paintings as a group representing "Ie mondane cose / volubili e via pili vane che vento" [AV 37.50-I: "the inconstant things of the world, even emptier than wind"], which she contrasts with "Ie gloriose / ed etterne" [AV 37.52-3: "glorious and eternal things"].I9 Furthermore, the guide remonstrates with the poet .. narrator for gazing too long at the image of Dante, saying, "Che pili miri? forse credi / renderli col mirar Ie morte posse?" (AV 6.23-24: "Why do you keep gazing? Do you think perhaps you can give him back his dead powers by staring?"). Just a little later she wishes to hurry the narrator away from the images of Dante and other poets, saying, "perder tempo e pur mirare ad essi" (AV 6.36: "To look at these is to waste time"). While the guide compliments Dante for describ .. ing "il sommo ben" [the highest good] in his poetry, she apparently con .. siders his Comedy a distraction from heavenly things rather than a poten .. tial means of access to them. 19- AV 37-49-53-

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The guide's negative pronouncements on poetry should prompt the reader of the Amorosa Visione to question whether her judgments can be understood as unequivocally representing the poet Giovanni Boccaccio's own opinions. If so, it is absurd that Boccaccio should have chosen to devote a long and distinguished career to literature and even wrote a defense of poetry. Rather than ignore this aspect of the poem or conclude that Boccaccio simply did not know what he was doing when he included poetry in the category of "worldly goods" denounced by the guide, it is preferable to claim that in the Amorosa Visione, Boccaccio's irony extends to the pronouncements of the rather vaguely delineated heavenly guide. The guide urges the poet .. narrator figure to give up the goods of fortune, which include poetry, in order to work for "eternal things." This position cannot be accepted as the author's view, for if it were, we would not be reading the words of the poem itself. I would suggest that Boccaccio's own position differs somewhat from that of the guide: for him, wisdom, glory, riches, and love are not only worldly things, they are worldly goods. The Amorosa Visione clearly points out their mutability. But as long as such worldly goods are properly understood in the Boethian sense as gifts of For .. tune or, to put it in Augustinian terminology, as long as they are used rather than enjoyed, there is no reason to renounce them completely, as the heavenly guide repeatedly urges the poet .. narrator to do. The guide does not allow for any middle ground; she represents an asceticism that would condemn the goods of this world because they are of this world, rather than seeing these goods as imperfectly deriving from or reflecting the "cose etternale" [eternal things] she exhorts the narrator to direct him .. self toward. Certainly, the guide's position resonates with the contemptus mundi views of medieval moralists and can be seen as a call to renounce the active life among worldly goods for a contemplative life that focuses on "cose ettemale." But it would be a mistake to simply equate her opinions with Boccaccio's. Given the complexity of the Amorosa Visione, the reader would do well to treat its speakers as the proponents of a particular ideol .. ogy, rather than as a mouthpieces for authorial views. If we take the guide's pronouncements against the "mondane cose" [worldly things] with a grain or two of salt rather than accepting them as an infallible guide to Boccaccio's moralitas in the Amorosa Visione, then the Ovidian stories of abandoned women in the Triumph of Love have an ambiguous rather than a purely negative valence. On the one hand, the guide's view of these stories would simply brush them all aside as examples of unworthy attachment to "libidinous labors" and the grievous torment

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that follows them. On the other hand, the narrator responds powerfully and sympathetically to these grief.-stricken women; not only does he not pronounce any judgment upon them, he vicariously reconstructs their sto .. ries from their point of view. The positions of the guide and the narrator represent two different types of reader-the first represents readers who would put literature in the service of didactic schema; the second repre .. sents readers who imaginatively identify with literature. As Boccaccio sug .. gests in the Amorosa Visione, both types have their shortcomings: the for .. mer, in their zeal for the moral message, may end up deciding that literature itself is a waste of time, a collection of false fantasies that detract from the pursuit of true goods; the latter, with their unquestioning aes .. theticism, may fail to maintain any critical distance whatsoever from their reading. In the Amorosa Visione, Boccaccio does not give his readers an exemplary interpreter in the text whose opinions and judgments they can trust unthinkingly: instead, they must develop a reliance on their own crit .. ical faculties as they negotiate the complexities of the poem. Like the Amorosa Visione that preceded it, Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta depicts the dynamics of reader response. Again, sto .. ries of abandoned women provoke sympathetic response and readerly identification. This time, however, the person who invests so much emo .. tional energy in these stories is not a male narrator who serves as the poet's alter ego, but an abandoned woman called Fiammetta, whose name had earlier served as a senhal for the poet's Neapolitan beloved in the allusive (and almost certainly fictive) autobiography that runs through Boccaccio's youthful works. 20 In her Elegia, this Fiammetta narrates a simple story: she, a married woman, becomes irresistibly attracted to a young man whom she encountered one day in church and whom she calls by the name Panfilo. After they have carried on a love affair for some time, Panfilo must return to Florence at the command of his ill father. Despite Fiammetta's objec .. tions, he departs, promising he will return. Predictably, he never does; most of the Fiammetta describes Fiammetta's turbulent feelings of sorrow and anger as she deals with her abandonment. As Vincenzo Crescini first pointed out, well over a century ago, Boc .. caccio modeled the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta upon the laments of bereft women in the Heroides. 2I Besides noting the general similarity in 20.

On Boccaccio's creation of a fictive autobiography, see Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta,

34- 1 4 8 . 21. Vincenzo Crescini, Contributo agii studi suI Boccaccio con documenti inediti (Turin: Loescher, 1887), 156.

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theme and narrative technique, Crescini's study specifically draws parallels between Fiammetta's situation and that of Phyllis, waiting in vain for false Demophoon to return to her. However, unlike the writings of abandoned women Ovid imagined in his Heroides, Fiammetta's lament does not take the form of a letter intended to persuade her faithless lover. Rather, she addresses her book to an audience of women, whom she hopes will have pity on her: "mi piace, 0 nobili donne, ne' cuori delle quali amore pili che nel mio forse felicemente dimora, narrando i casi miei, di farvi, s'io posso, pietose" (EMF Prol. I: "I wish to recount my story to you, noble ladies, and if possible awaken pity in you, in whose hearts loves perhaps dwells more happily than in mine").22 Fiammetta wishes her readers to display the same sympathy shown by narrator in the Amorosa Visione. Just as the Amorosa Visione's narrator tells his audience that tears are the appropriate response to his depiction of Dido, Fiammetta pictures her audience's sym .. pathetic tears for her plight: Le quali cose, se con quel cuore che sogliono essere Ie donne vedrete, ciascuna per se e tutte insieme adunate, son certa che i dilicati visi con Iagrime bagnerete, Ie quali a me, che altro non cerco, di dolore per .. petuo fieno cagione.

[If you consider these things both one by one and all together and feel them with a woman's heart, I am sure that your gentle faces will be bathed in tears, something that will cause endless grief to me.] Throughout her Elegia, Fiammetta continues to address her audience and invite their vicarious emotional participation in her woes. Cesare Segre has pointed out that nearly every chapter of the Fiammetta begins with her plea for sympathy from her ideal audience of female readers, and that this pattern is reinforced by a series of addresses to the female audience within each chapter. He concludes that in the first sort of address, the women pri .. marily function as attentive listeners, while in the second, they become "the confidantes whose experiences and aspirations can be called to wit .. 22. All quotations from the Elegia are taken from the text in Carlo Del Como, ed., Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, in Vittore Branca, ed., Tutte Ie opere di Giovanni Boccaccio, vol. 5, pt. 2 (Milan: Mondadori, 1994), and are cited by chapter, section, and sentence number. Translations are from Mariangela Causa;Steindler and Thomas Mauch, eds. and trans., The Elegy of Lady Fiammetta (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

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ness or invoked for approbation."2 3 Thus, in the course of each chapter, Fiammetta's rhetorical addresses construct an imagined audience that becomes ever more involved in her story. Fiammetta, who expresses such concern about how her readers will react to her own story, portrays herself as a similarly involved and atten .. tive reader of other stories-specifically classical ones. As Marina Brown .. lee notes, though Fiammetta claims in the beginning of the story that her narrative will not contain "favole greche ornate di molte bugie ne troiane battaglie sozze per molto sangue" (EMF Prol.3: "Greek myths embellished with many lies, nor Trojan battles befouled with much blood"), such sto .. ries actually pervade the text as Fiammetta embellishes her own tale with a continual stream of classical allusions to those very Greek myths and Trojan battles. 24 The rhetorical strategy of the Fiammetta thus stands in opposition to that of the Heroides, in which Ovid had the great heroines of the mythological past speak and write as if they were contemporary women. Boccaccio's Fiammetta, in contrast, has a contemporary Neapoli .. tan matron narrating her story as if she were a classical heroine living in the pagan past. As Segre has argued, the disjunction between the matter of the story and the manner of its narration opens up a space for irony: If we were to find, prosaically, a disproportion between Fiammetta's fairly banal story and the classical fables with which it is compared, we would (if we refrained from passing judgment) seize on one of the work's constituent elements; for it carries out a detailed, refined, psy .. chological analysis within parameters derived from classical literature. Boccaccio's game must be accepted on its own terms (and these are not without a touch of irony): the comparisons are made officially not by the author but by the "I" characters, and all exaggeration can be charged to her (learned) desperation. 25 Critics whose readings of the Fiammetta have a more moralizing tone than Segre's see far more than a touch of irony in the Fiammetta's self.. identification with classical stories: in a footnote, Hollander suggests that 23. Cesare Segre, "Structures and Registers in the Fiammetta," in Structures and Time: Narra~ tion, Poetry, Models, trans. John Meddemmen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979),73.

Segre (7 1-72) gives a list of the first type of addresses to the reader and a specimen of the second type drawn from a single chapter. 24. Brownlee, The Severed Word, 60. 25. Segre, "Structures and Registers," 80-81.

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the self.·deluded Fiammetta may well remind the reader of a medieval Madame Bovary; Smarr sees Fiammetta's classical allusions as bringing moral warnings into the text that the deluded protagonist naively or will .. fully ignores. 26 For the forsaken Fiammetta, only literature can bring her pleasure and distract her from her suffering. When Panfilo goes away and she cannot stay outside to watch the slow progress of the sun across the sky, she stays inside with her ladies for a storytelling session: alcuna volta, se altro a fare non mi occorreva, ragunate Ie mie fanti con meco nella mia camera, e raccontava e face va raccontare storie diverse, Ie quali quanta pili erano di lungi dal vero, come il pili cosl fatte genti Ie dicono, cotanto parea ch'avessono maggiore forza a cac .. ciare i sospiri e a recare festa a me ascoitante; Ia quale aicuna volte, con tutta Ia malinconia, di queUe lietissimamente risi. E se questa forse per cagione legittima non poteva essere, in libri diversi recercando Ie altrui miserie, e queUe aUe mie conformando, quasi accompagnata senten.. domi, con menD noia il tempo passava.

(EMF 3.11.1-2) [Sometimes (if I had no other obligations) I gathered my maids together in my chamber and recounted, or had them recount, all sorts of stories, and the fur .. ther from the truth they were-most of these people's tales are-the greater power they seemed to have in chasing my sorrows away and making me a cheerful listener ; and there were many times when I laughed about them with great pleasure in spite of all this melancholy. And if for some legitimate rea .. son this pastime were not possible, I looked in various books for other peo .. ple's miseries, and by comparing them to mine, I felt I had company, and so the time passed less tediously.J Fiammetta's solacing of her love melancholy with stories foreshadows Boc .. caccio's later use of this theme in the Proem to the Decameron, in which the male narrator announces that his hundred stories are intended to pro .. vide support and diversion to "queUe che amano" [those ladies who love] so that they can banish "malinconia, mossa da focoso disio" [a sense of melancholy, brought on by burning desire].27 For Fiammetta, reading about others' woes can bring relief for her own sadness, for her reading 26. Hollander, Boccaccio's Two Venuses, 174; Smarr, Boccaccio and Fiammetta, 143. 27. See Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1985),6-7.

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makes her realize that she does not stand alone in her suffering, but rather connects her with a community of other women. She takes up her pen to write her own story so that she may have her own audience of sympathetic (female) readers who sustain themselves by reading about her miseries, much as she has been comforted by reading about others' sorrows. Put simply, Fiammetta's mode of reading is egotistical: she reads in order to reread her own story in another's life. Though she never explicitly says so, the reader can guess that Ovid's Heroides must be one of the "diversi libri" [various books] she has been reading to find companionship in her sorrows, for she repeatedly refers to the sufferings of these aban . . doned women as she narrates her own story. She sees her love for Panfilo as kindled by Venus, just as Dido's passion was incited by the false Asca . . nius (EMF 1.19.2). When Panfilo tells her that he must leave to attend his ill father, she begs him to delay, echoing the words of Heroides 7 as Dido warns Aeneas of the potential dangers he and his men will face and pleads for him to put off his depature. 28 Later, she retrospectively reads Panfilo's stubbing of his toe as an evil sign because Laodamia had considered it an ill omen for Protesilaus in Heroides 13. 29 And when she speaks to a mer . . chant about the absent Panfilo, she compares herself to Deidamia, the heroine of Statius's Achilleid.3° Later, as Fiammetta finally realizes Panfilo's faithlessness, she berates him with the same anger and many of the same phrases that the aban . . doned Phyllis addressed to Demophoon in Heroides 2)1 Subsequently, when she learns that Panfilo has a new love, she pictures herself as Oenone beholding Paris in the ship with Helen)2 Like Dido and Phyllis, she con . . templates killing herself, though her attempt to do so sounds almost paro . . dic in its failure)3 After her unsuccessful suicide attempt, she decides to imitate her Ovidian models by writing a letter to Panfilo, though she pre . . sumably knows from her reading of the Heroides that such an epistle will have no effect on her forgetfullover. 34 Toward the end of her recitation of 28. Cf. EMF 2.8.5-9 and Her. 7.41-74. 29. Cf. EMF 3.3.1 and Her. 13.87-90. 30. Cf. EMF 5.2.2 and Statius's Achilleid. 31. As Del Corno notes, EMF 5.5 derives largely from Heroides 2, and, in fact, one scribe was moved to note in the margin beside this section "Ex Ovidij secunda pistolarum ad litteram." See Del Como, ed., Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, 291. 32. EMF 6.2.6 and Her. 5.61-68. 33. Walter Pabst, Venus als Heilige und Furie in Boccaccios Fiammetta--Dichtung (Krefield: Scherpe Verlag, 1958),23-26, discusses the similarities between Dido and Fiammetta. 34. Cf. EMF 6.22·3-4·

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her woes, she compares herself to various Ovidian heroines, including Dido, Hypsipyle, Oenone, and Ariadne, only to conclude that she suffers far more than they ever did.3 5 In this catalog, Fiammetta's obsessive cita . . tion of her classical models turns into a competition with them: she no longer reads to find models for, or companions in, her suffering, but to outdo them. In the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, we see what happens when a reader's imaginative participation in literature expresses itself in literal responses. The narrator of the Amorosa Visione identifies and sympathizes with the Ovidian heroines he sees so that he can imagine their sorrows and their words. Based on the guide's denunciations, we may deem his responses inappropriate or problematic, but they cause him no actual harm in the course of his visionary journey. In the Fiammetta, Boccaccio pre . . sents the reader with a much more extreme case of textual voyeurism: he depicts a woman who not only sympathizes with Ovid's abandoned hero . . ines, but makes herself into one of them by reenacting their words, their sufferings, and even their suicidal desires. Fiammetta's vicarious participation in the lives of these heroines does not free her from her own pain, but rather makes her dwell obsessively in it. In adopting various letters from the Heroides as her master narratives, she chooses texts that do not allow for growth, change, or the lessening of sorrow, for the epistolary form of the Heroides captures the fictive writer at a particular moment in which she pours out her feelings of anger, loss, and loneliness. Fiammetta compulsively repeats a series of these disconnected moments in her life and in her text; as a result she cannot find any resolu . . tion for her grief, short of her own death or Panfilo's return. Clearly, her intense psychological involvement in literature has arrested her own emo . . tional development. At the end of her static narrative, Fiammetta shows no signs of growth, change, or deepened understanding-she remains exactly as she was as its beginning, frozen in time like the letters of the abandoned heroines she tries so desperately to imitate. Like his Amorosa Visione, Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta confirms the seductive pull of the stories of abandoned women, the way in which they invite a sympathetic response from the reader. In the Amorosa Visione, the tension between the guide's response and the narrator's places these stories in an ambiguous light. Fiammetta's misuse of them in the lat . . ter work, however, more clearly lends itself to a moralizing interpretation 35. Cf. EMF 8.5. 1 7.

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that reads the Ovidian women Fiammetta imitates as exempla of foolish and unchaste love and Fiammetta herself as seriously deluded. Yet we should not forget that Fiammetta's own sad tale, like the stories she imi .. tates, invites the emotional sympathy of the reader and makes it difficult to accept this judgment without some qualification. In their interpretations of these and other Boccaccian fictions, Hollan .. der and Smarr argue that Boccaccio explores the conflict between reason and desire. I would suggest that this conflict also operates at the level of reader response, in such a way that it tends to undercut the rationalistic, moralizing readings that these two critics propose. For though a reader's rational faculties may find the arguments in favor of the moralistic inter.. pretations of these works persuasive, the pathos of Boccaccio's portrayals of these putatively negative exempla make the reader desire other possi .. bilities that "save" the text from a purely ironic reading. We may wish to dismiss this conflict as a nonproblem, by concluding that Boccaccio was a much better poet than he was a moral philosopher, and that, for some readers, the affective qualities of his poetry have simply gotten in the way of his moralitas. There remains, however, another possibility: by making his "negative" characters like the powerfully attractive abandoned women judged stultus (foolish) in the medieval commentary tradition, Boccaccio forces his read .. ers to experience a struggle between their own reason and desires as they interpret his text. As a result of this exercise, his readers can better appre .. ciate the divergence between theoretical moral frameworks and how human beings manage to apply them. Rather than simply condemning the narrator of the Amorosa Visione, Madonna Fiammetta, or the abandoned women they both admire for their "bad" choices, we as readers come to understand how difficult it can be to make the "right" choices. Thus, Boc .. caccio's Amorosa Visione and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta function much as Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in N. S. Thomp .. son's interpretation: [B]y providing a variety of vicarious stimulations and purposely offer.. ing false signs, both texts constitute a moral laboratory for the individ .. ual to experiment with a variety of responses, with the aim of eliciting thereby a greater understanding in the reader of the nature of vice and virtue.3 6 36. N. S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of "The Decameron" and "The Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996),313.

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As Thompson argues, these narratives thereby adopt a somewhat danger .. ous interpretive strategy in their presentation of a "bewildering series of pathways where local interpretation is at best difficult."37 Such a narrative strategy raises more questions than it settles: In vicariously participating in the narrative debate, in vicariously liv .. ing (and enjoying) the adventures of the characters, will the reader dis .. cover something about his own propensities? Will he see through the appearance and reality of the collection to his own masks and sub .. terfuges, or simply enjoy and condone the escapades related?3 8 By raising such questions, this narrative strategy involves the reader's own inner self in the writer's adventurous mode of moral teaching. By under .. standing Boccaccio's Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and Amorosa Visione in this way, a reader can learn firsthand how easily desire can overwhelm rea .. son and can thus learn how to temper judgment with compassion, moral values with human sympathy.

37. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, 3 16-17· 38. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, 3 17·

~

Five

~

Chaucer's

Troilus and Criseyde Re,gendering Abandonment

n the preceding chapters, I have examined texts that allude to or center on the experiences of abandoned women. As a result, it may seem para .. doxical to introduce a discussion of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and its main source, Boccaccio's Filostrato. After all, these poems focus on the story of a male protagonist who must come to terms with the fact that his lady has left him. Nevertheless, both poems manifest their indebtedness to Ovid's portrayals of abandoned women in the Heroides in various ways. On the most literal, positivistic level, both Chaucer's Troilus and Boccaccio's Filostrato punctuate their narratives with allusions to the Heroides. Both poems pay abundant homage to the form of Ovid's Heroides: amorous epis .. tIes and the processes of their composition feature prominently in these narratives. Yet their poetic debts to Ovid's text run deeper than a mere census of allusions would indicate, for both poems display the profound influence of Ovid's rhetorical strategy in the Heroides. In their concentra .. tion on private, emotional experience and exclusion of the larger political realities, both poems reinscribe Ovid's generic transformation of epic materia into the mold of erotic elegy. In his Heroides, Ovid effectively con ..

I

13 0

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structs an anti .. epic, retelling the story of the Trojan War through the per .. sonal amorous sufferings of Penelope, Oenone, and Briseis; Boccaccio and Chaucer similarly choose to filter their version of the matter of Troy through the lens of the disastrous love affair of Troiolo and Crise ida, Troilus and Criseyde. In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer strengthens and embellishes a pattern of allusions to the Heroides that he found in a more attenuated form in Boccaccio's Filostrato. My discussion of these allusions will focus on Chaucer's poem, since Chaucer more fully develops this allusive strategy, and as a result, its larger implications become more readily apparent. Nev .. ertheless, where appropriate, I will show how Chaucer's Ovidian allusions build on Boccaccio's text. I In both these narratives, Boccaccio and Chaucer introduce a series of allusions to stories of abandoned women, though the story they tell will ultimately upset that gendered pattern. 2 As a result of this network of allusions, Troiolo/Troilus becomes identified with Ovid's abandoned women; at various points he adopts their modes of discourse and behavior as he writes love letters, laments his absent beloved, and ultimately bewails her faithlessness. In addition, Criseida/Criseyde's literary genealogy places her in a line of descent from Briseis, one of Ovid's distressed heroines; Chaucer's poem also explores some of the affinities and differences between Criseyde and this literary precursor. I shall begin my discussion of the Ovidian allusions in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde with the first, and most prominent, allusion in the poem: namely, Pandarus's direct citation of the nymph Oenone's epistle to Paris. Chaucer adds this allusion to the story, in one of the many instances of Chaucer's interpolation of classical lore into Boccaccio's less self.. con .. sciously historicist romance. As John Fleming notes, Chaucer's Pandarus The Italian text of the Filostrato comes from Giovanni Boccaccio, Caccia di Diana, Filostrato, ed. Vittore Branca (Milan: Mondadori, 1990); I cite the English translation presented in Giovanni Boccaccio, Filostrato, trans. Robert P. apRoberts and Anna Bruni Seldis (New York: Garland, 1986). 2. In his thoughtful essay on gender roles in Chaucer, Alcuin Blamires discusses the way in which Chaucer tends to use the reversal of normative gender roles as a theme in Troilus and Criseyde, and calls attention to R. E. Kaske's article describing how Chaucer switched the roles of lover and lady in the traditional aube as well as other instances of such gender reversal. Blamires's article, however, does not call attention to Chaucer's allusive cross~gendering of the Heroides. See Blamires, "Questions of Gender," 82,94-102; and R. E. Kaske, "The Aube in Chaucer's Troilus," in Chaucer Criticism, vol. 2, "Troilus and Criseyde" and the Minor Poems, ed. R. J. Schoeck and J. Taylor (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), 167-79, cited in Blamires, "Questions of Gender," 103. I.

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talks of Oenone's letter as if it had just recently arrived in Troy: obviously, Chaucer makes a learned joke for his audience) Pandarus cites the aban .. doned nymph's letter in the course of a lengthy speech to counter Troilus's assertion that, since he has been unsuccessful in love himself, Pandarus ought not offer any advice to others. Pandarus comments: "I woot weI that it fareth thus by me As to thi brother, Paris, an herdesse, which that i.. cleped was Oenone, Wrote in a compleynte ofhir heuynesse; Yee say the lettre that she wrote, I gesse?" "Nay, neuere yet, ywys," quod Troilus. "Now," quod Pandare, "herkne, it was thus: "'Phebus, that first fond art of medicyne,' Quod she, 'and couthe in euery wightes care Remedye and rede by herbes he knew fyne, Yet to hym self his konnyng was ful bare; ffor loue hadde hym so bounden in a snare, Al for the daughter of the kyng Amete, That al his craft ne koude his sorwes bete.' "Right so fare I, vnhappyly for me; I laue one best, and that me smerteth sore; And yet, peraunter, kan I reden the, And nat my self-repreue me na more."

At first, this allusion seems straightforward: Pandarus uses Oenone's description of Apollo's amorous difficulties to describe his own situation. However, Pandarus's citation of the letter strategically misquotes it. Oenone's text, while indeed mentioning Apollo, actually bemoans her own inability to heal her love with her medical skills: "me miseram, quod amor non est medicabilis herbis! / deficior prudens artis ab arte mea" (Her. 5.149-50: "Alas, wretched me, that love cannot be healed by herbs! I am 3. See John Fleming, Classical Imitation and Interpretation in Chaucer's Troilus (Lincoln: Uni~ versity of Nebraska Press, 1990), 122. 4. All quotations of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde are from the text printed in B. A. Windeatt, ed., Troilus and Criseyde (New York: Longman, 1984). I have modernized the spelling of words with the Middle English yough.

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skilled at this art, but my art leaves me helpless"). Pandarus, then, has made an interesting gender switch: he has turned a text focusing on an abandoned woman into one that describes an abandoned man, perhaps foreshadowing the course of the main narrative, which first portrays Criseyde's abandonment by her father, and later shifts to Troilus's aban . . donment by Criseyde. But that is not all that happens in this passage: in recasting Oenone's lament as Apollo's own complaint, Pandarus has man . . aged to ignore the tale of sexual violence that links the wood nymph to the sun god. The full text of the passage that Pandarus so ostentatiously invokes actually reads as follows: 5 me fide conspicuus Troiae munitor amavit, ille meae spolium virginitatis habet, id quoque luctando; rupi tamen ungue capillos, oraque sunt digitis aspera facta meis; nec pretium stupri gemmas aurumque poposci: turpiter ingenuum munera corpus emunt; ipse, ratus dignam, medicas mihi tradidit artes admisitque meas ad sua dona manus. quaecumque herba potens ad opem radixque medenti utilis in toto nascitur orbe, mea est. me miseram, quod arnor non est medicabilis herbis! deficior prudens artis ab arte mea. ipse repertor opis vaccas pavissa Pheraeas fertur et a nostro saucius igne fuit.

(Her. 5.139-52) [The builder of Troy, well . . known for the lyre, loved me; this same one had the prize of my virginity, wrestling for it. Nevertheless, I pulled his hair with my nails and scratched at his face with my fingers; 1 did not want gems and gold as the prize for rape: it is a vile thing when gifts can buy a body that had been born free. That same one, finding me worthy, passed on the art of med . . icine to me and let my hands into the secret of his gifts. Every helpful herb, every healing root, wherever it grows in all the world, belongs to me. Alas, wretched me, that love cannot be healed by herbs! I am skilled at this art, but my art leaves me helpless. The discoverer of the art is said to have led to pas . . ture the Pherean cows, but he was scorched by our fire.] 5. Modem critics have condemned Heroides 5.140-45 and 151-52 as spurious; the Loeb edi, tion, in fact, relegates them to the footnotes, and Showerman leaves them out of his translation.

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In his adaptation of her letter, Pandarus focuses on only two verses of Oenone's narrative-those describing Apollo's stint as Admetus's cowherd. Ovid implies both here and in his Ars amatoria that Apollo's servitude results from his desire for a woman. 6 In his allusion to this episode in the Teseida, Boccaccio clearly adopted this interpretation, giv . . ing Chaucer the basis for Pandarus's reference to "the doughter of the kyng Amete."7 As Sanford Brown Meech suggests, Chaucer may have also got . . ten this idea from the Italian translation of Ovid's Heroides attributed to Filippo Ceffi. 8 E 10 nominato Iddio Febo, che da prima trovo la scienza della medi . . cina, gia per amore diventoe pastore, amando la bella figliuola del Re Ameto; e sappiendo a tutte gravezze dare rimedio, da amore solamente non si seppe guardare. 9

[And the aforementioned god Phoebus, who first discovered the science of medicine, became a shepherd for love, loving the beautiful daughter of King Ameto; although he knew how to remedy all illnesses, he did not know how to guard himself from love.] 6. Cf. Ars Amatoria 2.239-42. According to the article on Admetus in George Wissova, ed., Paulys Real~encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1896), 1:377-78, the most important ancient legends say that Jupiter sentenced Apollo to serve Admetus as a cowherd in order to punish him for killing the Cyclopes. Other authors imply that Apollo served Admetus out of love for the king himself, but no classical writer appears to back up Chaucer's and Boccac~ cio's claims that Admetus had a daughter whom Apollo loved, which probably came from a gloss to Ovid like the one included in the Italian translation of the Heroides cited in the main text above. 7. George Lyman Kittredge, "Chaucer's Lollius," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 28 (1917): 112-13, notes that T eseida 4.46 is a possible source, where Arcita says,

Sl come te alcuna volta Amore costrinse il chiaro cielo abandonare e lunga Anfrisio, in forma di pastore, del grande Ameto a gli armenti guard are ...

[Just as love once forced you to leave the bright sky and watch cattle along the Amphrysius in the guise of a herdsman for the great Admetus . . .] Boccaccio's gloss on this passage explicates the story further, saying, "Fu Febo innamorato d'una flgliuola d' Ameto, re di T esaglia, la quale non potendo altrimenti avere, si transformo in pastore, e posesi col detto re, e stette con lui guardandogli il bestiame suo, in cos1 fatta forma, sette anni" [Phoebus fell in love with the daughter of Admetus, king of Thessaly, and since he could not have her any other way, he changed himself into a shepherd, placed himself with this king, and stayed with him, keeping his cattle, under this guise, for seven years]. 8. Meech, "Italian Translation," 112-13. 9. See Bemadoni, ed., Epistole Eroiche, 45. The translation is my own.

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No matter where Chaucer acquired his knowledge of Apollo's amorous service, it is fair to say that Pandarus's rather selective reading of the epis .. tIe of Oenone constitutes a misreading of the letter as a whole, for Oenone barely touches on Apollo's love service in her epistle. Instead, the main emphasis in the Ovidian text falls on Oenone's own involvement with Apollo-a disturbing tale of sexual aggression. 10 Apollo repays his violent initiation of Oenone into adult sexuality with the more generous initia .. tion of the wood nymph into his medical arts. But now, as she composes her "compleynt" to Paris, her dearly bought skills are utterly useless against a faithless lover who has violated both his oath and her trust. In wrenching the sense of Oenone's epistle in a way that makes it apply to himself without regard for her story, Pandarus violates the textual integrity of Oenone's letter much as Apollo had earlier violated the phys .. ical integrity of her body. Lest this image seem too strong, we should note that Pandarus chooses to identify himself with Apollo, Oenone's rapist. And this identification is not the only way in which Pandarus's bit of tex .. tual tomfoolery can be taken as referring to Apollo as sexual aggressor: as John Fleming also notes, the passage from the Heroides that Pandarus (mis}cites is cognate with another passage on Apollo the physician in Metamorphoses I. I I In that passage, Apollo beseeches Daphne to grant him her love, lamenting his inability to cure his own amorous longings: inventum medicina meum est, opiferque per orbem dicor, et herbarum subiecta potentia nobis. ei mihi, quod nullis amor est sanabilis herbis nec prosunt domino, quae prosunt omnibus, artes!

(Met.

1.521-24)12

[The art of medicine is my discovery. I am called "healer" throughout the world, and I possess power over the herbs. Alas! No herb can cure that love; nor can arts that heal all others heal their lord.J At this point, the fearful Daphne flees, pursued by Apollo. Unlike Oenone, Daphne manages to escape Apollo's clutches, but only by 10. Mary Jo Arn, "Three Ovidian Women in Chaucer's Troilus," Chaucer Review IS (1984): 6-7, makes note of this passage, but has little to say about its description of sexual violence. II. Fleming, Classical Imitation and Interpretation, 123. 12. The text of the Metamorphoses is cited from the Loeb Classical Library edition, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1921).

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renouncing her humanity and being changed into a laurel tree by her father. By an earlier generation of critics, Pandarus's concatenation of Ovidian texts would be viewed as just another example of Chaucer's getting his classical lore hopelessly muddled. Nevertheless, careful readers like Flem, ing and Wetherbee have presented compelling evidence to illustrate Chaucer's self, conscious play with classical intertexts. I3 Here, we have precisely such a case: Pandarus offers Troilus, an unsuspecting reader who admits to having no knowledge of the actual text, a tendentiously garbled version of Oenone's epistle. As John Fyler has noted, Pandarus's pseudo, citation also misses the main point of Oenone's letter to Paris, her warning that Paris's foolhardy actions will result in the fall of Troy. 14 Furthermore, as I have argued above, Pandarus recasts Oenone's epistle in such a way that he ignores her own complaint to focus on the problems of the male god Apollo, and entirely elides the god's troublesome history of sexual vio, lence. Pandarus's textual fabrication thus serves as a warning sign, telling the reader to beware of many of the other texts he will spring on Troilus and Criseyde in the course of the narrative: they too, will be used to con, ceal the true nature of events. Besides displaying Pandarus's lack of inter, est in women's discourse, Pandarus's pointed editing of Oenone's epistle to elide its potent subtext of sexual violence suggests that behind his facade of amorous incapacity lurks the potential for aggressive sexual behaviorbehavior that will later manifest itself in his relations with Criseyde. IS While Pandarus miscites Oenone's epistle to Paris, Criseyde includes a fairly close paraphrase of the nymph's letter in one of her own speeches to Troilus. As she is about to be forced to part from Troilus, she vows her fidelity to her lover and swears an oath: And thow Symois, that as an arwe clere, Thorugh Troie ay rennest downward to the se, 13. See Fleming, Classical Imitation and Interpretation; and Wetherbee's Chaucer and the Poets for thoughtful arguments that persuasively demonstrate what Fleming terms Chaucer's "deep clas~ sicism" (xiii). 14. See John Fyler, Chaucer and Ovid (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 115-16, and Fyler, "The Fabrications of Pandarus," in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: HSubgit to alle Poesye, " ed. R. A. Shoaf (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 199 2 ), 109. 15. I refer to incidents such as Pandarus's poking and pinching of his niece, his thrusting of Troilus's letter down the front of her dress, his plots to bring her to Troilus without her knowledge or consent, his nocturnal appearance in her bedroom with T roilus in tow, his throwing of T roilus into bed with her, and, last but not least, his equivocal and disturbing encounter with Criseyde the morning after she and T roilus have consummated their mutual attraction.

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Ber witnesse of this word that seyd is here, That thilke day that ich vntrewe be To Troilus, my owene herte fre, That thow retourne bakward to thi welle, And I with body and soule synke in helle.

As various editors of the poem have remarked, Criseyde's speech recasts lines in Oenone's epistle that represent the vow that Paris has carved in a poplar tree: CUM PARIS OENONE POTERIT SPIRARE RELICTA, AD FONTEM XANTHI VERSA RECURRET AQUA.

Xanthe, retro propera, versaeque recurrite lymphae! sustinet Oenonen deseruisse Paris.

[IF PARIS REJECTS OENONE AND LIVES, LET THE WATERS OF THE XANTHUS RETURN TO THEIR SOURCE.

o Xanthus, hurry backward; you must turn, waters, and flow back again your source! Paris has deserted Oenone, and still lives .] to

Here, Chaucer's Criseyde takes on the role ascribed to Paris, who betrayed the nymph Oenone for Helen. Just as Pandarus's earlier allusion to Oenone's epistle involved the application of a female persona to a male character, this one involves a woman speaking and acting in ways earlier ascribed to a male persona. In this allusive gender.. switching, Chaucer foreshadows his casting of Troilus in the role of an abandoned woman later in the poem. Like the earlier allusion to Oenone, Criseyde's elaborate oath is a Chaucerian embellishment of Boccaccio's Filostrato: in Boccaccio, Criseyde swears only by the arrows of love, not by "Symois, that as an arwe clere ... rennest downward to the se."I6 16. In Fil. 4.146, Criseyde tells Troilus, io ti giuro per quelle amorose saette che per te m' entrar nel petto, comandamenti, lusinghe 0 marito, non torceran da te mai l'appetito. [I swear to you, by these arrows of love which entered my breast because of you, that commands, flatteries, or a husband will not ever turn my desire from you.]

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As I have argued, the set of allusions to Heroides 5 are Chaucer's own addition to the Filostrato, but he had found a set of parallels to Heroides 10 (the letter of Ariadne to Theseus) already present in Boccaccio's text. These parallels tend to identify both Troiolo and Crise ida with the aban; doned Ariadne and may well have given Chaucer the idea for the allusive gender;role switching that characterizes his use of Heroides 5. When Boc; caccio's Criseida laments that she and Troiolo are to be separated, her histrionic grief resembles that of Ovid's forsaken women-in fact, Branca's note on this particular stanza of Filostrato compares Crise ida to various of Boccaccio's abandoned heroines in the Amorosa Visione: I7 Erasi la dolente in suI suo letto stesa gittata, piangendo Sl forte, che dir non si poria; e '1 bianco petto spesso batteasi, chiamando la morte che l'uccidesse, poi che '1 suo diletto lasciar Ie convenia per dura sorte, e' biondi crin tirandosi rompea e mille volte ognor morte chiedea.

[The grieving woman had thrown herself prone upon her bed, weeping so strongly that it could not be told. And often she beat her white breast, calling on death to slay her, since she was obliged by cruel fate to leave her delight, and plucking her blonde hair, she tore it, and a thousand times she continu . . ally called on death.] More specifically, Criseida resembles Ovid's Ariadne, who engages in sim; ilarly self;mutilating displays of grief: "protinus adductis sonuerunt pectora palmis, / utque erat e somno turbida, rupta coma est" (Her. 10.15-16: "Right away my palms beat my breast, and I tore my hair, dishevelled as it was from sleep"). Chaucer's Criseyde also appears to model her behavior after Ariadne as she reacts to the bad news of her impending separation from Troilus: Hire ownded heer that sonnyssh was of hewe She rente, and ek hire fyngeres longe and smale

17. Branca, ed., Caccia di Diana, Filostrato, 325.

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She wrong ful ofte and bad god on hire rewe, And with the deth to doon boote on hire bale; Hire hewe whilom bright, that tho was pale, Bar witnesse of hire wo and hire constreynte.

After Criseyde laments her ill fortune, the narrator describes the physical manifestations of her psychological torment: Ther;with the teris from hire even two Down fiUe as shoure in Aperil ful swithe; Hire white brest she bet and for the wo After the deth she cryed a thousand sithe Syn he that wont hire wo was for to lithe She moot forgon; for which disauenture She held hire self a forlost creature. (T&C 4.750-56)

In her epistle, Ovid's Ariadne repeatedly describes her disheveled appear; ance; she tells Theseus that he should picture her in his mind, and "adspice demissos lugentis more capillos / et tunicas lacrimis sicut ab imbre gravis" (Her. 10.137-38: "Look at my hair, let loose like that of one mourning for the dead, and look upon my robes, soaked with tears as if with rain"). Though Ariadne only imagines an audience for her disfiguring grief, the woebegone Criseyde actually has one, as Pandarus enters her room And fond that she hire selven gan to trete fful pitously, for with hier salte teris Hire brest, hire face, y;bathed was ful wete; The mighty tresses of hire sonnysshe heeris Unbroiden hangen al about hire eeris Which yaf hym verray signal of martire Of deth which that hire herte gan desire.

Here, Chaucer describes Criseyde's sorrow at her impending separation from T roilus in terms that recall Ovid's portrayals of the suicidal grief of abandoned women, the martyrs of love whose stories Chaucer would tell at length in his Legend of Good Women. Ariadne, however, does not kill

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herself for Theseus: as Ovid describes in the Metamorphoses, Bacchus arrives and sweeps away the grieving girl. Likewise, Criseyde will be wooed and won by Diomede. Nevertheless, Chaucer does not pursue this allusive possibility; his text alludes only to the Ariadne of the Heroides, solitary and grief.. stricken. I have suggested that Chaucer, following Boccaccio, draws parallels between Ariadne's histrionic sorrow and Criseyde's in book 4 of Troilus and Criseyde. But in book 5, Chaucer shifts the terms of the equation, as Heroides 10 hovers in the background of Troilus's lament: Wher is myn owene lady lief and deere? Wher is hire white brest, where is it, where? Wher ben hire armes and hire eyen cleere That yesternyght this tyme with me were? Now may I wepe allone many a teere And graspe aboute I may, but in this place, Saue a pilowe, I fynde naught tenbrace. How shal I do? Whan shal she come ageyn?

As Windeatt notes in his comment on this passage, Troilus's sorrowful description of his beloved's absent body and the physical reality of his empty bed suggest the influence of Ariadne's bed lament in Heroides 10: saepe torum repeto, qui nos acceperat ambos, sed non acceptos exhibiturus erat, et tua, quae possum pro te, vestigia tango strataque quae membris intepuere tuis. incumbo, lacrimisque toro manante profusis, "pressimus," exclamo, "te duo-redde duos! venimus huc ambo; cur non discedimus ambo? perfide, pars nostri, lectule, maior ubi est?" Quid faciam?

[Often I return to the couch where we once slept, a couch that would never see us together again, and touch the imprint left by you-it is all that remains in your place-and the bedclothes that once grew warm beneath your limbs. I lie down, and dampening the bed with my outpouring of tears, I cry aloud:

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"We were two who pressed upon you-give back two! Both of us came here together; why do we not leave together as we came? Ah faithless bed-the greater part of my being, where is he?" What shall I do?] Here, Chaucer's allusion to Ovid is mediated by Boccaccio, whose descrip . . tion of Troiolo also contains elements that tend to identify the bereft hero with Ariadne. I8 Chaucer's text, however, intensifies the link to Ariadne's bed lament by casting his hero's speech as a series of rhetorical questions about the physical absence of his beloved, and showing Troilus as "grasp . . ing about" in his bed and finding nothing there. At this point in the story, Chaucer invokes the Heroides in order to foreshadow his hero's plight: he casts Troilus in the role of the forsaken Ariadne, though unlike Ariadne, Troilus has not yet discovered the truth about his beloved's faithlessness. Ironically, Criseyde herself actually brings up the possibility of amorous betrayal: she fears that Troilus will take up with someone else in her absence. Interestingly enough, her speech on this subject incorporates an allusion to Penelope's letter to Ulysses in Heroides I: "And ouer al this I prey yow," quod she tho, "Myn owene hertes sothfast suffisaunce, Syn I am thyn al hoI with . . outen mo, That whil that I am absent no plesaunce Of oother do me fro youre remembraunce: ffor I am euere agast, for why men rede That loue is thyng ay ful of bisy drede. "ffor in this world ther lyveth lady non, 18. See Fil. 5.20, where Troiolo, like Ariadne, finds himself embracing the bedclothes instead of his lover: Ella basciava me, e ragionando prendevam festa lieta e graziosa; or sol mi trovo, lasso, e lagrimando, in dubbio se giammai tanto gioiosa notte deggia tornare; ora abbracciando vado il piumaccio, e la fiamma amorosa sento farsi maggiore, e la speranza farsi minor per 10 suol che l'avanza.

[She was kissing me, and we had a glad and gracious good time talking. Now I find myself alone, alas, and weeping, in fear whether such a joyous night is destined ever to come again. Now I keep embracing the pillow, and I feel the amorous flame growing greater, and hope growing less through the grief which overcomes it.]

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If that ye were vntrewe, as god defende, That so bitraised were or wo bigon As I, that all trouthe in yow entende. And douteles, if that ich other wende, I ner but ded, and er ye cause fynde, ffor goddes loue, so beth me naught vnkynde."

As Windeatt and other editors of the poem have noted, Chaucer adds Criseyde's line "loue is thyng ay ful of bisy drede" to the text he found in Boccaccio's Filostrato. This sententia derives from Ovid's Heroides I, where Penelope writes to Ulysses, "res est solliciti plena timor is amor" (I. I 2: "Love is a thing ever filled with anxious fear"). 19 Penelope makes this com . . ment after noting her tendency to worry about a possibility that had never come to pass-that Ulysses would be killed in battle at Troy. Likewise, Criseyde invokes Penelope's words as she, too, worries about something that never happens: namely, that Troilus will betray her for another woman. Ironically, in Criseyde's case, the problem lies not in her lover, but in herself. While Penelope mainly concerns herself with Ulysses' safety in her epistle, she does express some doubts about his fidelity: haec ego dum stulte metuo, quae vestra libido est, esse peregrino captus amore potes. forsitan et narres, quam sit tibi rustica coniunx, quae tantum lanas non sinat esse rudes.

[While I foolishly worry about things like these, you may be captive to a stranger's love-I know you men. Perhaps you even tell how rustic a wife you have-one fit only to work the wool.] Penelope's concern that Ulysses will find her too rustic after his wander . . ings among sophisticated women gets echoed not by Criseyde, but by Troilus. In book 4, the poem's insecure hero worries that once Criseyde lives among the Greeks, she will find him too rough and unsophisticated, a notion that the more self. . confident Troiolo does not express anywhere in Boccaccio's Filostrato (T&C 4.1485-91). But while Penelope's concerns I9. Windeatt, ed., Troilus and Criseyde, 441.

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about Ulysses' possible faithlessness in her Heroides epistle come as after .. thought to her worries about his safety, the "bisy drede" that Criseyde expresses in her speech stems entirely from her fear that Troilus might betray her. For both Penelope and Criseyde, amor is closely linked to timor. Pene .. lope's fear is a recurring motif in Heroides I: the verbs timuere and metuere occur with some frequency, as well as the noun form timor. 20 Similarly, Criseyde's fear tends to motivate many of her actions in the Troilus; her fear and the grounds for it will be treated at greater length below. But it is worth noting at this point that unlike Penelope, whose fears focus on dan .. gers to her husband, Criseyde's fears center on herself. Penelope, in effect, worries, "What has happened to him?" while Criseyde wonders, "What would happen to me?" Chaucer's juxtaposition of Penelope's fear with Criseyde's in this passage suggests why Criseyde does not end up becoming a byword for faithfulness, like "Penelopes trouthe and good Alceste": Criseyde's concern for herself outweighs her love for Troilus. Besides these textual parallels between Ovid's texts and Chaucer's, var .. ious generic similarities align Troilus's actions and sufferings with those of the abandoned women of the Heroides. Like Phyllis waiting for Demophoon to return, Troilus scans the horizon and counts the days, and like her, he finally comes to the realization that his lover has far overstayed the promised term of absence and has forsaken him. 21 Many of the aban .. doned women of the Heroides discuss suicide, and some even plan their deaths. Besides regularly referring to the danger of death if he is deprived of Criseyde's love, Troilus actually does try to kill himself, though in a pas .. sage that clearly alludes to Ovid's story of Pyramus and Thisbe, Criseyde awakens from her deathlike swoon at a crucial moment and prevents him from doing so (T&C 4.1156-1239), Finally, like Ovid's Phyllis and Dido, T roilus not only imagines his death, but also makes funeral arrangements (5.295-322) and even composes his epitaph (4.322-29). Nevertheless, the most interesting group of allusions to Ovid's Heroides in both the Filostrato and Troilus and Criseyde refers to the epistle of Briseis to Achilles, a text clearly linked to the literary prehistory of Chaucer's heroine. Ovid builds this letter around an episode that precipitates much of the action of Homer's Iliad: namely, Agamemnon's taking of the captive princess Briseis from Achilles. The seer Calchas had ordered Agamemnon to turn over the captive Chryseis to her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo, 20. 21.

See Spath, Ovids Heroides als Elegien, 39-41, on Penelope's timor in the Heroides. Cf. Heroides 2.

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in order to end a plague that Chryses had called down upon Greek troops in retribution for his daughter's fate. Agamemnon consents, but only on condition that Achilles give him his own captive, Briseis. Achilles does so, but with his pride seriously wounded, he retires to his tent in a rage and refuses to fight. As a result of military setbacks to the Greeks, Agamemnon must try to persuade the angry warrior to resume fighting. He eventually offers to give Briseis back to Achilles, an offer that Achilles at first scorns, though he later accepts it. Ovid's Heroides portray Briseis as angry, hurt, and bewildered by Achilles' initial refusal of Agamemnon's offer as she pleads with her former master to take her back. Like Chryseis, whose sub . . stitute she becomes, Briseis is powerless, enslaved, a token to be traded at the pleasure of men involved in a war. 22 Chaucer could not have known the Iliadic context of Ovid's epistle directly, but the medieval commentaries on the Heroides and the Italian translation of the Heroides he may have read in preparing to undertake his poetic recasting of the Troy story gave a summary of the plot of this episode. 23 Moreover, the Ilias Latina, a first . . century Latin translation of Homer's poem found in medievallibri manuales, could have also provided background on Briseis; Agamemnon's taking of Briseis from Achilles occurs within the poem's first hundred lines. 24 The Briseis episode would have been of particular interest to Chaucer; he would certainly have known that Boccaccio derived his Criseida from the character Briseida in Benoit de Saint . . Maure's Roman de Troie. While Benoit invented Bri . . seida's story himself, he adapted her name from Homer's Briseis. Thus, as Kittredge, Donaldson, and other critics have noted, Chaucer's Criseyde has a literary genealogy that directly relates her to Homer's Briseis. 25 Chaucer's repeated allusions to Heroides 3 may be a way of signaling to a classically educated reader-such as his friend and fellow poet John 22. In the Iliad the women are referred to only by their patronymics, but later commentators call Briseis Hippodamia and Chryseis Astynome. See the discussion of this episode of the Iliad in Mihoko Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), 21-29. 23. See the prologue of the commentary printed in Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling, 239, and the prologue to the Italian translation of Heroides 3 in Bernadoni, ed., Epistole Eroiche, 20. 24. See Marcho Scaffai, ed., Ilias Latina (Bologna: Patron, 1982). 25. See George Lyman Kittredge, The Date of Chaucer's Troilus and Other Chaucer Matters (London: Kegan Paul, 19°5); and E. Talbot Donaldson, "Briseis, Briseida, Criseyde, Cresseid, Cressid: Progress of a Heroine," in Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives, ed. Edward Vasta and Z. P. Thundy (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970), 1-12.

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Gower-his awareness of the connection between these two female char, acters. 26 In fact, in the Confessio Amantis, Gower himself tellingly juxta, posed their stories in his discussion of "supplantacioun": Ensample I finde thereupon, At Troie how that Agamenon Supplantede the worthi knyht Achilles of that swete wiht, Which named was BrexeYda; And also of Crise ida, Whom T roilus to love ches, Supplanted hath Diomedes.

The two stories Gower here invokes are linked by more than rhyme words in Chaucer's Troilus: As we shall see, a cluster of allusions to Ovid's Briseis crops up in Troilus's epistolary rhetoric in Troilus and Criseyde. Nevertheless, there may be an earlier allusion to Briseis's epistle just before T roilus begins to write his very first epistle to Criseyde. At this point in the story, Pandarus gives Troilus instructions on how he should woo his lady with words. Here, Pandarus's activities might remind us that, according to medieval commentaries, one of the functions of Ovid's Hero . . ides was to show how one might solicit a potential lover. In a passage that has no parallel in Boccaccio's text, Pandarus gives Troilus a writing lesson, telling him along the way, "Ne scryuenyssh or craftily thow it write; / Biblotte it with thi teris ek a lite" (T&C 2.1026-27), a phrase that Windeatt and other editors of the poem have compared to Heroides 3.3. The opening of Briseis's letter reads, Quam legis, a rapta Briseide littera venit, vix bene barbarica Graeca notata manu. quascumque adspicies, lacrimae fecere lituras; sed tamen et lacrimae pondera vocis habent.

26. Kittredge, "Date," 16. As Kittredge points out, in book 5 of the Confessio, Gower tells the story of "Chriseide, doughter of Crises," who is captured by Agamemnon. 27. For the text of the Confessio Amantis, see G. C. Macauley, The Complete Works of John Gower, vols. I and 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901).

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[The words you read come from stolen Briseis, barely written in Greek by her barbarian hand. Whatever blots you see, tears made them, but tears nonetheless have the weight of words .] Despite its fictive narrator's protests, Briseis's letter actually displays con . . siderable rhetorical art: by drawing attention to her lack of literary finesse as her opening gambit, she emphasizes her sincerity. Her writing comes not only from her hand, but from her heart; her epistle, blotted with tears, becomes a synecdoche for her body. Likewise, in recommending that T roilus not be too "scryuenyssh" or crafty in his epistle to Criseyde, Pan . . darus shows that he understands that to be successful in the art of love, the lover must present himself as unskilled in the craft of persuasion-too pol . . ished a performance might make his intended audience suspicious. For Pandarus, the lover's epistle blotted with tears is the epitome of amatory artfulness, a useful prop in the elaborately verisimilar "chance encounter" between Troilus and Criseyde that he stage . . manages. For Troilus, how . . ever, the tearstained epistle is not only a rhetorical pose: all too soon, he finds himself in nearly the same psychological position as Briseis, and the words and the sorrows of an abandoned woman will become his own. By the time Troilus writes his letter to Criseyde in book 5, he has already begun to despair. After waiting for Criseyde two months, he has heard nothing from her. He has had his dream of the boar, which he inter . . prets for himself as a sign of betrayal. Pandarus, however, dismisses the dream and recommends that Troilus write directly to Criseyde in order to find out what her absence and her silence mean. Troilus, without helpful advice from Pandarus this time, throws himself into composing a letter that brims with allusions to Heroides 3-it is almost as if T roilus has delib . . erately decided to use the Heroides as a model for how to win his lady back, a use one medieval commentator suggested for Ovid's poems. 28 After com . . mending himself to Criseyde in a standard opening formula, T roilus con . . tinues his epistle with words that echo the tearstained opening of Briseis's letter: "ffor which to yow with dredful herte trewe I write, as he that sorwe drifth to write My wo that euerich houre encresseth newe Compleynyng as I dar or kan endite. 28. See the accessus quoted in chapter

I.

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And that defaced is, that may ye wite The teris which that for myn even reyne. That wolden speke, if that they koude, and pleyne "Yow first biseche I that youre even clere To loke on this defouled ye nat holde. And ouere al this that ye, my lady deere, Wol vouch.,sauf this lettre to byholde."

Troilus's elaborate apology to Criseyde for the form of his letter greatly expands lines at the end of Troiolo's analogous letter in the Filostrato, which also alludes to the same passage in Briseis's epistle. 29 While Boccac., cio's hero places his apology at the end of his epistle, Chaucer's Troilus fol., lows the epistle of Briseis even more closely by apologizing for the formal deficiencies of the letter before its intended reader has even gotten to its main part. Both T roilus and Briseis face the challenge of putting into words the language of the body: sighs and tears. Briseis sees her teardrops as being equivalent to written signs, while Troilus wishes that his mute tears might be able to speak his complaint. Both Troilus and Briseis hesitate to complain, and both seem to require permission to continue their laments. As a slave, Briseis wonders whether it is proper for her to lodge a protest with Achilles for his treatment of her: "Si mihi pauca queri de te dominoque viroque / fas est, de domino pauca viroque querar" (Her. 3.5-6: "If it is right to complain a little about you, my master and beloved, I shall complain a little"). Troilus similarly phrases his protest to his lady in the subjunctive mood: 29. See Branca, ed., Caccia di Diana, Filostrato, 334, which notes the Ovidian phrasing of Fil. 7·74: Perdona se nell' ordine dettando io ho fallito, 0 se di macchie piena forse vedi la lettera ch'io mando: che dell'uno e dell'altro la mia pena n'e gran cagion, pero che Iagrimando vivo e dimoro, ne Ie mi raffrena nullo accidente; dunque son dolenti lagrime queste macchie sl soventi.

[Pardon me if in the order of writing I have erred, and if perchance you see the letter which I send covered with stains, for my suffering is the greater cause of one and the other since I live and abide in tears, and no occurrence checks them in me. Therefore, these spots, which are so frequent, are tears of sorrow.]

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If any servant dorst or oughte of right Upon his lady pitously compleyne, Thanne wene I that ich oughte be that wight.

Both writers place themselves in a humble, abject position, but the simi .. larity of their rhetoric conceals the vast difference in their circumstances: Briseis, formerly a princess, has actually become a captive; Troilus, a king's son, lives only in metaphorical slavery. Troilus's amorous servitude is the product of his own will (or lack of it) rather than external circumstances. Troilus's epistle contains one final parallel to Briseis's epistle that has no precedent in Boccaccio's Filostrato. As his letter draws to a close, T roilus calls attention to his physical deterioration, exclaiming, I woot that whan ye next vpon me se, So lost haue I myn hele and ek myn hewe, Criseyde shal nought konne knowen me. I.. wys, myn hertes day, my lady free, So thursteth ay myn herte to byholde Youre beute that my life vnnethe I holde.

Windeatt cites as a parallel to these lines Boccaccio's: "Oh me, che tu non mi conoscerai / tal son tornato ne' dolor malegni!" (Fil. 7.75: "Ah me! For you will not recognize me, I am so changed in my malignant sorrows"). Still, Heroides 3 forms an even closer parallel, as Briseis calls attention to her own loss of "hele and hewe" toward the end of her epistle: "abiit cor .. pusque colorque; / sustinet hoc animae spes tamen una tui" (Her. 3.141-42: "Both my flesh and my color are gone; what spirit I still have is only sustained by hope in you"). Like Briseis, Troilus makes his own bod .. ily existence depend on the hope of seeing an absent lover. As this exam .. pIe illustrates, Chaucer has done more than simply translate Boccaccio's Filostrato in Troilus's letter: he has gone back to Boccaccio's own source and further strengthened the allusive parallels between Troilus and Briseis. While the similarities between Troilus's letter and Ovid's epistle of Bri .. 30. Branca, ed., Caccia di Diana, Filostrato, 333, also note Boccaccio's allusion to Heroides 3: "Se '1 servidore in caso alcun potesse / del suo maggior dolersi, forse ch'io / avrei ragion se di te mi dolesse" (Fil. 7.54: "If in any case the servant might complain of his superior, perhaps I would be right if I were to complain of you").

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seis are fairly straightforward, Chaucer may also have hidden some more oblique references to the story of Briseis in Troilus and Criseyde. For instance, a veiled allusion to the story of Briseis may lurk behind the fol .. lowing exchange between Pandarus and Troilus in book 3. Here, Troilus swears to Pandarus that he will not reveal his relationship with Criseyde to anyone: But natheles, by that god I the swere, That as hym list may al this world gouerneAnd if I lye, Achilles with his spere Myn herte cleue, al were my lif eterne, As I am mortal, if I late or yerne W olde it be .. wreye, or dorst, or sholde konne, ffor al the good that god made vnder sonneThat rather dey I wold and determyne, As thynketh me, now stokked in prisoun, In wrecchidnesse, in filthe, and in vermyne, Caytif to cruel kyng Agamenoun; And this in all the temples of this town, Up .. on the goddes alle, I wol the swere To . . morwe day, if that it liketh the here. And that thow hast so muche i.. do for me That I ne may it neuere more disserue, This know I weI, al myght I now for the A thousand tymes on a morwe sterue; I kan namore but that I wol the serue Right as thi sclaue, whider so thow wend, ffor euere more vn .. to my lyves ende.

As Windeatt's edition notes, this passage contains several additions and changes to the text of the Filostrato. First, Troiolo does not swear by Achilles, as Troilus does. Second, Troiolo swears by his desire not to fall into Agamemnon's hands, while Troilus introduces the idea of becoming the Greek king's captive. Third, Troiolo does not swear to serve Pandaro as his slave wherever he goes)! The juxtaposition of Achilles' and Agamem .. 31. Windeatt, ed., Troilus and Criseyde, 267-68.

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non's names alone might cause a reader to remember Briseis, the woman who precipitated their great dispute, but the references to slavery and cap . . tivity-especially the picture of Troilus as Agamemnon's captivestrengthen the subtle evocation of her story. For Briseis, after all, writes to Achilles as a captive of "cruel kyng Agamenoun," and she begs him to take her with him if he decides to leave the war and go home, in order that she might become one of his household slaves. Rather than being capricious additions to Boccaccio's text, the details Chaucer introduces work together to recall the situation of Briseis; the point of such an allusive exercise is subtly to identify T roilus with the distraught heroine whose rhetoric he will later adopt. Another veiled allusion to the story of Briseis and Achilles relates to Briseis's medieval avatar, Criseyde. In book 2, Criseyde professes shock at Pandarus's suggestion that she should enter into an amorous relationship with Troilus: Allas, I wolde han trusted, douteles, That if that I thorugh my disauenture Hadde loued outher hym or Achilles, Ector, or any mannes creature, Ye nolde han had no mercy ne mesure On me, but alwey had me in repreue. This false worlde, allas, who may it leue?

As Windeatt's edition of the poem notes, Boccaccio's Criseida mentions only Troiolo in her speech reproving Pandarus. In his poem, Chaucer has added Criseyde's prominent mention of Achilles in the stress position at the end of the line. Why? This gratuitous reference to the Greek hero may be a backhanded reminder of another woman who, through "disauenture," had come to love Achilles, namely Briseis. In any event, this speech definitely lays out the possibility of Criseyde's loving a Greek warrior or a Trojan prince. Ironically, in spite of her protests, Criseyde ends up follow . . ing the very amorous trajectory that she envisions here, only in reverse. The presence of the story of Briseis in Troilus and Criseyde extends beyond allusions and influences to Chaucer's treatment of larger thematic issues. As I have argued above, Chaucer would have been well aware of the poetic genealogy of Boccaccio's Crise ida and Benoit's Briseida. He cer . .

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tainly knew Ovid's treatment of the Homeric Briseis and Chryseis in the Remedia amoris. There, in order to illustrate his claim that all love is van . . quished by a succeeding love, the praeceptor amoris trots out a lengthy exemplum: Vidit ut Atrides (quid enim non HIe videret, Cuius in arbitrio Graecia tota fuit?) Marte suo captam Chryselda, victor amabat: At senior stulte flebat ubique pater. Quid lacrimas, odiose senex? bene convenit illis: Officio natam laedis, inepte, tuo Quam postquam redde Calchas, ope tutus Achillis Iusserat, et patria est illa recepta domo, "Est" ait Atrides "illius proxima forma, Et, si prima sinat syllaba, nomen idem: Hanc mihi, si sapiat, per se concedat Achilles: Si minus, imperium sentiat HIe meum. Quod siquis vestrum factum hoc incusat, Achivi, Est aliquid valida sceptra tenere manu. Nam si rex ego sum, nee mecum dormiat ulla, In mea Thersites regna, licebat, eat." Dixit, et hanc habuit solacia magna prioris, Et posita est cura cura repulsa nova.

[When Atrides saw (for what could he not see, in whose power all Greece lay) Chryseis captured by his army, the conqueror loved her: but everywhere her old father wept stupid tears. Why do you weep, hateful old man? It is well with them; you hurt your daughter, you fool, by your officiousness. And when Calchas, safe under Achilles' protection, had ordered her to be restored, and she was taken back by her father's house, "There is one," said Atrides, "whose beauty is almost equal to hers, and, but for the first syllable, the name is just the same . If he were wise, Achilles would freely yield her to me; otherwise let him feel my power. If any of you, Acheans, blames this deed, it is something to hold a scepter in strong grasp. For if I am king, and I have no girl to sleep with me, Thersites may as well sit upon my throne." He spoke, and took her as ample solace for his former love; his passion was allayed, for the new drove out the old.]

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Ovid's retelling of this Homeric story serves an emblem of the com . . modification of women: Agamemnon does not desire a particular woman, so much as a sexual partner. To him, Briseis and Chryseis are interchange . . able and hence exchangeable. Even their names, which are simply patronymics, can hardly be distinguished from one another. In the mascu . . line world of the Trojan War, as Ovid presents it, one woman is as good as another; they are chattel, without identities or subjectivity of their own, property to be traded or exchanged by men. Carolyn Dinshaw, drawing on anthropological work on the "traffic in women," calls attention to similar patterns of exchange in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. 32 Though she does not suggest an Ovidian dimension to the pat~ern of exchange of women enacted in Chaucer's poem, I believe that Chaucer develops this theme from his reading of Ovid's retelling of the story of Agamemnon and Achilles, Chryseis and Briseis. Part of the Remedia amoris passage quoted above actually gets cited in the course of Troilus and Criseyde, as Pandarus, who serves as Troilus's own personal praeceptor amoris, gives Troilus advice in book 4. When Troilus becomes morose and depressed at the thought that Criseyde will be leaving him behind in Troy, Pandarus suggests that he find himself another girlfriend. With an Ovidian phrase from the final lines of the Remedia amons passage quoted above, Pandarus assures his friend, "The newe loue out chaceth ofte the old" (T&C 4.415). Troilus, in response, becomes angry when Pan . . darus suggests that he would stoop so low as to "traysen a wight that trewe is vnto me" (T&C 4.438); he will not commit amorous treason. For him, Criseyde simply cannot be exchanged for another woman, and he wants no new lady, just as Briseis wanted no new master. At other points in the story, however, Troilus takes a less courtly, more Pandaric (or pandering) view of women. In a famous conversation in book 3, Troilus assures Pandarus that he has done no "baudreye" in making arrangements for Troilus's sexual enjoyment of his own niece. Troilus, in fact, offers to do the same for Pandarus, should he wish it: And that thow knowe I thynke nought, ne wene, That this seruise a shame be or iape, I have my faire suster, Polixene 32. Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989),56-64. The "traffic in women" is a phrase made famous by Gayle Rubin, "The Traffic in Women: Notes on the Political Economy of Sex," in Toward An Anthropology of Women, ed. Rayna R. Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 150-210.

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Cassandre, Eleyne, or any of the frape; Be she neuere so faire of weI y. . shape, Tel me which thow wilt of euerychone, To han for thyn, and lat me thanne aUone.

Here, we see Troilus taking a view of women as commodities, as objects to be exchanged by men. In return for Pandarus's "seruise" with respect to his niece, Troilus offers one of his own kinswomen. Troilus blithely assumes that he can somehow make his sisters (and even his "sister. . in . . law" Helen, whose track record thus far ought to suggest that she has her own ideas about her sexual partners) do his and Pandarus's bidding. His cataloging of them "or any of the frape" shows that when he is not personally involved with one of them, he sees women as fundamentally alike-as objects to serve male desires. As Dinshaw writes of this scene, "[I]n the ease with which Troilus offers his 'servise'-indeed, his sister-we sense that this view of women as gifts, tokens of exchange, is more basic to the relations between men in Troy than is the view of women as singular and unique."33 But even if Troilus refuses to exchange Criseyde for another, she does become an exchangeable commodity in the course of the poem. R. A. Shoaf has suggested some ways in which Criseyde's "falsing" of Troilus becomes associated with images of money and coinage.3 4 The beginning of book 4 presents the economy of the exchange of prisoners in which Criseyde becomes an unwilling participant: Of Priamus was yeve at Grekes requeste A tyme of trewe, and tho they gonnen trete Hire prisoners to chaungen, meste and leste, And for the surplus yeven sommes grete.

(T&C 4.57-60) The prisoners "meste" and leste" are here viewed in terms of their social status, in terms of who they will bring in exchange. And for the "surplus," the Trojans and Greeks will get cold hard cash: the ultimate commodification of a human being. When Hector protests against exchanging Criseyde, he uses exactly the same economic terminology, 33. Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, 61. 34. R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the Word (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1983), 10 7-9.

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exclaiming, "We usen here no wommen forto selle!" (T&C 4.182). Hec . . tor may not be interested in buying and selling women, but his brother Troilus certainly imagines asking for his lady Criseyde in marriage as an economic transaction: I haue ek thought, so it were hire assent, T a axe hire at my father of his grace; Than thynke I this were hire accusement, Syn weI I woot I may hire nought purchace.

Troilus has objected to Pandarus's suggestion that he exchange Criseyde for another woman, and he also objects to the Trojan parliament's plan to exchange her for Antenor. Nevertheless, in his manner of describing his father's permission, we see that even Troilus tends to think of Criseyde as a commodity that can be purchased. Like Chaucer's Criseyde, Ovid's Briseis knows what it is to be turned into an object of exchange. As Harold Jacobson has pointed out in his dis . . cuss ion of Heroides 3, Briseis's world has been ripped apart by war-she has no more security in the world, and she clings desperately to any scrap of it she can salvage from the wreckage of her life. She copes with her literal enslavement to Achilles by assenting to it and turning it into a psycholog . . ical enslavement.3 5 Afraid of what new calamity may befall her in the future, Briseis fears change. In this respect, especially, the character of Chaucer's Criseyde greatly resembles her Greek counterpart, and in fact, may have been inspired by it. As C. S. Lewis has argued, fear plays a major role in Criseyde's character: Chaucer has so emphasized the ruling passion of his heroine, that we cannot mistake it: It is Fear-fear of loneliness, of old age, of death, of love, and of hostility; of everything, indeed, that can be feared. And from this Fear springs the only positive passion which can be perma . . nent in such a nature; the pitiable longing, more childlike than wom . . anly, for protection, for some strong and stable thing that will hide her away and take the burden from her shoulders.3 6 35. See Jacobson, Ovid's "Heroides," 12-42; his view of Briseis's servitium amoris undergoes fur, ther development in Spoth, Ovids Heroides als Elegien, 67-76. 36. See C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (Oxford: Oxford Uni, versity Press, 1936), 185. More recently, Nolan, Tradition of Roman Antique, 234-43, discusses Criseyde's constant anxiety.

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At the beginning of the poem, Criseyde, like Briseis, is a fearful and for .. saken woman, though Criseyde has been abandoned by her father rather than by her lover. As we later learn from Calchas's speech to the Greeks, he left her behind at night while she was "slepyng at hom," much as The .. seus left Ariadne "slepying in an ile" (HF 4 I 6) to discover his treachery the following morning. When Calchas steals away from her with no warn .. ing or explanation, leaves Troy, and goes over to the Greeks, Criseyde sud .. denly finds herself in grave physical danger: The noise vp ros whan it was first aspied Thorugh al the town and generaly was spoken That Calkas traitour fled was and allied With hem of Grece, and casten to be wroken On hym that falsly hadde his feith so broken And seyden he and al his kyn atones Ben worthy to be brennen, felle and bones.

(T&C 1.85-91) Criseyde's fear and hesitancy, though often seen as a flaw in her character, are by no means unwarranted: as this passage indicates, the vox populi has spoken against her, and in fact, would like to see the punishment for her father's sins visited on her body. The narrator comments that "of her lif she was ful sore in drede" (1.95). And no wonder, for she "alday herd at ere / Hire fadres shame, his falsnesse and tresoun" (I. 106-7). Criseyde clearly understands her perilous position, for she seeks the protection of the most powerful man in Troy. Fortunately for her, Hector feels pity upon seeing such a beautiful creature in distress and assures her that she can rely on him. Nonetheless, though Hector may guarantee Criseyde's physical safety, she has other threats to worry about, as her reaction to Pandarus's news of "false" Poliphete's plan to bring "aduocacies newe" upon her indicates (T&C 2.1467-69). To the reader, the Poliphete episode may appear to be just another one of Pandarus's fabrications, created so that he may maneu .. ver Criseyde into a place where he can easily bring her to Troilus.3 7 But Pandarus's mention of Poliphete's "aduocacies newe" implies some previ .. ous legal challenge to Criseyde; her shock and concern show that Pandarus does not manufacture the threat of Poliphete's legal machinations out of

37. Fyier, "Fabrications of Pandar us,"

110,

argues that this is an "invented threat."

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whole cloth but has picked an enemy that Criseyde has contended against before: What is he more aboute me to drecche And don me wrong? what shal I doon, allas? Yet of hym self nothing ne wolde I recche, Nere it for Antenor and Eneas, That ben his frendes in swich manere cas. But for the loue of god, myn vncle deere, No fors of that, lat hym han al yfeere. Withouten that I have ynough for us.

(T&C 2.1471-78) Clearly, Pandarus's story sounds plausible precisely because Criseyde has experienced problems from that quarter before. Criseyde knows exactly what part of her property Poliphete seeks, for she assures Pandarus that she (and he) will have enough to live on without it. In fact, she says she would not worry about Poliphete's suit at all, except for his friends Antenor and Aeneas, who are well connected in Trojan society. As Windeatt notes in his edition, Antenor and Aeneas were eventually to betray Troy by aiding in the theft of the Palladium; ironically, in book 4, Antenor proves to be Criseyde's own downfall, since he is the warrior for whom Criseyde must be exchanged. As this sketch of Criseyde's circumstances in Troy suggests, she has had some cause to be concerned about the falseness of men. In the famous soliloquy in which Criseyde considers whether she ought to grant her love to Troilus, she talks about her fears of male betrayal: ffor euere some mystrust or nice strif Ther is in loue, som cloude is ouere that sonne. Therto we wrecched wommen no . . thing konne, Whan vs is wo, but wepe and sitte and thinke; Oure wrecche is this, oure owen wo to drynke. Also thise wikked tonges ben so preste To speke vs harm, ek men ben so vntrewe, That right anon as cessed is hire leste So cesseth loue, and forth to loue a newe; But harm y. . doon is doon, who . . so it rewe;

Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

IS7

ffor though thise men for loue him first to .. rende, fful sharp begynning breketh ofte at ende. How ofte tyme hath it y.. knowen be, The tresoun that to wommen hath ben do To what fyn is swich loue I kan nat see, Or wher bycometh it whan it is ago.

Criseyde views women as the victims of love, portraying them as power .. less, passive, and unable to do anything but "wepe and sitte and thinke" if something goes wrong. Boccaccio's Crise ida does express the concern that she may be only a passing fancy of the well .. born Troilus, saying, "questa amorosa brama gli passera" (Fil. 2.76: "This amorous desire will pass from him"). Chaucer's Criseyde, however, worries at length about the fickleness of men and refers to common knowledge about "the tresoun that to wom .. men hath ben do." She cites no specific examples, but like her uncle Pan .. darus, she may be aware that Helen has supplanted the nymph Oenone in the affections of Troilus's brother Paris. But ironically, Criseyde will be the lover who commits "tresoun"-the daughter of the traitor to Troy becomes a traitor to Troilus, while Troilus himself metaphorically turns into the abandoned women that Criseyde feared she might become. Through its network of allusions to the Heroides, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde keeps figures of abandoned women in the background of a narra .. tive that eventually upsets that gendered pattern-Troilus rather than Criseyde metamorphoses into a forlorn letter writer begging for the return of the beloved. Chaucer's narrative strategy allusively cross .. dresses his characters, so that Criseyde becomes identified with the false Paris while Troilus resembles the weeping Ariadne, and more importantly, Briseis. In a sense, the first prominent allusion to the Heroides, Pandarus's citation of Oenone's epistle to Paris serves as programmatic statement, symbolizing the way that Chaucer's citations of the Heroides in Troilus and Criseyde reverse the traditional gender .. roles of abandoner and abandoned. The narrator subversively reads the Heroides as Pandarus does, reading a man where we would expect to see a woman. Of course, Chaucer's reinscription of the gendered master .. narrative of abandonment provoked some resis .. tance-not the least of which comes from the narrator himself, as he con .. tinually apologizes for Criseyde's upsetting (and unwomanly) behavior. In his next fiction, the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer portrays himself as

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being forced by his critics to write stories that conform to the convention of female abandonment-to read the Heroides straight, rather than side .. ways. Yet, as we shall see in the next chapter, in bringing stories of aban .. doned women out of the allusive background of his texts and into the fore .. ground, Chaucer does not simply capitulate to simpleminded critics. His rereadings of the Heroides in the Legend challenge the conventions of his chosen genre, even as those in the Troilus challenge the conventions of gender roles.

~

Six

~

Chaucer's Heroides The Legend of Good Women

he Prologue to Chaucer's Legend of Good Women positions the poem as a palinode to the tale of betrayal and abandonment enacted in Troilus and Criseyde. In the Prologue's dream . . vision, the god of love, one of Chaucer's most comically obtuse exegetes, takes the poet . . narrator to task for his previous literary sins against his law-namely, his translation of the Roman de la Rose and his composition of Troilus and Criseyde. Fortu . . nately {or perhaps unfortunately} for the tongue . . tied narrator, the god of love's consort, Alceste, steps in to aid him, concluding her defense by deciding that he should simply plea . . bargain and accept the following lighter sentence:

T

Thou shalt, whil that thow livest, yer by yere, The moste partye of thy tyme spende In makynge of a gloryous legende Of goode women, maydenes and wyves, That were trewe in lovynge al here lyves; And telle of false men that hem betrayen 159

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That al here lyf ne don nat but assayen How manye we men they may don a shame; For in youre world that is now holden game.

(LGWG 471-79) For Alceste (and presumably for the god of love), the logical antidote to the tale of female betrayal and male fidelity told in the Troilus lies in a col .. lection of stories about "good women" whose goodness chiefly consists in their steadfastness in the face of male betrayal. Oddly enough, the god of love seems so concerned at redressing the poet .. narrator's crimes against women that he does not realize that tales focusing on male infidelity will probably do precious little to further Love's cause with female auditors, and perhaps might instead prompt them to conclude that she "nys but a verray propre fol / that loveth paramours to harde and hote" (G 259-60)hardly a sentiment that the god would approve. Given Alceste's thematic requirements, Chaucer's poet .. narrator decided to turn to Ovid's Heroides for many of the individual stories that make up the "gloryous legende" that follows. The similarities between Chaucer's Legend and the Heroides extend beyond their subject matter. Both the Legend of Good Women and the Heroides are generally ranked among their authors' minor works, over .. shadowed by larger narrative collections; both are named in other works in their author's oeuvre, as Ovid praises himself for the innovation of his epistolary collection in the Ars amatoria and the Man of Law mentions the "Seintes Legende of Cupide" in a catalog of the Chaucer's works in the Canterbury Tales. Moreover, as Michael Calabrese suggests, Chaucer's positioning of the Legend as a penance for literary sins may ultimately derive from medieval biographical readings of Ovid's works. I Such inter .. pretations viewed the Heroides as Ovid's attempt to write himself back into the good graces of offended Roman women or even the godlike and angry emperor, who had allegedly exiled the erring love poet for the erotic excesses of the Amores and the Ars amatoria. 2 In both cases, the poet him .. I. See Michael Calabrese, Chaucer's Ovidian Arts of Love (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994), 17-18. 2. See Huygens, Accessus ad auctores, 32: "Ipse accusatis fuit apud Cesarem, quia scriptis suis romanas matonas illicitos amores docuisset; unde librum scriptsi eis, istum exemplum propones, ut sci at amando quas debeant imitari, quas non" [(Ovid) was accused before Caesar, because his writ~ ings taught Roman matrons illicit loves; therefore he wrote this book for them, that by setting forth this example, they might know which they should imitate in loving and which not]. A thir~ teenth~century biography printed in Nogara, "Di alcune vite," 422, says that Ovid wrote the Hero~

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self becomes implicitly cast in the role of the imploring women he por . . trays. Similarly, Rita Copeland points out analogies between the Prologue to the Legend and the accessus to medieval manuscripts of the Heroides, which gave their readers background material on Ovid as well as a state . . ment of his intent in writing the work and the moral lessons that could be drawn from it) Finally, modern critics have not arrived at a consensus about either poem {or rather, collection of poems)-each has been inter . . preted on the one hand as a straightforward and sympathetic portrayal of women and on the other as an ironic, parodic work that points out their shortcomings. This wide spectrum of critical opinion is usually seen as stemming from a flaw in the works themselves: namely, their inconsistency of tone, their rapid shifts between pathos and wit.4 To give a few examples of such tonal inconsistencies in the Legend, what should a reader make of the fact that the narrator says he is too busy to describe Antony and Cleopatra's wedding feast in the Legend of Cleopa . . tra, but then spends thirty lines in a description of the battle of Actium, in which Cleopatra does not appear at all? What of the sexual wordplay that Sheila Delany sees in the chaste . . seeming Legend of Thisbe?5 What of the narrator's rush to end the Legend of Philomela-apparently so that he does not have to describe the grisly feast in which this legendary "good woman" and her sister Procne punish her rapist brother. . in . . law by serving up his son for dinner? These examples come from legends other than those that Chaucer derives from the epistles of abandoned women in Ovid's Heroides (namely those of Dido, Ariadne, Phyllis, Medea, and Hypsipyle), but some critics have also pointed out incongruous elements within this Ovidian group of legends. For instance, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra, royal princesses of Crete, seem to overhear Theseus's complaint about his imprisonment through a latrine shaft. And Jason and Demophoon are both jocularly described in barnyard language. 6 ides from exile. See also Ghisalberti, "Medieval Biographies of Ovid," 44, which gives the text of a fifteenth~century accessus to the Heroides that claims that Ovid wrote this work in the hope of being recalled from exile by the emperor. 3. Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Tradi~ tions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 186-97. See chapter I for a more detailed discussion of the medieval accessus to Ovid's Heroides. 4. See chapter I for a survey of this opposition in modern criticism on the Heroides. For a dis-cuss ion of tonal shifts in the Legend, see Frank, Chaucer and the Legend, 206. 5. See Sheila Delany, The Naked Text: Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 130-3 2 . 6. For instance, see Frank, Chaucer and the Legend, 115-17, 86, and 149-51, for these obser-vations. Many more could be added by William Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges: The Performability

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For readers, these odd details and variations in tone are unsettling, forc . . ing a continual reexamination of their own investment in these stories, and of their own complicity with the narrator's point of view. The tonal shifts act as alienation devices, distancing readers from the text and reminding them to beware of getting caught up in the narrator's rhetoric, for the narrator's performance-like the sweet talk of the false men whom he denounces-also aims to persuade, to seduce, and thus gives only a par . . tial and fragmentary representation of the "real" story. Ovid's heroines try to persuade their betrayers to see events from their point of view; Chaucer's somewhat bumbling narrator tries to fit an unlikely crew of clas . . sical women into pseudo . . Christian Martyrerakten to convince the god of love of his repentance. In the Heroides, the witty lapses in decorum help remind readers that what they are reading is a fiction constructed as a sophisticated literary challenge to earlier poets' fictions, rather than a genuine woman's voice. In the Legend of Good Women, the narrator's clumsy occupatio and bluster . . ing asides repeatedly draw the reader's attention to the fact that the stories have been selectively edited in order to get the poet . . narrator out of trou . . ble with a courtly readership that prefers stories that conform to simple ethical schemes. 7 Chaucer's Legend, then, can be interpreted as a medita . . tion on the power of (male) poets to enshrine or defame their subjectsespecially women-in the service of their own ideological ends. Ovid's Heroides questions and casts a satirical eye on the high seriousness of epic ideals, revealing that the epic point of view succeeds by silencing dissent . . ing voices (especially those of women); Chaucer's Legend demonstrates how poets deform their portrayals of women's lives in the service of the courtly idealism symbolized by the god of love, an idealism that celebrates female passivity and denies the psychological complexities of individual experience. Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of novelistic discourse, genre, and parody can help explicate aspects of the Legend of Good Women that have proved of the "Legend of Good Women" (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1994). Quinn reads the entire Legend ironically, discovering humorous incongruities seemingly every~ where in the text on the basis of the way Chaucer might have performed the Legend, a tactic that results in an extremely speculative, and to my mind, unconvincing reading of the poem. 7. For a discussion of how the Legend adopts (and perhaps parodies) the editing practices of medieval commentaries on the Heroides, see Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 199-200 .

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perennially challenging to critics. Marina Brownlee has applied some of Bakhtin's ideas to Ovid's text (see chap. I), pointing out that the Heroides stage an "admixture and conflict of alien discourses that is consummately novelistic."8 Her Bakhtinian view of the Heroides serves as the basis for a rehabilitative reading of the poem, for it enables her to include both of Ovid's rhetorical extremes in an understanding of his art rather than priv . . ileging one and considering the other an artistic flaw. Despite Brownlee's suggestive lead, no recent critic writing on Chaucer's Legend of Good Women appears to have turned to Bakhtin's work when negotiating the tonal problems of this notoriously difficult text. 9 Nevertheless, because Chaucer's text relativizes the discourse of his Ovidian heroines (by marking it off as direct speech), frequently refers to and parodies other literary forms (including the courtly lyrics of the French Marguerite poets, alliterative romances, and hagiography), calls into question the stylistic pronouncements of Love (who prefers mono . . logic, didactic literature), and gestures at polyglot sources that show the writer's awareness of his discourse as "already spoken," Bakhtin's theories about novelistic discourse provide a useful framework for examining how Chaucer incorporates Ovid's abandoned women into the Legend. Although Bakhtin generally excludes poetry from his conception of novelistic discourse, he does admit that poetry can exhibit novelistic ten . . dencies in certain circumstances, especially when it is linked to genres such as parody and satire that feed off of other literary genres. For Bakhtin, these "indirect" genres, which play with others' words, offer an ideologi . . cally motivated riposte to more exclusive forms of representation: For any and every straightforward genre, any and every direct dis . . course-epic, tragic, lyric, philosophical-may and must itself become the object of representation, the object of a parodic travestying "mim . . icry." It is as if such mimicry rips the word away from its object, dis . . unifies the two, shows that a given straightforward generic word-epic or tragic-is one . . sided, bounded, incapable of exhausting the object; the process of parodying forces us to experience those sides of the 8. Brownlee, The Severed Word, 27. 9. H. Anne Payne, Chaucer and Menippean Satire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981); Nicholas Lawton, Chaucer's Narrators (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985); and John Ganim, Chaucerian Theatricality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), have all applied Bakhtinian ideas to Chaucer, but these critics have not extended their discussions to the Legend.

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object that are not otherwise included in a given genre or a given style. 10 Bakhtin's discussion of the "indirect forms" that led to the novel surveys the persistence of this tradition during the Middle Ages. Bakhtin empha .. sizes the importance of "the relationship to another's word" in medieval literature, taking the continual infiltration of the authoritative Word of the Bible and the words of the church fathers into the works of learned writers as his primary example. This appropriation of authoritative sacred discourse could range from pious quotation to disrespectful parody-and, as Bakhtin notes, in a given instance it may not be easy for us to determine the tonal shading of a specific writer's scriptural or liturgical borrowings: The transitions between various nuances on this spectrum are to such an extent flexible, vacillating and ambiguous that it is often difficult to decide whether we are confronting a reverent use of a sacred word or a more familiar, even parodic playing with it; if the latter, then it is often difficult to determine the degree of license permitted in that play. I I Bakhtin's question about the license permitted to the parodic appropria .. tion of sacred speech opens up the question of whether such forms of sacred parody are a blasphemous disavowal of the sacred Word. However, in another context, Bakhtin makes it clear that the parodic use of another's word should not be taken as prima facie evidence that a writer denigrates the content of that word-only its ossified, artificial, and arid stylization. As he notes in his discussion of ancient parody, Ancient parody was free from any nihilistic denial. It was not, after all, the heroes who were parodied, nor the Trojan War and its partici .. pants; what was parodied was only its epic heroization; not Hercules and his exploits, but their tragic heroization .... The direct and serious word was revealed, in all its limitations and insufficiency, only after it had become the laughing image of that word-but it was by no means discredited in the process. 12

10. I I.

12.

Bakhtin, "Prehistory," 55. Bakhtin, "Prehistory," 69-70. Bakhtin, "Prehistory," 55-56.

Chaucer's Heroides

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Thus, Bakhtin points out that it did not disturb the Greeks to attribute a parody of Homeric style to Homer himself (the War between the Frogs and Mice) and one might add, the Romans to attribute the Culex to Virgil. Similarly, in his treatment of various types of sacred parody during the Middle Ages, such as the Cyprian feasts, parodic prayers, parodic liturgies, the risus paschalis, and the festa stultorum, Bakhtin emphasizes that these genres were not only permitted by the church hierarchy-in many cases they were sponsored by it. Thus, parody, and specifically sacred parody, need not be regarded as signs of cynicism or skepticism; such appropria .. tions of "another's word" are more likely to be a lighthearted jeu d'esprit than bitter mockery. Bakhtin's concept of parody provides a useful corrective to an overly ironic reading of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women that would view the Legend as "a most unmerciful satire upon women," as H. C. Goddard wrote nearly a century ago in one of the first lengthy critical discussions of the poem. I3 In Goddard's view, the Legend was to be read as a satire upon women, a misogynist satire that said, in effect, "You want good womenhere, I'll give you good women," and then proceeded to find the most notorious, negative exempla possible to show just what women are really like, telling only a very small part of the story so as not to upset Love. Cer .. tainly, I would agree with this early critic's view of the Legend as parodic and ironic, but I do not agree that its satire targets women. Recall that the women whom the narrator portrays in the course of the Legend are women from the distant past: legendary figures, literary figures-even the real his .. torical figures Cleopatra and Lucretia are portrayed through the mediation of literary representations. Thus, the "facts" about these women do not come from the narrator's experience, but from his written authoritiesauthorities who have performed acts of interpretation and editorial shap .. ing on the "real" narratives of these women's lives comparable to those that the narrator imposes on their texts. In reality, the target of the parody in the Legend of Good Women is not women themselves, but forms of liter.. ary representation by (male) poets and the courtly ideology that makes the idealization of women into an end in itself, a counterreligion. In a swift rebuttal to Goddard's article published only a year later, John Livingston Lowes strongly argued that women such as Cleopatra and 13. See H. C. Goddard, "Chaucer's Legend of Good Women," Journal of English and Germanic Philology 7 (I 908): I 10.

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Medea whom Goddard found so ludicrously out of place in a portrayal of "good women" actually appear elsewhere in courtly catalogs of good women. Lowes's attempt to establish a literary,historical context for the Legend was certainly a useful corrective to Goddard's purely formalist interpretation. I4 Nevertheless, Lowes's reading, which pulled these cata, logs out of context, did not question whether they should be read as a "straight" authorial statement, or whether they are focalized, placed in the mouth of a character whose words are directed toward some particular rhetorical end or included in a context that would warn the reader not to accept them as exemplary.I5 Even readers who accepted Lowes's assump, tion that the compilers of these catalogs were utterly sincere in their por, trayals of "Love's martyrs," need not conclude, based upon this proposi, tion, that Chaucer's catalog in the Legend is in earnest rather than "game," as Lowes claimed long ago. I6 If catalogs of "Love's martyrs" containing women such as Cleopatra and Medea were as well known in the courtly lit, erature of Chaucer's day as Lowes claimed, it would not be at all anachro, nistic to conclude that the object of parody in the Legend is not the women but precisely that tradition itself-a tradition that also demands of its nar .. rator a unified stylization of discourse that the heterogeneous voices of the Legend of Good Women rebel against. The Legend, and especially its Prologue, which explicitly glances back at the French sources underlying Chaucer's early poetry, can be read as Chaucer's farewell to his career as courtly "maker" in favor of a new form of poetry that does not exclude the uncourtly, the mundane, or even the obscene. Chaucer's return to the dream,vision in the Legend could be viewed as a retrograde movement in his poetry, since he had moved beyond this literary device in the Troilus. And so it is, but deliberately so, as Chaucer revisits his earlier poetic debts only in order to demonstrate how much he has grown away from them. Two modern discussions of the Legend have drawn parallels between it and Dante's Commedia, a poem that Chaucer knew well and glancingly alludes to in the Legend. 17 Hence, 14. John L. Lowes, "Is Chaucer's Legend of Good Women a Travesty?" Journal of English and

Germanic Philology 8 (1909): 513-69. 15. For instance, Lowes, "Chaucer's Legend," 563-64, cites the portrayal of several of these women in Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione as standard exemplars of Love. While this is true, Lowes neglects to mention that the heavenly guide's negative judgment on them makes their status ambiguous. 16. For a discussion of such catalogs, see Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991). 17. See Donald Rowe, Through Nature to Eternity: Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" (Lin~ coIn: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 87-1°7; and Lisa Kiser, Truth and Textuality in Chaucer's Poetry (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1995),95-110.

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it does not seem inappropriate to see this step in Chaucer's career as anal . . ogous to the step in Dante's career from the monologic "courtly" poetry of his Vita Nuova and his affirmation of the "illustrious vernacular" purged of municipal influences in his De Vulgari Eloquentia to the linguistic cornu . . copia of styles in the Commedia, ranging from the "parole ornate" of Virgil to the low slang of the devils in Malebolge and the simplicity of baby talk. 18 Dante styles his poen1 a comedia that contrasts with the "parole ornate" of Virgil's "alta ... tragedla." Similarly, the narrator's leave . . taking of his work in T roilus and Criseyde, Go, litel bok, go litel myn tragedye, Ther God thi makere yet, er that he dye, So sende myght to make in som comedye!

(T&C 5.1786-88) may also be read as looking toward a new form of "makying" in the future: The Legend of Good Women, which, like the Troilus that preceded it, reex . . amines both the limited ideology and the constrained language of courtly "makyng." The Prologue to Chaucer's Legend is the best . . known part of the poem, and critical discussions of the poem have frequently chosen to focus on it and ignore the legends of individual women that follow it, thus consigning these female characters to a marginal status in the critical tradition. I9 Cer. . tainly, the neglect of the Legendary portion of the Legend during much of the twentieth century was at least partly due to the still . . unsettled critical controversy over which of the two prologues is prior, a debate that deflected attention from the rest of the work.20 In scholarly studies written in the last two decades, Chaucer critics have begun to deal with the prob . . lems of the Legendary, rather then simply dismissing this part of the poem as one of the his failures and refusing to take it seriously, as earlier writers 18. See Robert Hollander, "Babytalk in Dante's Commedia, " Studies in Dante, L' Interprete 16 (Ravenna: Longo, 1980), 115-29, for a discussion of Dante's revisionist response to his earlier stylistic strictures in the De Vulgari Eloquentia. 19. One gets the feeling that some commentators would be much happier had Chaucer choo' sen to break off the work after the end of the Prologue instead of toward the end of the Legend of Hypermnestra. In fact, E. Talbot Donaldson, Chaucer's Poetry: An Anthology for the Modem Reader (New York: Ronald Press, 1958),514-31, prints only the Prologue to the Legend, thus reifying a divorce that had already taken place in the minds of many of the poem's critics. 20. See John L. Lowes, "The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women as Related to the French Marguerite Poems and to the Filostrato," PMLA 19 (1904): 593-683, and Lowes, "Chronological Relations," 749-864, on the dating problem.

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ABANDONED WOMEN

on the poem tended to do. 21 While I aim in this chapter to discuss in some detail the poem's treatment of one particular Ovidian abandoned woman, an encounter that takes place within the Legendary, I nevertheless wish to first take up the Prologue in order to understand the rhetorical positioning of the individual legends and of their narrator. 22 Like one of Chaucer's best . . known prologues, that of the Wife of Bath's Tale, the Prologue begins with a meditation on experience and authority. The narrators begins by citing the commonplace, "[T]here is joye in hevene and peyne in helle" (LGW G 2). As Mario Praz points out, the narrator's statement, ... [T]here ne is non that dwelleth in this contre That eyther hath in helle or hevene ybe, Ne may of it non other weyes witen But as he hath herd seyd or founde it writen; For by assay there may no man it preve

explicitly calls into question the mode of otherworldly seeing vouchsafed to Dante-at least for himself and fellow residents of England. 23 Even in the opening of the Legend, then, we can see examples of what Bakhtin might refer to as novelistic discourse. The narrator begins by explicitly rehearsing "another's word"-a piece of proverbial lore about heaven and hell. His next lines call that statement into question by asking what grounds there are for it, and in doing so, challenges the authority of Dante, who claimed that he had "proved it by assay." The narrator concludes his epistemological inquiry by deciding that belief does not require firsthand 21. For instance, see Rowe, Through Nature to Eternity; Delany, The Naked Text; and Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges. Donaldson's comment on the breaking off of the legendary is telling:

"Whether the termination was caused by Anne's death or by the poet's revulsion at having to vary the same old moral once again, we do not know. We may safely share Chaucer's relief that the task did not have to be carried on" (Chaucer's Poetry, 959). Robert B. Buriin, Chaucerian Fiction (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, I 977), 34, views the work even more critically, call~ ing the legendary portion of the poem a "colossal blunder." 22. Discussion here takes the G Prologue as text. For an account of the chronology of the pro~ logues, see Quinn's Chaucer's Rehersynges, 23-60, which argues the rhetoric of F is oriented toward performance and that G is a later reworking aimed at a reading audience. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation, 197, also argues that G is the later text. 23. Mario Praz, "Chaucer and the Great Italian Writers of the Trecento," in The Flaming

Heart: Essays on Crashaw, Machiavelli, and Other Studies in the Relations between Italian and English Literature from Chaucer to Eliot (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, I966 ), 53.

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knowledge; to make his point, he cites another proverb, "Bernard the monk ne say nat aI, pardee" (LGW G 16), a reference that suggests that faith in things unseen remains necessary even for those, like Bernard of Clairvaux, who have experienced divine revelation. The narrator ends his meditation on authority with a hymn to books as the key of remembrance, concluding that we should believe "olde bokes" in those cases where "there is non other assay by preve" (G 27-28). Clearly, the opening of the poem sets the stage for the entrance of another of Chaucer's bookish nar' rators. As it turns out, this narrator has a soft spot in his heart for daisies as well as for books. With the narrator's evocative description of a flowery field in the season of May (the usual chronotope for medieval romance as well as courtly love lyric) the poem again ventures into the territory of "another's word."24 The narrator treads the well,worn paths of courtly poetry; his debts to the French "makers" Froissart, Machaut, and Deschamps in these descriptive passages have been extensively cataloged. 25 For the purposes of my discussion here, it is not necessary to detail the borrowings from these individual poets; rather, one simply needs to be aware of the insertion of other voices and genres within the discourse of the poem. As if to acknowledge the thoroughgoing bookishness of his descriptions of the natural world-the fact that his words actually belong to other writ, ers-the narrator here pauses to acknowledge his poetic debts and to con, fess the inadequacy of his own discourse: For weI I wot that folk han here,beforn Of makyng ropen, and lad awey the corn; [And] I com after, glenynge here and there, And am ful glad if I may fynde an ere Of any goodly word that they han left.

(LGW G 61-65) Even in this fascinating confession of poetic belatedness, the narrator ends up appropriating "another's word"-this time, the discourse of the Bible 24. On the concept of the "chronotope," see M. M. Bakhtin, "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel," in The Dialogic Imagination, 84-258. 25. See Lowes, "French Marguerite Poems" and "Chronological Relations" as well as Marian Lossing, "The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women and the Lai de Franchise," Studies in Philo I. . ogy 39 (194 2 ): 15-35; James 1. Wimsatt, Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 165-67, 181-87; and the notes by M. C. E. Shaner in Benson, Riverside Chaucer.

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and of biblical exegesis. As Ellen Martin points out in an article on this topos, allusions to the story of Ruth, who as a widow in a strange land asked leave of Boaz to glean the wheat left over after the laborers had taken in the harvest, frequently appear in prologues to medieval scriptural commentary.26 Martin writes that "the exegetes find in Ruth a figure that shows how a story of humility can work as an affirmation of individual invention." For the exegete (to use the reading in the Glossa Ordinaria), the first harvest is by preachers who harvest spiritual meanings from Scrip .. ture, while the ears left for Ruth "are the most sublime truths that are understood only after an initial reading."2 7 Thus, Martin suggests, the seeming humility of the narrator's identification of himself as a gleaner may actually conceal a more authoritative poetic stance. 28 However, the fact that the narrator's protestations of his own "belatedness" (to use Harold Bloom's terminology) are also borrowed from another source sug .. gests that Chaucer intends this witty bricolage to tell us something about his narrator's deference to others' authority rather than showing him claiming any for himself.29 Moreover, Martin does not consider in detail the implications of the narrator's identification of himself with the figure of Ruth. In this passage, the narrator implicitly identifies his own act of poetic making-the praise of May and the daisy-with the activities of someone humble, marginal and female, an exile who picks through the leavings of others. The narrator's humility, be it real or feigned, proves to be a prologue to his own humiliation: as Elaine Tuttle Hansen suggests, in the course of the dream drama that follows, the narrator becomes "feminized" and disem .. powered.3° In the scene with Love and Alceste, the narrator's earlier works are misread and misunderstood, he is not allowed to defend himself against Love's charges, and ultimately, he must bow to the whim of the tyrannical god (who calls the narrator a worm and points out in no uncertain terms the narrator's inadequacies as a lover and a poet). Alceste at first appears 26. Ellen E. Martin, "Chaucer's Ruth: An Exegetical Poetic in the Prologue to the Legend of

Good Women," Exemplaria 2 (1991): 467-90. 27. Martin, "Chaucer's Ruth," 472. 28. Martin's "Chaucer's Ruth" focuses only on the Prologue and only on this figure. She inter, prets the narrator straightforwardly as "Chaucer" and accepts his discourse as authorial, an identification I prefer to avoid. 29. For Bloom's ideas about poetic competitiveness, see The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973). 30. See Elaine Tuttle Hansen, Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), I-10, on the "feminization" of men in general and the nar' rator in particular in the Legend.

Chaucer's Heroides

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to be his ally against the angry god, but in the course of "defending" him she tells Love that the narrator cannot be held responsible for his past lit . . erary misdeeds since he was just translating someone else's words and did not really know what he was saying. She implicitly compares the narrator to a fly, cuts him off when he tries to defend himself, and designs the poetic penance that the god of love will impose upon him. While this treatment may be hard on the narrator, it is nonetheless highly entertaining for the reader to watch Chaucer pit his narrative persona against these two mis . . guided exegetes. For these otherworldly beings, the narrator's most recent poetry is too complex, too ambiguous-they want unproblematic poems, not stories that show love as mutable or women as "slyding of corage." By having Love read Criseyde into an exemplum of falsehood, Chaucer illustrates the kind of reading that results from Love's "draf and corn" poetics, a hermeneutic stance that sweeps away the complexities of human behavior and of its literary representations, replacing them with sententious plati . . tudes)I Implicitly, Chaucer warns his readers against adopting such an interpretive stance themselves-and in the stories that follow, he presents his readers with a series of tales that repeatedly threaten to break out of the moralizing straightjacket in which his blustering narrator strives to enclose them. It is no wonder that that the narrator always seems in a hurry to move on to the next story before he loses control of his material. In expos . . ing the arbitrariness of a totalizing reading that simply labels the aban . . doned women of the Heroides as "good," Chaucer also shows his skepticism about moralizing readings of the Heroides, which viewed many of the hero . . ines as examples of stultus arnor-foolish love. 32 Rather than exploring all the individual legends (a project that in itself would require-and has received-more than one book), I wish to exam . . ine one in which Chaucer's intertextual play with types of discourse and with his auctores is a major motif)3 In the Legend of Dido, Chaucer retells a classic (if not the classic) narrative of love, betrayal, and abandonment: the story of Aeneas and Dido. Virgil appears to have invented the tale of their amorous involvement in his Aeneid (up to then, Dido had generally 3 I. Chaucer's send;up of the God of Love and his "draf and com" interpretive approach should serve as a warning against applying similar "fruyt and chaff' hermeneutic models to his own poetry, though it apparently did not in the case of some exegetical critics. 32. See the discussion of the commentary tradition in the introduction. 33. For instance, see Frank, Chaucer and the Legend; Delany, The Naked Text; Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges; and Florence Percival, Chaucer's Legendary Good Women (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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been viewed as a chast~ widow), a story that Ovid turned inside out in Dido's letter to the Trojan hero in Heroides 7.3 4 As discussed in my intro . . ductory chapter, Chaucer had already told this tale in his summary of the Aeneid in the first book of the House of Fame, a text that also incorporates elements of Ovid's Heroides. As Marilynn Desmond has argued, in the course of the Legend, Chaucer not only revises his auctores, Virgil and Ovid-he also engages in a revisionary dialogue with one of his own ear . . lier literary productions.3 5 The opening lines of the Legend of Dido crystallize the intertextual allu . . siveness and textual revisionism that I see as the controlling narrative strategies of this tale. Here Chaucer's narrator (for, as in all of Chaucer's fictions, we must be wary of too closely identifying his narrative persona as his authorial voice) again adopts what we might call a "belated" poetic stance, proclaiming himself only a follower of the greatest of the Latin authors: Glorye and honour, Virgil Mantoan, Be to thy name! and I shal, as I can Folwe thy lantern, as thou gost byforn, How Eneas to Dido was forsworn. In thyn Eneyde and Naso wol I take The tenor, and the grete effectes make.

(LGW 924-29) However, these lines are not precisely the profession of humility toward Virgil that they may at first appear. In keeping with the narrator's ten . . dency to glean from his auctores, they derive from Dante-more specifically, from Dante's Statius, who uses similar language in Purgatorio 22 to compare Virgil to a man who goes by night and carries the light behind him: "Facesti come quei che va di notte, / che porta illume dietro e se non giova / ma dopo se fa Ie persone dotte" (Purg. 22.67-69: "You were like one who goes by night and carries the light behind him and profits not himself, but makes those wise who follow him").3 6 In Dante's poem, these 34. See N. M. Horsfall, "Dido in the Light of History," in Oxford Readings in Vergil's "Aeneid," 13 8-44. 35. Desmond, Reading Dido, 152. 36. See Howard SchIess, Chaucer and Dante (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984), 159, cit~ ing G. o. Chapman, "Chaucer and Dante," Times Literary Supplement, August 29, 1952, 565. SchIess also suggests Inf. 1.82-87, in which Dante addresses Virgil as the "glory and light of other poets."

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lines do not constitute unmitigated praise of Virgil, for the image shows that although he bore the light of truth in his poetry, the pagan Virgil could make no use of it himself. The narrator compounds his apparently flattering backhanded slam at Virgil with another startling line-namely, that he will follow Virgil in telling "How Eneas to Dido was forsworn" (LGW 927). Of course, this is precisely what Virgil does not do in book 4 of the Aeneid-he makes it abundantly clear that Aeneas himself never swore an oath or made a vow of any sort to Dido; while Aeneas may feel sad about the unfortunate hand that the gods have dealt in making him leave Carthage to seek his high destiny without Dido, he certainly does not "forswear" her. Generations of those who, like the young Augustine, have "wept for Dido" may feel the emotional pull of the abandoned queen, but Virgil makes sure that his audience knows that the only vows exchanged between Dido and Aeneas happened in Dido's mind)7 The phrase "Virgil Mantoan" in these lines pointedly underlines to the narrator's willful misreading of Aeneid 4. In Inferno 20, the canto con . . cerned with the Theban prophetess Manto and the founding of Virgil's hometown Mantua, Dante's Virgil gives an account of the origin of the city differing markedly that given in the Aeneid and then announces to us, "se tu mai odi / originar la mia terra altrimenti, / la verita nulla menzogna frodi" (Inf. 20.97-99: "If ever you hear other origin given to my city, let no falsehood defraud the truth"})8 In saying this, Dante's Mantuan Virgil implicitly retracts the story given in the Aeneid as a lie and offers a new, improved version in its place. At times, Chaucer's narrator seems to be fol . . lowing a "Virgil Mantoan" whose text has also been somehow rewritten. Viewed in the context of the Dantesque allusions I am suggesting, the nar . . rator's fulsome "invocation" of Virgil draws our attention to the textual revisions of Virgil that play such an important role in both Dante's Com . . media and the Legend of Dido that follows. Even if the second of these parallels may seem overly subtle, the narra . . tor clearly wants his audience to guess that he is up to something when he talks of following book 4 of the "Eneyde" and Epistle 7 of Publius Ovidius 37. For the contrast between the narrator's opinion of Dido's relationship with Aeneas and the queen's own subjective view, see Niall Rudd, "Dido's Culpa," in Harrison, Oxford Readings, 153-54. In addition, see Aeneas's objections to Dido's view of their relationship in Aeneid 4.338-39, quoted below. 38. For a discussion of Dante's subversive rewriting of Virgil, see Hollander, "The Tragedy of Divination in Inferno XX," in Studies in Dante, 131-218.

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"Naso's" Heroides in one breath. The problem here is that Virgil's and Ovid's accounts of Dido simply cannot be reconciled-as countless critics have noted, Virgil's raging fury does not take the same tone as Ovid's pathetic heroine; there are unresolvable differences between the Aeneid and Heroides 7, the text that really tells "How Eneas to Dido was forsworn" (LGW 927). The narrator may think that he can smooth Virgil and Ovid together and that no one will notice, but at least one late . . medieval reader did notice and strongly objected-namely, the Middle Scots poet Gavin Dou . . glas, who, in the Prologue to his 1513 translation of the Aeneid, takes Chaucer to task for the narrator's misprision of Virgil in the Legend of Good

Women: I say nocht this of Chauser for offens, Bot till excuss my lewyt insufficiens, For as he standis beneth Virgill in gre Vndir hym alsfer I grant my self to be And netheless into sum place, quha kend it, My mastir Chauser gretly Virgill offendit. All thoch I be tobald hym to repreif, He was fer baldar, certis, by hys leif Sayand he follow it Virgilis lantern toforn Quhou Eneas to Dydo was forsworn.

Douglas continues by mounting a defense of Aeneas's good name and high destiny, yet in his conclusion he excuses his poetic master's unfortunate lapse: Bot sikkyrly of resson me behufis Excuss Chaucer fra all maner repruffis In lovyng of thir ladeis lylly quhite He set on Virgill and Eneas this wyte, For he was evir (God wait) all womanis frend. (Prol. 445-49)

39. All quotations from Gavin Douglas's translation of the Aeneid are from Virgil's "Aeneid" Translated into Scottish Verse, ed. David F. C. Coldwell (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1957)·

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Douglas equates the narrator of the tales with Chaucer himself, who, by his maligning of Virgil and sanctification of Dido, merits a place as "all womanis frend." Given Chaucer's earlier exploration of the tensions between the Virgilian and Ovidian Dido figures in the House of Fame, Douglas's conflation of Chaucer the author with the Legend's narrator is not groundless-however, recall that in both the House of Fame and The Legend of Good Women, Chaucer's version of the Aeneid story occurs within the framework of a dream .. vision refracted through the conscious .. ness of a not .. completely reliable narrator. Nevertheless, rather than dwell on the problem of Chaucer's narrators, I wish to return to the text of the Legend of Dido to see just what aspects of its rewriting of the Aeneid gave Gavin Douglas pause. After the opening quoted above in which he professes to follow Virgil, "as I can," Chaucer's narrator actually does follow Virgil fairly closely in recounting the events leading up to Aeneas's arrival in Carthage. In his retelling of Aeneas's adventures during fall of Troy and its aftermath, the narrator depicts the hero as he flees the burning city with his son at his right hand and his father on his back, adding: And by the wey his wif Creusa he les And moche sorwe hadde he in his mynde, Or that he coude his felawshipe fynde. But at the laste, whan he hadde hem founde, He made hym redy in a certeyn stounde, And to the se ful faste he gan hym hye, And sayleth forth with al his companye Toward Ytalye, as walde his destinee. (LGW 945-52) By the way, the narrator casually tells us, Aeneas has managed to misplace his wife. In book 2 of the Aeneid, Virgil's Aeneas gives the following account of this unfortunate and disturbing event: namque avia cursu dum sequor et nota excedo regione viarum, heu misero coniunx fatone erepta Creusa substitit, erravitne via seu lassa resedit, incertum; nee post oeulis est reddita nostris. nee prius amiss am respexi animumve reflexi

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quam tumulum antiquae Cereris sedemque sacratam venimus: hic demum collect is omnibus una defuit, et comites natumque virumque fefellit

(Aen. 2.736-44) [F or while I ran along a trackless path after leaving the streets I knew-alas,

was my wife Creusa snatched by an unhappy fate? Did she halt, or did she stray from the path or sink down weary? I do not know. Never again was she restored to our eyes, nor did I look back for my lost one, or cast a thought behind, until we came to the mound and ancient Ceres' hallowed home. Here at last, when all were gathered together, she alone was missing and failed the company, her child, and her husband.] Unlike his mythic predecessor, Orpheus, Aeneas never bothers to look back at his wife-but even so, his Creusa, like Eurydice, disappears before he reaches the hill of Ceres. Some modern readers of Virgil have found these lines rather troubling, for although the unmindful Aeneas expresses sorrow over losing Creusa, he nonetheless seems to somehow hold her responsible for losing her way: the verb fallere, which appears at the end of this passage, does have the secondary meaning "to disappoint," as it is translated here, but its primary meaning in Latin is actually "to deceive, to swear falsely."4 0 Still, one wonders just who deceives whom in these particular verses. Apparently Ovid's Dido asked herself precisely the same question after she had been left by Aeneas. In Heroides 7, Ovid's abandoned queen alludes to this very passage as she upbraids Aeneas: omnia mentiris, neque enim tua fallere lingua incipit a nobis, primaque plector ego. si quaeras, ubi sit formosi mater Iulioccidit a duro sola relicta viro! haec mihi narraras-sat me monuere! merentem ure; minor culpa poena futura mea est.

(Her. 7.81-86) [You are false in everything-and I am not the first your tongue has deceived, nor am the I first to feel the blow from you. Do you ask where the 40. On Aeneas's loss of Creusa, see Christine Perkell, "On Creusa, Dido, and the Quality of Victory in Virgil's Aeneid," in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. Helene P. Foley (New York: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1981),358-62.

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mother of pretty Iulus is? She died, left behind by her unfeeling lord! This was the story you told me-and it should have been warning enough for me! Burn me; I deserve it! The punishment will be less than my fault merits .J Here, Ovid's Dido bitterly concludes that she deserves Creusa's fate among the ashes of Troy for her own mistake in trusting Aeneas. The verb in the phrase she uses to describe Aeneas's lying is once again the same troubling word, fallere, that Virgil's Aeneas used in describing his loss of Creusa. 41 In book 2 of the Aeneid, once Aeneas discovers that he has lost Creusa, he claims that he goes back into the burning city after her and there encounters her ghost. Chaucer's translation of these events in the House of Fame really does "follow Virgil" as the narrator describes the scenes from the Aeneid he sees painted on the walls of the Temple of Venus: How Creusa was ylost, allas, That ded, not I how, she was; How he hir soughte, and how hir gost Bad him to flee the Grekes host, And seyde he moste unto Itayle, As was hys destinee, sauns faille; That hyt was pitee for to here, When hir spirit gan appere, The wordes that she to hym seyde, And for to kepe hir sone hym preyde. There sawgh I graven eke how he, Hys fader eke, and his meynee, With hys shippes gan to saylle Towardes the contree of Itaylle As streight as that they myghte goo.

Significantly, in the Legend of Dido's recasting of the story, Aeneas does not return to Troy seeking Creusa. The narrator omits any reference to either 41. Chaucer's statement in line 945, "And by the wey his wif Creusa he les," may actually pre' serve a hint of this Virgilian/Ovidian wordplay, for in Middle English the word les can also be a construed as a noun meaning "deception, falsehood." In fact, according to Larry D. Benson, A Glossarial Concordance to the Riverside Chaucer (New York: Garland, 1993), 1:493, two of its five occurrences in this sense in all of Chaucer's canon occur in this very legend. Obviously the noun les does not work syntactically in the line about Creusa, but that does not mean that the verb, which sounds the same, is free from evoking such resonances in the mind of a reader or auditor.

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Creusa's death or her ghost; from his account a reader or listener could even be led to believe that Creusa might still be alive when Aeneas sails off with his men. Judging from the Legend, once Aeneas finds his "felaw .. shipe," his grief at misplacing his wife evaporates. This Aeneas seems in a rush to leave the city (and perhaps also Creusa) behind him and to set sail as soon as possible, a scenario that we should bear in mind as we read the conclusion of the Legend of Dido. With his portrayal of the fall of Troy, the narrator begins a systematic smear campaign against Virgil's pious hero. Before moving on, I would like to make another suggestion about this episode-could the figure of Creusa, who in the Aeneid supposedly trails right behind Aeneas but somehow gets lost, be intended as a figure for the narrator of this tale, who claims to follow the "lanteme" of Virgil "as I can" but who seems lost in some other version of events? After this prologue, the narrator describes Aeneas's landing in North Africa, his encounter with his mother, Venus, who has disguised herself as a huntress, and his visit to her temple in Carthage, where he meets Dido. Although the narrator had suppressed Venus's discussion of Dido's past history (given in Aeneid I), saying that "me lesteth nat to ryme" (LGW 996) of such details, in introducing Dido he mentions that she "whilom was the wif of Sytheo" (LGW 1005), thereby reminding the reader famil .. iar with Virgil's epic of Dido's vow of fidelity to the memory of her dead husband. The narrator suppresses this vow in his version of the story, in keeping with his strategy of portraying Dido as an innocent ("sely Dido") and Aeneas as a deceiver. As he unfolds the story of the love of Dido and Aeneas, the narrator tends to follow the sequence of events given in book 4 of the Aeneid, but consistently refracts his telling of the story through the lens of Ovid's Dido. After all, the narrator tells his readers that he does not strive for word .. for .. word fidelity to Virgil: "I coude folwe, word for word, Virgile, / But it wolde lasten al to longe while" (LGW 1002-3). As critics over the years have noted-among them Edgar Shannon, John Fyler, and Lisa Kiser-the Leg. . end's narrator tends to omit parts of Virgil's apparently overly long epic that deal with the supernatural or with the machinations of the Olympian gods. 42 As a result, Aeneas's decision to leave Dido seems like his fault, and the protestations that he does so only at the behest of Mercury and his

42. See Shannon, Chaucer and Roman Poets, 203; Fyler 112-13; and Lisa Kiser, Telling Classi-cal Tales: Chaucer and the ((Legend of Good Women" (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), 128-2 9.

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father's ghost seem like so many fabrications of one who is "wery of his craft" (LGW 1286). The narrator's stripping of the epic machinery from the Aeneid exposes it as a tale of all .. too .. human frailty-for without divine backing, Aeneas comes off as opportunistic rather than pious. In place of epic machinery, Chaucer's narrator fills his tale with the dis .. courses of Ovidian love and courtly verse. He describes Dido in phrases that evoke the image of a romance heroine: ... she was holden of alle queenes flour Of gentillesse, of fredom, of beaute, That weI was hym that myght hire ones se; Of kynges and of lordes so desyred That al the world hire beaute hadde yfyred, She stod so weI in every wightes grace.

(LGW 1°°9-14) Now Aeneas comes onto the scene, having been hidden by Venus's arts. The narrator remains skeptical about this bit of Virgil's epic machinery, and feels obliged to comment, "I can nat seyn if that it be possible, / But Venus hadde hym maked invysible- / Thus seyth the bok, withouten any les" (LGW 1020-22). Here, the narrator's protestations make it sound as if he thinks that Mantuan Virgil has been lying again. Nevertheless, the narrator's next vignette actually belies Virgil as he depicts Aeneas's reaction to the depictions of the Trojan War on Dido's temple: "AlIas that I was born!" quod Eneas; "Throughout the world oure shame is kid so wyde, Now it is peynted upon every syde. We, that were in prosperite, Been now desclandred, and in swich degre, Ne lenger for to lyven I ne kepe." And with that word he brast out for to wepe So tendrely that routhe it was to sene.

In the temple scene in Aeneid I, the mighty hero also weeps as he con .. templates Dido's temple, but certainly not because he feels his fame has been slandered. Quite the contrary:

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constitit et lacrimans "quis iam locus" inquit "Achate, quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris? en Priamus. sunt hic etiam sua praemia laudi, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mort alia tangunt. solve metus; feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem." (Aen. 1.459-63) [He stopped, and weeping, he spoke: "What land, Achates, what country on earth is now not full of our sorrow? Look-there is Priam. Here, too, virtue has its full rewards; here, too, there are tears for misfortune and mortal sor. . rows touch the heart. Let go of your fear; this fame will bring you some safety."] Virgil's Aeneas seems reassured rather than offended by the depiction of the Trojan War he encounters in Dido's temple-he weeps in sympathy, not in shame. As Kiser notes, Chaucer's Aeneas here seems rather touchy about his reputation-but then again, if his flight from Troy unfolded pre . . cisely as the narrator has described it, he has cause to be. 43 Now, the tale turns to Dido, "this fresshe lady, of the cite queene" (LGW 1035), and again we hear the narrator shifting to a romance mode. We see her admire the handsome Eneas, whose words, face, "braunes," and "bones" are all well formed (LGW 107 I). She invites the comely hero to her palace and feasts him with a banquet that sounds like it came straight out of the pages of an Arthurian romance: Ful was the feste of deyntees and rychesse, Of instruments, of song and of gladness, Of many an amorous lokyng and devys. This Eneas is come to paradys Out of the swolow of helle, and thus in joye Remembreth hym of his estat in Troye.

(LGW

1100-1105)

Yet the joye/Troye rhyme in this passage, which is used with foreboding effect in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, hints that all is not what it seems in Carthage, and that Aeneas's earthly paradise may soon turn to Dido's private hell. In the meantime, all is courtly games and gifts, as Chaucer catalogs 43. Kiser, Telling Classical Tales, 126-27.

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Dido's munificence to her Trojan guest in minute detail. (These rich gifts are absent in Virgil's narrative; here, we see another example of Chaucer "romancing" his epic source.) Aeneas gives Dido gifts in return, which he has Ascanius present. Here again, the narrator displays his skepticism of Virgil's epic machinery-while Virgil says that Venus substituted Cupid for Ascanius in order to provoke Dido's fateful passion, our narrator tells us that "as of that scripture / Be as be may, I tak of it no cure" (LGW 1144-45)· In contrast to Virgil's account, the Legend describes how Aeneas's own speech fires the queen's desire: al the longe day they tweye Entendeden to speken and to pleye; Of which ther gan to breden swich a fyr That sely Dido hath now swich desyr With Eneas, hire newe gest, to dele, That she hath lost hire hewe and ek hire hele.

Like Chaucer's Troilus and like many a romance hero or heroine, Dido finds herself seriously lovesick after such verbal interactions with her beloved. She consults her sister Anna about her wish to wed Aeneas (for she does couch her desire "with him to dele" in licit terms). The narrator omits Anna's speech, for "hereof was so long a sermounynge / It were to long to make rehersynge" (I 184-85), but tells us that Anna at first resisted the idea before at last giving in. Actually, as Shannon pointed out long ago, Anna's speech in the Aeneid is far less ambiguous than Chaucer's nar .. rator implies-all of her arguments actually favor Dido's remarriage. 44 Again, Chaucer's narrator draws attention to his stripping down of Virgil's epic at the very moment in which he pointedly alters Virgil's text. The day after this nocturnal consultation, Dido and Aeneas go hunting a "herde ofhertes"-a stag hunt that, like the hunt in the courtly milieu of Book of the Duchess, also is a heart .. hunt. Chaucer's vivid tableaux of the richly dressed company and their equipage evoke similarly detailed scenes from medieval romances. In keeping with his shift to the discourse of romance, the narrator casts Aeneas in the role of a courtly lover; he goes down on his knees and swears an oath to be faithful to Dido during a revi .. 44. Shannon, Chaucer and Roman Poets,

200-202.

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sionary retelling of Virgil's notorious "cave scene" in which Aeneas and Dido, finding themselves separated from the others by a storm, take refuge in a cave and consummate their elemental passion. In the Legend of Dido, there is a good deal less thunder and lightning than in the Aeneid: For there hath Eneas ykneled so, And told hire al his herte and al his wo, And swore so depe to hire to be trewe For wele or wo and chaunge hire for no newe; And as a fals lovere so weI can pleyne That sely Dido rewede on his peyne, And tok hym for husbonde and becom his wif For everemo, whil that hem laste lyf.

(LGW 1232-39) In this passage, the narrator adopts Dido's subjective feelings about the cave scene, saying that Aeneas has vowed himself to Dido, and even call . . ing them "husbonde" and "wif." As Quinn notes, the phrase "we Ie or wo" sounds like a deliberate echo of the marriage ceremony.45 Here, the dis .. course of courtly love modulates into the liturgical discourse of marriage. After the Aeneid's "cave scene," Virgil's narrator makes his view of what has happened between Aeneas and Dido quite clear, informing us that Dido "coniugium vocat, hoc praetexit nomine culpam" (4. 172: "She called it marriage; she used this word to screen her fault"). Dido seems to believe that she has contracted a marriage with Aeneas; Virgil's narrator here dis .. agrees and pointedly calls Dido's claim a mere "pretext."46 Virgil's narrator thus sides with Aeneas, who will later inform Dido flat out that "nec coniugis umquam / praetendi taedas aut haec in foedera veni" (4.338-39: "Nor have I ever made any marriage"rite my pretext, for I never had such a compact with you"). Later in the Legend of Good Women, Dido herself seems to support this view. In her expressions of shock upon hearing of Aeneas's plan to depart, she acknowledges that, in fact, there has been no marriage ceremony between them: "Have ye nat sworn to wyve me to take?" (LGW I304), a question that indicates that Aeneas has only vowed 45. Quinn, Chaucer's Rehersynges, I06. 46. For a discussion of the Virgilian Dido's view of what has taken place in the cave, see Gor-don Williams, Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, I968 ), 377-83, who argues that "Virgil always portrays Dido as really convinced that she is married to Aeneas" (3 80 ).

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to wed her in the future. Still, she calls herself his "wif' in the very next line, and says he has sworn to be faithful to her. In the Legend of Good Women, Aeneas's oath in the cave scene sounds like a good deal like a troth .. plight, and the relationship has most certainly been consummated, for this Dido clearly states that she is pregnant-a state of affairs that Vir .. gil's Dido had wished for, and at which Ovid's Dido had only darkly hinted. In Chaucer's day, a troth .. plight followed by consummation was considered a legal and binding marriage, even if not solemnized in a church ceremony, so the narrator tends to vindicate Dido's legal claims to wifehood, even if she herself does not press them. 47 Following this ambiguous cave scene, Aeneas plays at being Dido's lover. Iarbas, Dido's suitor, feels bereft, while Aeneas exults in his good fortune: "Now laugheth Eneas and is in joye / and more richesse than evere he was in Troye" (LGW 1252-53). Again, the Troye/joye rhyme sounds foreboding to any reader familiar with Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and so it is, for the narrator follows it up by lamenting that foolish women too easily pity men's feigned woes. In short, things do not look good for Dido. After Aeneas dances attendance on Dido, sings her songs, sends her let .. ters, tokens, and brooches, and generally carries on a courtly love affair with all the trappings, we hear that This Eneas, that hath so depe yswore Is wery of his craft withinne a throwe. The hote erneste is al overblowe. (LGW 1285-87) Thereafter, Aeneas gets his ships ready and plans to leave by night. Dido, suspicious of her lover's restlessness, fears that something is wrong; Aeneas tells her that his father's ghost has come to him and Mercury has instructed him that he must leave for Italy. Unlike Virgil, our narrator does not choose to show us these events-we have to take Aeneas's word (or not) for them. The Legend's Dido does not react to Aeneas's planned departure with furor, as does Virgil's. Rather, like Ovid's heroine, she pleads with Aeneas, begging him to take her along, or failing that, to kill her. But Aeneas does neither:

47. See Henry Ansgar Kelly, Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975), 188,206, for the principle and an example. Kelly takes the view that the Legend's Dido was married (2 I I ).

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For on a nyght, slepyng he let her lye, And stal awey unto his companye And as a tray tour forth he gan to sayle, Toward the large contre of Ytale. Thus he hath laft Dido in wo and pyne And wedded there a lady hyght Lavyne.

(LGW 1326-31) At this point, the narrator is through with Aeneas. The {anti)hero's vil; lainous departure is thoroughly formulaic-or at least it becomes so in the course of the Legend, if one compares these lines with those describing Theseus's departure from Ariadne a few stories and several hundred lines later: Whan Adryane his wif aslepe was, For that hire syster fayrer was than she, He taketh hire in his hond and forth goth he To shipe, and as a tray tour stal his wey, Whil that this Adryane aslepe lay, And to his contre;ward he sayleth blyve.

(LGW 2171-75) In depicting Aeneas's departure in such rhetorically standard terms, Chaucer's narrator follows his many thrusts at Virgil's epic with a parody of the repetitive formulas of romance discourse. The narrator now wraps up the loose threads of the plot by describing Dido's preparations for death and her suicide. But he does not end his story with Dido's sword thrust to her heart-like a ghost speaking from the grave, Dido has almost the last word, as the narrator quotes the beginning of her swan;song epistle from the Heroides and refers the reader to Ovid's text for the full letter. In contrast to some of the other legends, the ending of the Legend of Dido offers no explicit narratorial denunciation of bad men. Instead of offering poetic closure of this sort, the last couplet simply tells the reader to go read something else: "But who wol al this letter have in mynde / Rede Ovyde, and in hym he shal it fynde" (LGW 1366-67). The narrator's final gesture in this Legend harks back to its beginning as he again submits himself to the authority of "another's word." However, this time, his poetic guide is not "Virgil Mantoan," whom he had said he would

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follow, but "Ovyde" who has quite suddenly and with no warning replaced Virgil as "myn auctour." The narrator has abandoned Virgil, just as Aeneas has left behind Dido. His own tendency to forsake his literary models should make his reader beware of placing too much trust in him. In the Legend of Dido, Chaucer's play with varieties of discourse and genres is subtler than in some of his other Legends, where readers have picked out elements that appear obviously comic or incongruous. In the Legend of Dido, the clash of different types of discourse tends to be more restrained, perhaps because Chaucer knew he could afford to be subtle. For instance, he did not have to make his narrator hint as broadly about the less exemplary aspects of Dido's character because the members of his audience would have not only known the story, but probably would have also been well aware that medieval mythographic interpreters of Virgil such as Fulgentius and Bemardus Silvestris viewed Dido as an exemplum of female lustfulness. 48 Even though Chaucer's Legend of Dido may not per. . fectly illustrate Bakhtin's theory of novelistic discourse, the complex inter . . textuality of this legend-its play with Virgilian and Ovidian voices, of epic, romance, liturgical, and courtly modes of discourse-does lend sup . . port to claims about the Legend's celebration of linguistic variety. The pro . . fusion of discourses found in this and other dialogic Legends strains against the boundaries of the mono logic courtly narratives the god of love had requested of the narrator in the Prologue. The god of love had wanted sim . . pIe stories that fit a straightforward generic model; instead, he gets com . . plex novelistic narratives. Like the Legend of Good Women as a whole, the Legend of Dido breaks off rather than ends. Instead of providing his readers with a moral, or some other semblance of poetic closure, the narrator tells us to go and read another book. This rhetorical strategy implies that the story that the nar . . rator tells is not the last word, not the only way of telling Dido's story; his readers are left to explore the alternatives on their own. After this incon . . elusive finale, the narrator tells five more tales before trailing off at the end of Legend of Hypermnestra with the words: "This tale is seyd for this con . . elusion" (LGW 2723). This weighty phrase makes it sound as if the narra . . tor had just imparted some sort of profound piece of moral wisdom to his audience, when he has done nothing of the sort. Like the bad men in the individual Legends, the narrator suddenly abandons his readers before 48. See Desmond, Reading Dido, 84-9+

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telling them what this "conclusion" might be, before giving any sense of closure or completion. 49 This abrupt finish to the Legend of Good Women has led to a great deal of critical discussion. Perhaps the narrator has given up on his penance, or perhaps, within the fiction of the frame narrative, he has actually died while carrying it out. Or maybe, as some critics say, the narrator has nothing to do with it: Chaucer the author just got bored and decided to give up on the poem as a failure. 50 The end of the Legend of Good Women is thus highly ambiguous-is it an ending at all? In any event, the narrator's abrupt departure leaves us as readers to draw our own "conclusions," rather than giving us the sort of pat moral ending that Love requested in the Prologue. And this, in a sense, seems to be one of the main points of Chaucer's Legend: by showing us the interpretive deficiencies of the god of love and leaving us in the hands of an unreliable narrator who doesn't always give this capricious god exactly what he asks for, Chaucer tries to retrain us, his readers, to think for ourselves. 51 If we are dissatisfied with the limitations of Love's vision and the sort of mono . . logic, didactic poetry showcasing weeping women and evil men that he prescribes, so much the better. For perhaps then we will be receptive to the kind of poetry that shows that there's more than one story to tell, and more than one way to tell a story-the kind of poetry that celebrates a multi . . plicity of narrators, their viewpoints, and their voices, as they make their way on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and through the journey of our life.

49. See Rowe, Through Nature to Eternity, 118-19. 50. See the comment by Donaldson in note 2 I above. Frank, Chaucer and the Legend, 189-210, reviews the "Legend of Chaucer's Boredom" established by Chaucer critics early this century and cogently argues against it. 51. See Peter L. Allen, "Reading Chaucer's Legend of Good Women," Chaucer Review 21 (1987): 419-34, for an analysis of the evolving role of the reader in the Legend. My view of the Canterbury Tales, then, accords with Thompson's argument (Chaucer, Boccaccio, 4-6) that Chaucer stages a variety of competing voices, opinions, and styles that act as a "whetstone" for sharpening the reader's own faculties of interpretation.

Afterword The Metamorphoses of Ovid's Heroines

haucer's Legend of Good Women is a potent meditation on the power of literary representation; it repeatedly points out that the narratives that constitute the legendary are not so much stories of actual women's lives as refashionings of the tales that other men have told about them. In Chaucer's Legend, then, the "abandoned woman" becomes a stylized figure constructed in accordance with readerly expectations. Ovid's classical heroines have ossified into literary stereotypes that Chaucer uses as a pre .. text for interrogating literary genres and the nature of textual authority. I began this book by recalling the passage in the Confessions in which Augustine remembers his youthful tears for the dead Dido. This memo .. rable moment crystallizes a variety of conflicting writerly responses to the figure of the abandoned woman in literature. In the following pages, I would like to use some of these insights to frame my own retrospective dis .. cuss ion of some of the larger issues that Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer raise through their explorations and responses to classical stories of aban .. doned women as they translated and transformed these mythic tales in their own works.

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First of all, Augustine's sympathy for Dido represents a challenge to the heroic, epic values traditionally symbolized by the character of Aeneas. Augustine mentions that as a schoolboy he was obliged to memorize "Aeneae nescio cuius errores"-"the wanderings of some fellow called Aeneas" (Conf. 1.13). His deliberate casualness in referring to Aeneas's fated journey and his specificity in describing the reason for and mode of Dido's death in this passage demonstrate that Augustine takes more inter . . est in the private, emotional sphere represented by Dido than in Aeneas's heroic exploits. As we have seen, figures of abandoned women tend to challenge the centrality of the heroic code of the epic by calling attention to the private aspects of human experience that this masculine ethos tends to ignore. Ovid's Heroides remind the reader of the heroines whose stories are usually pushed to one side or ignored entirely in the epic mode. As my discussion of the anonymous poem "Deidamia Achilli" in chapter I sug . . gests, medieval writers used Ovidian forms to criticize the social destruc . . tion wrought by heroic endeavor as Achilles' betrayal of his wife trumps his warlike deeds. Likewise, Dante's allusion in Inferno 26 to the pain of Deidamia at losing Achilles makes the reader question the social cost of both Achilles' and Ulysses' desires to win glory through deeds of arms or through transgressive voyages. Deidamia's suffering at her separation from her husband reminds the reader to reflect on the sorrows of Penelope, a woman left behind by a husband more interested in heroic exploits than in domestic life. Ulysses' neglect of "'1 debito amore, / 10 qual dovea far Penelope lieta" (Inf. 26, 95-96: "the due love which would have made Penelope glad"), along with other clues, exposes his heroic behavior and rhetoric as egotistical and self. . serving. Chapter 2 also explores the way in which the figure of an abandoned woman calls attention to the female desires that the masculine heroic code tends to repress. In the story told in Chaucer's Knight's Tale, as in Boc . . caccio's Teseida, Theseus considers himself a heroic bringer of political order to the disarray represented by both the "regne of Femenye" and the city of Thebes. At first, Theseus seems an appealing and exemplary char . . acter in both Boccaccio's and Chaucer's texts, but disturbing elements in both writers' portrayals of him undermine his heroic facade. Boccaccio's elaborate attempt to recalibrate the chronology of Teseo's career to exclude the abandonment of Ariadne from his past merely calls the reader's attention to that past, while the rhetorical similarities between Teseo and Ulysses tend to raise suspicions about "buon Teseo." In the Knight's Tale, Theseus marches under the banner of the Minotaur, a sym . .

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bol that clearly reminds the reader that Theseus conquered the monster with Ariadne's help-and how the ungrateful and forgetful hero left her behind. The sufferings of Ariadne, which linger in the background of the Knight's Tale, call attention to the cost of Theseus's heroic exploits in the past and tend to make the reader question the validity of the political order that Theseus tries to create in the course of the Knight's Tale-a political order that only succeeds by dispensing with female autonomy, as shown by the fate of Emelye, who unwillingly weds Palamon at the end of the story. If stories of female abandonment raise doubts about the ways in which heroic and political discourses exclude or subjugate women, they tend to do so by creating a sympathetic emotional response in their readers. The affective dimension of literary portrayals of abandoned women clearly manifests itself in Augustine's schoolboy tears as he identifies with Dido's fate. Yet even as readers may be emotionally affected by the stories of abandoned women, there may be some question as to whether they repre .. sent appropriate models for ethical behavior. Augustine's critical reap .. praisal of his youthful emotional response-his conclusion that he was wasting his time in weeping for Dido when he should have been con .. cerned about the state of his own soul-demonstrates that the affective impact of abandoned women may be problematic, that a reader's involve .. ment with these desiring women may lead away from the paths of reason. Giovanni Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione and Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta explore the ways in which literary figures of abandoned women themselves embody a conflict between reason and desire and at the same time create a parallel conflict in their reader (see chap. 4). In the ethical schemes of medieval commentators, many of Ovid's heroines in the Heroides are reproved for stultus amor-for a love that goes beyond the bounds of rea .. son and social mores, like Dido's for Aeneas or Hypsipyle's for Jason. Despite the strictures of medieval commentators, the fictive readers por.. trayed in these works seem particularly attracted to these women. In the Amorosa Visione, the narrator's fascination with the classical figures of abandoned women that he sees painted on the walls in the "Triumph" sec .. tion of the poem becomes so compelling that he imagines lengthy, emo .. tional speeches for them-something that does not happen with any other figures the narrator describes in the course of the poem. In the Elegia, Fiammetta presents herself as a reader of the Heroides who ends up identi .. fying with and imitating the words and actions of Ovid's heroines, a course of action that nearly proves fatal. Some critics see Boccaccio's portrayal of

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both the narrator, lover of the Amorosa Visione and Fiammetta as warnings to his readers of the foolishness of such passionate attachments to these stories and their heroines. On the other hand, Boccaccio's moving por, trayals of abandoned women tend to arouse readerly sympathy, making it difficult to unhesitatingly assent to the dim view of them that such a moralistic reading inevitably must take. As I have argued, Boccaccio's texts reenact the tensions between reason and desire at the level of reader response. The difficulty in resolving this conflict between reason and desire likewise shows up in modern debates on the interpretation of Ovid, where the opposition that many critics posit between Ovid's wit and pathos recapitulates the medieval conflict between reason and desire. In Augustine's farewell to Dido, he loses his masculine identity in tears as he vicariously relives Aeneas's abandonment of Dido from her perspec, tive. In his allusive identification with the Aeneid, Augustine here switches gender roles-he both sheds tears as Dido does, and weeps for her as Aeneas does (see the introduction). Finally, Augustine's reappraisal of the Aeneid also comes as a farewell to the classical genre of epic; instead of focusing on the founding of empire, Augustine's narrative will document a search for his own individual identity as he embarks on the genre of spiri, tual autobiography. Chapters 5 and 6 consider issues of gender and genre similar to those encapsulated in this Augustinian vignette. My discussions of Chaucer's T roilus and Criseyde and Legend of Good Women examine how classical figures of abandoned women function in texts that question both conventional gender roles and the discursive limits of traditional genres. Troilus and Criseyde challenges the conventional gendering of narratives of abandonment as feminine: while Chaucer's fearful Criseyde does have affinities to her literary ancestress, Ovid's Briseis, Chaucer's allusive strat, egy seems targeted at associating the sorrows of young Troilus with those of Ovid's tearful heroines in a sort of narrative cross,dressing. In the Troilus, Chaucer had begun his challenge to the conventional gender roles articulated in stories of abandoned women. He goes a step fur, ther in his next work, The Legend of Good Women, as his narrator deals with stories of abandoned women who at times get out of hand, who chal, lenge the generic limitations imposed upon the narrator by a courtly audi, ence. By playing a variety of discourses against each other in such a way that the reader comes to appreciate the competing voices that a single, minded concentration on either masculine heroics or feminine pathos leaves out, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women reconsiders both the male heroic code and the subjective discourses of Ovidian heroines. Chaucer's

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mixture of wit and pathos in the Legend ends up being parodic, but rather than mocking women's suffering, he satirizes the stylized, mono logic por .. traits of abandoned women in the literary tradition, which make them into exempla rather than fully developed human characters. At the end of his eloquently argued Abandoned Women and Poetic Tra .. dition, Lawrence Lipking calls for the development of a "poetics of aban .. donment" that would make room for women and confront the traditional hierarchy of literary genres that privileges the epic and discounts the cru .. cial importance of elegiac and lyric forms. For Lipking, figures of aban . . doned women embody the marginalization and exclusion of women's voices by generations of {mostly male} literary critics: "The figure of the abandoned woman represents something more than the crosses of love. It stands for the pain of not being seen, of belonging to no one, of not being heard."I In meditating on various medieval texts, I have endeavored to seek out abandoned women, to focus on these allusive and marginal figures whose significance has often been ignored, and to listen to the female voices constructed through the verses of male poets. In doing so, I hope to have demonstrated that Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, three major male writers of the Middle Ages, also heard the voices of these plaintive out . . siders: they listened carefully to the laments of the abandoned women por . . trayed by Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, assimilated their mournful tone, and creatively transformed them in their own poetic reinscriptions of classical literature. Such inspired rewritings again affirm the tremendous poetic power that these powerless figures have paradoxically exercised over the European literary imagination from antiquity onward.

1.

Lipking, Abandoned Women,

212.

Appendix "Deidamia Achilli," ed. Stohlmann

he text that follows comes from Jiirgen Stohlmann's edition of the poem, as printed in "'Deidamia Achilli.' Eine Ovid .. Imitation aus dem I I. Jahrhundert," Literatur und Sprache im Europiiischen Mittelalter: Festschrift fur Karl Langosch zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Alf Onnerfors, et al. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), 195-2 3 1.

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DEIDAMIA ACHILLI Legitimam nuptam si dici fas sit amicam, Haec tibi casta suo mittit amica viro. Si legis, Aeacide, mittentis verba puellae, Perlege missa tibi! Mitte legenda michi, Mitte legenda tuo cara cum coniuge nato! Mittere vel noli verba, sed ipse veni! Sive venire nequis vel scribere, ne pigriteris: Pauca licet scribas, pauca videre iuvat! lam quater exactum quintus sol integrat annum Et lani pluvias urna refund it aquas, Ex quo per pelagus felicia vela daturusSed non et nobis prospera vela satis-, 193

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APPENDIX

Cum iamiam funes laxare pararet Ulixes, Dixisti miserae: "Deidamia, vale! Abstrahor et fat is ad T roiam poscor iniquis Et rogat auxilium Graecia tota meum. T eque michi comitem sociamque laboris haberem, Sed nova rusticior miles in arma feror. Tempus erit, cum me spectabis laeta redire, Troica cum niveos praeda sequetur equos Cumque perigrinae venient tibi munera gazae Ancillaeque Friges, quas tibi cumque leges." Sic michi blanditus-iam mollia carbasa ventus lnflabat-sociis teque volente fugis. Ex illo testis lascivi mater AmorisTestis erit mater vulnificusque puerNulla michi miserae solatia grata fuisse, Sed male praesumptos displicuisse cibos, Et, quamvis fessis premerentur mollia membris Strata, tamen nullo membra refecta thoro. En magis atque magis gravor inpaciensque doloris lmploro reditum nocte dieque tuum! At te nec pietas nec am or neque commovet aetas Pyrri, qui nostras it comes in lacrimas. lam puer et patri non inficiandus Achilli, Sed talis talem dignus habere patrem, Excepto, quod te nemo valet aequiperare Saevicia, Stigiae quam dedit ardor aquae. At Pyrro pietas, supra quod postulat aetas; Est pietas puero, quae sit honesta viro. Uxor abesse meum quotiens queror aegra maritum, Condolet absentem natus abesse patrem Et, quaecumque valet, flenti solatia praebet Et cohibet lacrimas-flet tamen ipse-meas. Ne videat miserae lacrimas Deus aequus, Achille, Ne videat lacrimas in tua dampna meas! Durus es et nostro magis intractabilis aevo, Durior est omni mens adamante tibi. Nos aversatus geris intractabile pectus Et reus est irae natus egoque tuae. At si vera fides, tractabile pectus haberes Nec raperet taurum bos aliena meum.

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Sed rapit; et venti mi deseruere secundi Iamque bibunt medio naufraga vela freto! Quam bene me miseram potui dixisse puellamSed mens venturum non videt ulla malum-, Cum Thetis Haemonii veniens de rupe magistri Intravit patrias te comitante casas! Tunc etiam iustas potui movisse querellas, Cum cepit Graios Scirias ora viros; At tunc me miseram memini dixisse puellam, Cum sine me celeres tolleret aura rates. Et nunc, ne qua meis sint tempora nuda querellis, Nunc quoque sunt madidae rore cadente genae. Rumor sollicitam Licomedis venit in aulam T e dominum servae succubuisse tuae, Et post barbaricos raptos ex hoste triumphos Victus ab ancilla diceris esse tua. Servula Briseis titulos incrustat Achillis Victoremque Frigum vincit amica virum; Quin etiam rixae narratur causa fuisse, Proh pudor, exertis digna fuit gladiis! Non ita iurabas, dum me violenter amabasEt satis ex aequo tunc redamabar ego-: "Per tibi te iuro, soli michi iungere, quaeso; Iungar ego soli, Deidamia, tibi!"? Cum michi sis primae, non soli, iunctus, Achille, Soli, non primo, sum tibi iuncta viro! Sic fore promisi, promissa tenaciter egi; At tua sunt verbis facta minora tuis. Tu nunc captiva fruereis plus captus amica Et iacet in viduo Deidamia thoro. Resque Deo curae mortales credimus esse, Cum videat tacitus facta nefanda Deus. 0 Deus et miseris quae numina cumque favetis, Nemo fidem servat, nemo diurnus amat! N i res nota foret, quis quando credere vellet Te cito propositum deposuisse tuum? levis, Aeacida, plus multo fronde caduca Plusque levis vento plusque tumente freto! Quo tibi dilectae defecit cura puellae. Cui tunc nolebas aequiperare deas?

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Briseis certe non est dea, fortis Achille, Execute probroso libera colla iugo! 95 Vae michi, vae miserae! Numquid potes absque rubore, Qui tibi de minimis rebus inesse solet, Solus in Argolicis scortum componere castris Nec metuis famam commaculare tuam? Ad te clamantes, dea, quae non spernis amantes, 100 Coge nova nuptam morte perire novam, Ne longum de me pelex sibi gaudeat et ne Vi superata mali cogar inulta mori! Iustius illa Iuet, quidquid peccavit Achilles, Quae plus quam fas est illecebrosa fuit. 105 Diva, perire meas, rogo, ne paciare querellas, Sed, precor, ut lacrimis compaciare meis! Non etenim nobis est unica cause doloris, Est tamen ex uno causa dolorque viro: Haec est prima michi, tibi maxima causa dolendi, I 10 Quod iacet in nostro turpis amica thoro; Altera parva quidem, sed et haec facit esse dolentem: Serva Neoptolemo facta noverca meo; T ercia, quod teneram potes oppressisse puellam Quodque meae flores virginitatis habes. I 15 Paenitet, Aeacide, puero tibi succubuisse, Paenitet et iuveni succubuisse tibi. Sum gavisa tuo, sed parvo tempore, ludo; Nunc miseram ludus me facit esse tuus. Gaudia presenti cedunt transacta dolori; 120 Plus est ecce malum, quam fuit ante bonum! Qui tunc gaudendi, nunc tu michi causa dolendi; Dulcia das idem pocula dasque necem! Mutato subitis cedit ratis aequore ventis, Hoc nisi succurras, victa subibit aquas. 125 Redde, precor, michi tel Si par peto, te michi redder Barbara prasesumpto cedat arnica thoro! michi praecipue semper dilectus, Achille, Dedecus a castris hoc removeto tuis! Vel modo vel seram nobis adhibeto medelam130 Sic foret Hectoreum Pelias hasta latus!

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Wimsatt, James 1. Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Four . . teenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Winsor, Eleanor Jane. "A Study in the Sources and Rhetoric of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women." Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1963. Wissova, Georg, ed. Paulys Real. . encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart, 1896. Wright, Constance S. "Vehementer Amo: The Amorous Verse Epistles of Baudry of Bourgueil and Constance of Angers." In The Influence of the Classical World on Medieval Literature, Architecture, Music, and Culture: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Studies, ed. Fidel Fjardo,Acosta, 154-66. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 199 2 .

Index

Abandoned women, 9-10, 14-15, 17-20. See also Ariadne; Briseis; Deianira; Deidamia; Dido; H yp" sipyle; Laodamia; Medea; Oenone; Ovid, Heroides; Penelope; Phyllis Abandoners. See Achilles; Aeneas; Demophoon; Hercules; Jason; Paris; Protesilaus; Theseus; Ulysses Abandonment: ambiguity of, 15; poetics of, 15 Abelard, 36. See also Heloise Accessus ad auctores, 26. See also Commentaries, medieval; Ovid, Heroides, accessus to Achates, 18o Achilles, 7, 18- 19, 37-40, 40n . 64, 4 1-43,47-4 8 ,5 0 ,53-6 7,69-73, I43-44,I49-5 2 ,I54,I88;in Amorosa Visione, I06n. 7, I I I, I 13-14. See also Briseis; Deidamia; "Deidamia Achilli"; Statius,

Achilleid Acontius, 27 Admetus, 134, I34n. 6

Aecus, 41 Aeneas, 1-7, 9, 16, 73, 94, 100, 156, 188, 189; in Aeneid, 2-3, 173, I73n. 37, 175-7 6 , I7 6n , 177-80 , 182, I82n. 46; in Amorosa Visione, 107-8; Dante as, 69, 74; in Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, 126; in House of Fame, 3-9; in Legend of Good ~omen, 171,173-75, 177-85. See also Dido; Virgil, Aeneid Aeneid. See Virgil, Aeneid Aers, David, 94n. 24 Aetas Ovidiana, 38 Agamemnon, 37, 143-44, 149-5 0 , 15 2 Ahl, Frederick M., 49n. 8, 76n. 2, 89n. 21 Alceste, 159-60, 170-7 I Alighieri, Dante. See Dante Alighieri Allen, J. Boyce, 28n. 22, 30n. 30 Allen, Peter L., I86n. 51 Amazons, 82-84, 89, 91, 94. See also Femenye Anderson, David, 78, 78n, 81, 8In. I I

20 9

2IO

Anderson, W. S., 17n. 31 Anelida, 99-100. See also Arcite; Chaucer, Anelida and Arcite Anna, sister of Dido, 181 Antenor, 156 Antony, 161 Apollo, 132-36, 134nn. 6-7 Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, 27 apRoberts, Robert, 13In. I Archibald, Elizabeth, 17n . 33 Arcite, 19, 77-78, 80, 84, 91-94, 96-10 I. See also Anelida; Boccac . . cio, Teseida; Chaucer, Anelida and Arcite; Chaucer, Knight's Tale; Emelye; Palamon Ariadne, 7,17, 19-20,27, 35n . 48, 36, 62n,75-8I,92-98,94n.28,95n. 32, 102-3, I I I, 114, 118, 127, 13 8-39, 155, 157, 161, 18 4, 188-89. See also Boccaccio, Teseida; Chaucer, Knight's Tale; Ovid, Heroides 10; Teseo; Theseus Arico, Giuseppe, 56n, 58, 58n. 20, 59n Aristotle, 9, 15 Arn, Mary}o, I35n. 10 "Arte allusiva," 5 I Ascanius, 107, 108, 126, 181 Astynome, I44n. 22. See also Chryseis Atalanta, 74 Auerbach, Erich, 9n. 13 Augustine, bishop of Hippo, 8, 14, 121; Confessions, 117,187; Conf. 1.13, I, 188; weeps for Dido, 1-3, 104, 117-18,173,187-90 Augustus, 22 Authority vs. experience, 168 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 14, I4n, 20, 25, 25nn. 13-14,26, 26n, 162-64, 164nn. 10-12,168, I69n.24, 185.Seea~o Dialogic poetics; Heteroglossia; Monologic poetics; Novel, discourse of Baldan, Paolo, 49n . 5 Barolini, T eodalinda, 67, 67n. 28, 69n. 32

INDEX

Barthes, Roland, 13 Baswell, Christopher, 4, 4n. 5, 6, 6n, 8, 9n . 12, 10, 37n.59 Baudreye, 152. See also Pandering Baudri of Bourgeuil, 34-38, 35nn. 45-47,45 Beatrice, 11-12, 12n. 20, 74 Bed lament, 140-41 Belatedness, poetic, 170, 172 Bellorini, Egidio, 45n , 46, 46n. 7 I Benoit de Saint Maure, Roman de Troie, 144, 150 Benson, Larry D., 4n. 4, 177n Bernadoni, Giuseppe, 46n. 67, 1I5n . 15, I34 n ·9,I44n . 23 Bernardus Silvestris, 185 Billanovich, Giuseppe, 5 I n. 12 Blake, Kathleen, 9In. 24 Blamires, Alcuin, 99-100, Ioonn. 39-40 ,I3 In . 2 Bloom, Harold, 170, 170n. 29 Boas, M., 50n. 9 Boaz, 170 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 10-12, 14-15, 18, 25,26-27,45-46,46n.69, 18 7, 19 1 Works: Amorosa Visione, 5, 14, 19, 33n . 3 8 , 77,88,94,102-23,127-29,138, 166n. 15, 189; passages cited: AV 3.8, 106; AV 6.23-24, 120; AV 6.36, 120; AV 9.1-12, 107; AV 9.27-30, 108; AV 15.4-6, 109; AV 2 1.34-39, 112; AV 2 1.46-48, 110I I; AV 22. 1-2, I I I; AV 22.6, I I I; AV 22.13-15, III; AV 23.52-60, 112; AV 23.70-72,113; AV 23.82-88, 113; AV 26.22-27, 115; AV 26.30, 114-15; AV 27.79-88, I 16-17; A V 28. 1-3, I 17; A V 29.7-12,118; AV 29.30,119; AV 37.50-51, 120; AV 37.52-53, 120 Decameron, I I, 125, 128 Elegia di Madonna Fiametta, 10, 14, 19, 33n . 38, 102-4, 122-29, 189; pas . . sages cited: EMF Prol. I, 123; EMF Prol. 3, 124; EMF Prol. 4, 123;

Index EMF 1.19.2,126; EMF 2.8.5-9, I26n. 28; EMF 3.3.1, I26n. 29; EMF 3. 11. 1-2, 125; EMF 5.2.2, I26n. 30; EMF 5.5, I26n. 31; EMF 6.2.6, I26n. 32; EMF 6.22.3-4, I26n. 34; EMF 8.5.17, I27n Filostrato, 130-3 1, 137-38, 141-43, 147-50,157; passages cited: Fil. 2.76 ,157; Fil. 4.87,138; Fil. 4.146, I37 n . 16; Fil. 5. 20 , 14 1; Fil. 7 ·54, 14 8; Fil. 7 ·74, 147; Fil. 7 ·75, 148 Teseida, 19-20 ,75,77-93, 97 n , 99, 101-3, I I I, 134, 188; passages cited: Tes. 1.14. I, 82; Tes. 1.130, 83; Tes. 2·4·7,81; Tes. 2.44-45, 87; Tes. 2·49,88; Tes. 3.25, 8In. 13; Tes. 4.4 6 , I34n. 7; Tes. 4·54, 89n. 21; Tes. 4.73, 89n. 21; Tes. 5,92,84,93; Tes. 6.46,79-80; Tes. 7.4. 8 ,85; Tes. 7.83.5-6, 89; Tes. I I .62,86; Tes. 12.38.4-5,89; Tes. 12.3 8 .7-8 ,9°; Tes. 12.43. 1,90; Tes. 12.83 .4,90 Boethius, 121 Boitani, Piero, 81, 8In. 14, 86n, 89, 89nn.I9-20,9In.23 Bond, Gerald, 35 nn . 45, 47, 3 6 , 36n. 51 Boredom, of Legend of Good Women nar .. rator, 186, I86n. 50 Bovary, Madame, 125 Branca, Vittore, 104-5, I05nn. 4,6, I I I, I I In, II3n. 12, 114, II4n. 13, 138, I3 8n , I47n, 148n Branch, Erin Hostetter, 88n Briseis, 7, 17,20,27,3 6 , 37 n . 57,3 8-39, 4 0n . 64,4 I ,43, 70 ,113- 14,13 1, 143-5 2 , 154-55, 157, 190. See also Achilles; Deidamia; "Deidamia Achilli"; Ovid, Heroides 3 Brownlee, Kevin, 74nn. 39-40 Brownlee, Marina, 25, 25n. 12,26, 124, I24n.24, 163, I63n.8 Brugnoli, Giorgio, 49n . 5 Burlin, Robert B., I68n. 21 Caesar, 65

211

Calabrese, Michael, 160, I60n. I Calchas, 39, 57, 143, 15 1, 155 Canace, 17, 29 Canterbury Tales. See Chaucer, Canter. .

bury Tales Cassandra, 4 1-42, 153 Cassell, Anthony, 47n Castor, 84. See also Pollux Cato, 51 Catullus, 27, 27n . 20, 56n, 62n, 95-96 Causa .. Steindler, Mariangela, I23n Cecchetti, G., 49n . 5 Ceffi, Filippo, 45, 45n , 46, 46n, II5n . IS, 134 Chapman, G. 0., I72n. 36 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 10-12, 14-15, 18, 26,27,45,19 1 Works: Anelida and Arcite, 19,78,99-101; passages cited: AA 14, 100; AA 2 I, 100; AA 87,99; AA 153-54, 99; AA 159, 99 Book of the Duchess, 181 Canterbury Tales, 20, 78,91,128; individual tales: Knight's Tale, I I, I4,I9,75-78,90-93,93n.26,94, 96-98, 99n . 36, 100-101, 188-89; Man of Law's Tale, 160; Wife of Bath's Tale, I I, 168; passages cited: KnT 866, 92; KnT 912-64, 96; KnT 975-81, 92; KnT 1761, 96; KnT 1812-18, 93; KnT 2284-88, 9 1n. 22 House of Fame, 3-9, 19, 78, 94-96, I07n. 9, 118, II8n, 17 2 , 175, 177, 183-97; passages cited: HF 1.143-2 38 , 3; HF 1.258 , 4; HF 1.265-72,4; HF 1.3°0-314,6; HF 1.345-60 ,6-7; HF 1.378- 82 , 7; HF 1.4°5-26,94; HF 1.4 16 , 155 Legend of Good Women, 11,14,19,20, 26,94,97-9 8 ,100,139,157-8 7, 190; narrator of, 169-70, I70n. 30; Prologue, 166-71, I67n.2o, I68n. 22, 185-86; as satire, 165-66; tonal shifts in, 161-62; specific legends:

212

Chaucer, Geoffrey Works: (continued)

Legend of Ariadne, 94n . 27, 95, 97; Legend of Cleopatra, 161; Legend of Dido, 172-85; Legend of Hypermnes-, tra, 167n. 18, 185; Legend of Philomela, 161; Legend of Thisbe, 161; passages cited: LOW F 419-20,78; LOWO 2,168; LOW G 5-9, 168; LGW G 16, 169; LGW G 27-28,169; LOW 0 61-65,169; LOW 0 471-79,160; LOW 924-2 9,17 2 ; LOW 927, 174; LGW 1002-3,178; LGW 1005, 178; LOW 1009-14, 179; LGW 1020-22,179; LGW 1027-34,179; LOW 1035, 180; LOW 1071,180; LOW 1100-1105, 180; LOW 1144-45, 181; LOW 1154-59, 181; LOW 1184-85, 181; LOW 1232-39, 182; LOW 1252-53, 183; LOW 1285-87, 183; LGW 1286, 179; LOW 1326-3 I, 184; LGW 1366-67,184; LGW 1980,96; LGW 2184,96; LOW 2171-75, 184; LOW 2222,96; LOW 2723, 18 5

Troilus and Criseyde, 10-1 I, 14,20, 3 2 , 130-59, 166-6 7, 180, 183, 190; passages cited: T&C 1.85-91, 155; T&C 1.95, 155; T&C 1.106-7, 155; T&C 1.652- 69, 132; T&C 2.414-20, 150; T&C 2.780-95, 156-57; T&C 2.1026-27, 145; T&C 2.1467-69,155; T&C 2.147 1-7 8 , 15 6 ; T&C 3.372-92, 149; T&C 3.4 0 7- 13, 153; T&C 4.57-60 ,153; T&C 4.182,154; T&C 4.322-29, 143; T&C 4.415, 15 2 ; T&C 4.438, 152; T&C 4.73 6-4 1 , 139; T&C 4.75 0-5 6 , 139; T&C 4. 81 3- 19, 139; T&C 4· I 15 6- 12 39, 143; T&C 4· 148 5-9 1 , 142; T&C 4· 1548-54, 137; T&C 4.1639-52,142; T&C 5.295-322,143; T&C 5. 1 33 1 -4 1 ,

INDEX

147; T&C 5.1345-47,148; T&C 5.1402-7,148; T&C 5.1786-88, 16 7 Cherniss, Michael, 99n . 36 Chiron, 56,70-73 Chronotope, 169, 169n. 24 Chryseis, 143-44, 15 1-5 2 Cleopatra, 161, 165-66 Clogan, Paul M., 50n. 9 Cochin, Henry, 5 In. 12 Coldwell, David F. C., 174n Commentaries, medieval, 15, 18-20, 26-27, 103, 145, 146, 162n. 7 Confessions. See Augustine, Confessions Conrad of Hirsau, 33-34, 34 n . 41 Constance of Angers, 34-35, 37, 45. See also Baudri of Bourgeuil Constans, Leopold, 46n. 68 Contemptus mundi, 121 Copeland, Rita, 161, 16In. 3, 162n. 7, 168n.22 Corynne, 100 Cowan, Bainard, 49, 49n . 7 Creon, 75-76,81,86-87 Crescini, Vincenzo, 122, 122n. 21, 123 Crete, 75-76,81,92, I I I Creusa, 2-3,175-78, 176n Crise ida (in Filostrato), 13 1, 138, 157. See also Boccaccio, Filostrato; Criseyde; Pandaro; Troiolo Criseyde (in Troilus and Criseyde) , 13 I, 136-44,I46,I50,I53-56,I90.See also Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Crise ida; Pandarus; T roilus Critics, exegetical, 171, 17 In. 3 I Cupid, 107-8, 181 Cydippe, 27 Dante Alighieri, 10-1 I, 12, 14, 15, 18, 26,27,38,45-46,88,120,168, 18 7, 19 1 Works: Commedia, 120, 166-67, 173; Inferno, 14, 18, 103, 106; Purgatorio, 5, 12n. 20, 49; specific cantos: Inf. 5, 40; Inf. 12,73; Inf. 20, 173; Inf. 26,

Index 47-61,77,86-87, II3n. II, 116, 117, 188; Purg. 9, 71; Purg. 10, 107; Purg. 2 1,55,73; Purg. 21-22,49; Purg. 22, 67, 172; Purg. 30 , 54, 73; passages cited: Inf. 5. 64-69, 69; Inf.

12.70-75,70; Inf. 18.83-96, 10 9-10; Inf. 20·97-99, 173; Inf. 26.95-6 , 188; Inf. 26.52-54, 52; Inf. 26.55-69, 53; Inf. 26.61-62, 61; Inf. 26.61-63, 47; Inf. 26.62-63, 52; Inf· 26.90-91, 68n. 31; Inf. 26·94-99,61, 6In, 67; Inf. 26.95-96, 188; Inf. 26. I 12-2 I, 87n; Inf. 26.121-23, 66; Inf. 3 1.6, 7 1; Purg. 9.34-45, 72 ; Purg. 10·94-95, 10 7; Purg. 2 1.9 1-93, 50; Purg. 2 I .91-102,54; Purg. 22.67-69, 172; Purg. 22.109-14, 63, 63 n ; Purg. 3 0 .49-5 I, 73 n . 37; Purg. 3 0 .98 , 73 De Vulgari Eloquentia, 167, I67n. 18 Vita Nuova, 167 Daphne, 135-36 "Dead White European Males," I!. See also Boccaccio; Chaucer; Dante; Ovid; Statius; Virgil Deianira, 7, 17, 103, 10 7, 109, 114-19 Deidamia, 18-19,37-39, 39n. 62, 40n. 64,4 1-44,47-48 ,53,5 6-59, 61-6 7, 63 n , 74, 77,88, 103, 111-14,119, 126, I88.Seea~o Achilles; "Deidamia Achilli"; Statius, Achilleid "Deidamia Achilli," 18-19,37,38-45, 48,62,188 Delany, Sheila, 6, 6n, I6In. 5, I68n. 21, I7 In ·33 Del Corno, Carlo, I23n, I26n. 31 Demophoon, 7,19,32-33,81,114, 123, 126, 143, 161. See also Ovid, Heroides 2; Phyllis Derrida, Jacques, 13, I3n . 23 Deschamps, Eustace, 169 Desire, conflict with reason, 128-29 Desmond, Marilynn, 4, 5n . 6, 6, 6n, 9, 9n. 12, 10, 17 2 , I72n'35, I85n

21 3

Dialogic poetics, 14. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail Diana, temple of, 90, 9In. 22 Dido, 1-9, I5-17,27,37n.59,62, 73-74, 94, 100, 104, 143; in Aeneid, 1-3,173, I73 n ·37, 174, 17 8-79, 182-83, I82n.46, 187-89; in Amorosa Visione, 5, 107-8, 113, 117-19; in Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta, 126-27; in Heroides, 174, 17 6-77, 183-8 4; in House of Fame, 3-9; in Legend of Good ~omen, 20, 161, 17 1, 173-75, 178-85. See also Aeneas; Ovid, Heroides 7; Virgil, Aeneid Dilke, O. A. W., 40n. 64, 60n Dinshaw, Carolyn, 152-53, I52n, I53n. 33 Diomede (in Troilus and Criseyde) , 140 Diomedes, 39, 47-4 8 , 50, 53-55, 57, 59, 6 I, 64, 68, 86, I I I. See also Dante, Inferno 26; Ulysses Di Pino, Guido, 67n. 28, 79n. 6 Domenico di Monticello, 46 Donaldson, E. Talbot, I44n. 25, I67n. 19, 168n.2I, I86n.50 Donati, Forese, 5 I, 5 I n. 12 Donnini, Mauro, 30n. 30 Doubleness, 19, 76, 78,99, 101 Douglas, Gavin, 174-75, I74 n Dream vision, 166, 175 Dronke, Peter, 35-3 6 , 35 nn . 47-49, 36nn·53-56,37nn·58-59 Dryden, John, 23-24, 23n. 8 Eco, Umberto, 13, I3nn. 23-24, 104, I04n.2 Economic language, 153-54 Edwards, Mary, I6n. 29, 46n. 7 I Ekphrasis, 4, 102 Emerson, Caryl, I4n, 25n Emelye (in Knight's Tale), 91, 9In. 22, 94,97-98, 101, 189. See also Arcite; Boccaccio, Teseida; Chaucer, Knight' s Tale; Emilia; Palamon

214

Emilia (in Teseida) , 20, 79, 86, 89-90, 103 Enterline, Lynn, I I, I In, 13 Eteocles, 49, 52, 78, 82, 86. See also Polynices

Ethopoeia,

22

Euripides, 27 Eurydice, 73, 176

Fallere, 176-77 Fame, 6-7. See also Chaucer, House of Fame Fear, and Criseyde, 154. See also Timor Femenye, 92, 188. See also Amazons Feminism, and poststructuralism, 12-13 Fiammetta, I 1,91, 103, 106, 122-28, 189. See also Boccaccio, Elegia di

Madonna Fiammetta Fifeld, Merle, 92n Finlayson, John, 91n. 23 Fleming, John, 13 1, 13 2n . 3, 135, 135n . 11,13 6 , 136n. 13 Foolish love. See Stultus amor Fortune, 120-2 I Frank, Robert Worth, Jr., 95, 95n . 3 1, 16Inn·4-6 , 17In.33, 186n·5 0 Frankel, Hermann, 17n. 3 I Fratricide, 49, 77,86,92. See also Thebes Fraud, 65, 69 Freccero, John, 48, 48n. 2 Froissart, Jean, 169 Frost, William, 91n. 23, 94n . 27 Fulcois of Beauvais, 38 Fulgentius, 185 Fyler, John, 155n , 178, 178n Ganim, John, 163n. 9 Ganymede, 72 Geffrey. See Chaucer, House of Fame Gender roles, inversions of, 73, 13 I, 13 In . 2 , 137, 157, 190 Ghisalberti, Fausto, 32n. 33, 161n. 2 Ginsberg, Warren, 28, 28n. 24 Glossa Ordinaria, 170 Goddard, H. C., 165, 165n, 166 Goold, G. P., 40n. 65

INDEX

Gower, John, 94n . 28, 95 n . 28, 144-45, 145nn. 26-27; Confessio Amantis 2 ·45 I-5 8 , 145 Green, R. H., 9 1n. 23,93 Groos, Arthur, 25n . 13 Guibert of Nogent, 38 Hagen, Hermann, 28n. 25 Haller, Robert, 92n. 25 Hanning, Robert, 9 I n. 24 Hansen, Elaine Tuttle, 12n. 19, 98, 98n, 17°,17 0n ·3 0 Harrison, S. J., 3n Harvey, Elizabeth D., I I, I In Hawkins, Peter S., 73n. 36 Hays, Greg, 60n Hector, 153-55 Helen of Troy, 16,27,35,38,4°,43,55, 64,7°, 1°3,116,126,137,153, 157; abduction by Theseus, 83-86, 93-94. See also Ovid, Heroides 17; Paris Heloise, 34, 3 6-37, 3 6n . 54,45· See also Abelard Hercules, 7, 107, 114-16, 115n . 15, 164. See also Deianira; Ovid, Heroides 9 Hermione, 17 Heteroglossia, 26. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail Hexter, Ralph, 7n, 27, 27nn. 16, 18, 28n.21, 29-30, 29n. 28,30n. 29, 37 n ·57, 115 n . 15, 144n . 23 Hilbert, Karlheinz, 35n . 46 Hippodamia, 144n. 22. See also Briseis Hippolyta, 83, 88, 90-9 1, 93-94, 98, 101 Hippolytus, 17, 81n. 13, 95n . 3 1 Hollander, Jean, 47n Hollander, Robert, 47n , 69n . 33, 103, 103n, I05n.4, 106, 106nn. 7-8, 120,124, 125n.26, 128, 167n. 18, 173 n ·3 8 Holquist, Michael, 25n. 14 Homer: Iliad, 17, 27, 27n. 20, 118, 143-44, 144n. 22; Odyssey, 17,27, I 17; War between the Frogs and Mice, 165

Index Hopkins, David, 23n. 8 Horace, Odes 1.7.25-26, 6sn. 27 Hunting, 181-82 Huot, Sylvia, lOS, Iosn. S Huygens, R. B. C., 29n. 26, 3 In. 3 1, 33n. 40, 34n . 4 1, I60n.2 Hypermnestra, 17, I8n Hypsipyle, 7, 17,27,36,38, 108-12, 114, 119, 127, 161, 189. See also Jason; Ovid, Heroides 6 Iarbas, 183

Ilias Latina, 144 Incest, 17, I7 n . 33 Intertextuality, 14 Iole, IIsn. IS, 116 Ipolyta, 20, 83, 8S, 88, 90, 103. See also Hippolyta Irony, 103, 105, 121, 128, 161 Iser, Wolfgang, 13, I3n . 24 Jacobson, Harold, I7n. 3 I, I8n, 22, 22n. 3,23, 23 n . 7, 24, 24n. 9, 27 n . 19, lIS, IIsn. 16, IS4, IS4 n ·3S J acoff, Rachel, 73, 74n. 3 8 Jason, 7,38, 108-12,114,161, 189. See also Hypsipyle; Medea; Ovid,

Heroides 6 Jauss, Hans Robert, 13, I3n . 24 Jeudy, C., son. 9 Jones, Terry, 91, 9 In. 24 Jove, 72 Kaske, R. E., I3In. 2 Kauffman,Linda,3 6 ,3 6n ·S4,43 Kelly, H. Ansgar, I83n Kirkham, Victoria, 79n. 6 Kiser, Lisa, I66n. 17, 178, I78n, 180, I80n Kittredge, George Lyman, I34n. 7, I44n. 2S,I4S n . 26 Kleinhenz, Christopher, 49n . S Knight, as narrator, 101. See also Chaucer, Knight's Tale Knight's Tale. See Chaucer, Knight's Tale

21 5

Koster, Severin, Ssn. 16 Lacan, Jacques, 13 Laocoon, 6o Laodamia, 17, 3S n . 4 8 , 39n. 62,1°7, 109, 116, 126. See also Ovid, Heroides 13; Protesilaus Lawton, Nicholas, I63n. 9 Les, I77n Lewis, C. S., IS4n . 36 Liber Catonianus, SO, son. 49 Limimanuaks, 34,39,144 Limbo, 63, 67n . 29 Limentani, Alberto, 80n. 9 Lipking, Lawrence, 8, 8n, 10, IS-I7, I7 n . 3 2 , 3 6n . S2, 19 1, I9 In Livia, 31 Logan, Terence P., 6sn. 26 Lossing, Marian, I69n. 2S Love, god of (in Legend of Good Women), IS9-60, 162, I6S, 170, 171, I7 In. 31, I8S-86; martyrs for, 166, I66n. 16 Lowes, John Livingston, 97, 97n , I6S-66, I66nn. I4-IS, I67n.20, I69n.2S Lucan, Pharsalia, SI, 6S, 65n . 27 Lucretia, 16S Lycomedes, 39, SS-S6, 61-62 Lynceus, 18 Lyne, R. O. A. M., 3n Macareus, 17 Macauley, G. C., I4sn. 27 Machaut, Guillaume, 94, 169 "Makyng," 167 Manto, 173 Mantua, 173 Marbod of Rennes, 38 Marriage, of Aeneas and Dido, 182-83 Mars, 99-100 Martin, Ellen, 170, I70nn. 26-28 Martinez, Ronald, 88n. 18 Mauch, Thomas, I23n Mazzotta, Giuseppe, 48, 48n. 3 McCoy, Bernadette Marie, 80n. 9

216

McGregor, James, 34, 34n . 43 McLeod, Glenda, I66n. 16 Medea, 7,17,27,38,108-11,114,161, 166. See also Hypsipyle; Jason; Ovid, Heroides 12 Medieval commentaries. See Commen . . taries, medieval Meech, Sanford, 46, 46n. 70, 134, I34n.

8 Meheust, Jean, 40n. 64, 50n. I I, 62n Mendelsohn, Daniel, 55n. 17,58, 58n. 19 Menelaus, 85, 86 Miller, Frank Justus, I35n. 12 Minnis, A. J., 28n. 22, 29n . 27, 9 In. 23 Minos, 77, 79-81 Minotaur, 76-82,92, 93n, 101, I I I, 188 Model reader, 104, I04n.2, 122 Moi, Toril, 12-13, I3nn. 21-22 Monologic poetics, 20. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail Moore, Edward, 49, 49n. 6 Morson, Gary Saul, I4n Mozley, J. H., 2In, 40n. 64,75 Musa, Mark, 49n . 4 Muscatine, Charles, 9 In. 23 Nelli, Francesco, 51, 5In. 12 Nicholson, R. H., 9In. 23 Nisus, 81 N oakes, Susan, 80n. 10 Nogara, B., 3In. 32, I60n. 2 Nolan, Barbara, 9In. 23, I54n. 36 Novel, discourse of, 25-26, 162-63, 168, 185. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail Nursing, 71-73 Odysseus, 17, 39. See also Ulysses Oedipus, 52 Oenone, 7,17,41,93,116,126-27, 13 1-37, 157· See also Ovid, Heroides 5; Paris Orpheus, 73, 176 Ovid, 5,7,8,10, 14, 16, 19,28,3 1, 56n, 120, 172,187,191; as praeceptor

amoris, Works:

I I

INDEX

Amores, 160 Ars amatoria, 28,3 1,39,99-100, 134, 160; passages cited: Ars am. 1.681-706,58; Ars am. 2.239-42, I34n. 6; Ars am. 3.345-46,21 Heroides, 8, 10-1 I, 15-16, I6n. 30, 17, I7 nn ·3 I -3 2 , 18, I8n·34, 20-46,78,99-100,101,102, 104-5,113,116,122,126,130-3 1, 145,160-62,171, 188-89; accessus to, 28-32, 146, 160-61, I60nn.2, 3, I6In. 3; "double epistles" in, 16, 17, 27; medieval commentaries on, 44, 103, 144-46, I62n. 7; transla . . tions of, 45-46; specific epistles: Her. I (Penelope), 62, 65, 68, I 17, 141-43; Her. 2 (Phyllis), 32-33, 126, I26n. 31, I43n. 21; Her. 3 (Br~e~),20,27n.20,36,4I,43,

144, I44 n . 23, 145, 146 , 148 , I4 8n , 154; Her. 5 (Oenone), 93, 13 1-38; Her. 6 (Hypsipyle), 36, 109; Her. 7 (Dido), 3,6, 7-8,94,108,118,126, 17 2 -74,17 6 , 184; Her. 9 (Deianira), 107, 114, 115, II5n . 15, 116; Her. 10 (Ariadne), 27n. 20, 36,95,97, 118, 13 8-4 1; Her. 12 (Medea), 108, 109; Her. 13 (Lao . . damia), 39n, 107, 126; Her. 15 (Sappho), 27, 27n . 17; Her. 16 (Paris), 27,35,38; Her. 17 (Helen of Troy), 38; Her. 2 I (Cydippe), 27; passages cited: Her. 1.1-2, 43; Her. 1.12, 142; Her. 1.75-78, 142; Her. 1.75-80,40; Her. 1.81,44; Her. 3. 1 -4, 145; Her. 3·3, 145; Her. 3.5-6,44,147; Her. 3.141-42,148; Her. 5.29-32, 137; Her. 5. 61 - 68 , I26n. 32; Her. 5. I 17-18,41; Her. 5· 139-52 , 133; Her. 5. 14 0-45, I33n; Her. 5. IS I-5 2 , I33 n ; Her. 5. 149-5 0 , 13 2 ; Her. 7.41-74, I26n. 28; Her. 7.81-86,176-77; Her. 10.15-16, 138; Her. 10·5 I-59, 140-4 1; Her. 10·55-57, 118-1 9; Her. 10.125-3°,96-97; Her. 10.137-38, 139; Her.

Index 12.3 1-32 , 108; Her. 13.87-90, I26n.29 Metamorphoses, 34,80,89, 105, 109, 140, 143; specific books: Met. I I, 58; Met. 13, 65; passage cited: Met. 1.521 - 2 4, 135 Remedia amoris, 151-52; passage cited: Rem. am. 467-84, 151 Ovide moralise, 94 Pabst, Walter, I26n. 33 Padoan, Giorgio, 49n . 4, 65n . 26, 76n. 3 Palamon, 77, 79-80 , 84, 89-94, 96, 98, 189. See also Arcite; Chaucer, Knight's Tale; Emelye Palestral games, 85-86 Palladium, 53, 156 Palmer, Arthur, I6n. 30 Pandaro, 149. See also Boccaccio, Filostrato; Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Crise ida; Criseyde; Pan-darus; Troilus; Troiolo Pandarus, 131-36, I3 6n . IS, 137, 139, 145-46 , 149, 15 2 , ISS-57· See also Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Criseyde; Pandaro; T roilus; Pandering, 152-53 Panfilo, 122, 125-27 Paratore, Ettore, 49n. 6 Par~, 7,16,27,35,38,41,7°,84,93, 116, 126, 131, 135-37, 157. See also Helen of Troy; Oenone; Ovid, Heroides 5, Heroides 16, Heroides 17 Parody, 163-65, 191 Parry, Adam, 3n Parthoenopaeus, 74 Patterson, Lee, 79, 79n . 7, 8In. 12,82, 82n, 99, 99 n ·37 Payne, H. Anne, I63n. 9 Peiffer, John C., II, 36n. 54 Peleus,58 Penelope, 17, 19, 27, 29, 35 n . 4 8 ,3 8 , 40, 43-44,4 8 ,62,65,68,77,88, 103, 116-17,131,141-43,188. See also Ovid, Heroides I; Ulysses Percival, Florence, 17 In. 33 Perithous, 84

21 7

Perkell, Christine, I76n Perryman, Judith, 99n . 36 Perugi, Maurizio, 45n Petrarch, 5 I, 5 In. 12 Petrocchi, Giorgio, 47n, 5 I n. 14 Phaedra, 17, I9,27,8I,8In. 13,93-95, 94n. 28, 98, 103, 161. See also Ari-adne; Hippolytus; Theseus Phaeon,27 Philomela, 89-90, 89n. 21, 95n. 28, 161. See also Procne; T ereus Phyllis, 7, 17, 19,29,3 2-33, 33n . 40, 114, 123, 126, 143, 161. See also Demophoon; Ovid, Heroides 2 Pity, 96 Poetry, in Amorosa Visione, 121 Poliphete, ISS Pollux, 84. See also Castor Polynices, 49, 52, 78, 86. See also Eteocles Polyxena, 70, 114, 152 Pope, Alexander: Eloisa to Abelard, 36; Rape of the Lock, 25n. I I Praeceptor amoris, 29, IS I-52. See also Ovid Praz, Mario, 168, I68n. 23 Pride, terrace of, 1°7. See also Dante, Purgatorio 10 Prins, Yopie, 13 Procne, 89, 89n. 21, 95n. 68, 161. See also Philomela; T ereus Proserpine, 84 Protesilaus, 17, 39n. 62, 107,116,126. See also Laodamia; Ovid, Heroides 13 Purser, Louis, I7n. 3 I Putnam, M. C. J., 3n Pyramus, 143 Pyrrhus,63 Quain, Edwin, 28n. 22 Quinn, William, I6In. 6, I62n. 6, I68nn.2I-22, I7In.33, 182, I82n. 45 Raby, F. J. E., 28n. 25, 35n . 45 Rand, E. K., 28, 28n. 23

218

Rape, 133-36 Reader, model, 186n. 5 I Reader response, 19-20, 104, 127-29 Reason: conflict with desire, 128-29, 189; guide in Amorosa Visione, 106 Reidy, John, 92n Relicta, in elegy, 14, 119, 1I9n Repetition, in laments of abandoned women, 112 Revisionism, 12, 16 Reynolds, L. D., 95n . 30 Riou, Y. F., 50n. 9 Robertson, D. W., 37, 37n . 58 Roman de la Rose, 159 Rosa, Luca, 32, 3 2nn . 35-36,33,33nn. 37,39 Rosati, G., 39n. 62 Rowe, Donald, 166n. 17, 168n. 21, 186n·49 Rubin, Gayle, 152, 152n Rudd, Niall, 173 n . 37 Ruth, 170 Ryan, Lawrence, 68n.30 Sacchi, E., 49n . 5 Sapegno, Natalino, 104, I05n. 4 Sappho, 10, 17,27,56n Satire, Legend of Good Women as, 191 Scaffai, Marco, 144n. 24 Schetter, Willi, 50n. 10 SchIess, Howard, 172n. 36 Scott, A. B., 29n . 27 Scott, John, 49 n . 4 Scylla, 80-81 Scyros,39,43,50,55-57,59,62,7 2 Searle, John, 13, 13n . 23 Sedlmayer, Heinrich, 33n. 40 Segre, Cesare, 123-24, 124nn. 23, 25 Seldis, Anna Bruni, 13In. I Seriacopi, Massimo, 47n Sexual violence, 136. See also Rape Shaner, M. C. E., 169n. 25 Shankland, Hugh, 69n . 33 Shannon, Edgar, 99nn. 35, 38, 178, 178n, 181, 18In Shoaf, R. A. 153, 153 n . 34

INDEX

Showerman, Grant, 40n. 65, 133n Singleton, Charles S., 47n, 65, 65n . 27, 70n, 7 I ,7 In , 73 n ·37 Slavery, 148-50, 154 Smarr, Janet, 79n. 6, 103, I03n, 105, I06n.8, 114, 1I4n. 14, 120, 122, 122n.20, 125, 125n.26, 128 Song of Songs, 35 Spoth, Friederich, I 19n, 143n. 20, 154n. 35 Stanford, W. B., 65n. 26 Statius, 10, 14, 15, 19,42, 191; as char . . acter in Commedia, 49, 49n . 5, 5°-5 1,54,63,73,17 2 Works: Achilleid, 18-19,37-39,43,47-53, 55-68,72-73,77,1°3, III, 1I3n. I I, 126, 126n. 3 I; passages cited: Achill. I. 141 , 56; Achill. I .242-5 I , 7 2 ; Achill. I .283-84, 56; Achill. 1.3°1-6,56; Achill. 1.313-17,42; Achill. 1.342, 56; Achill. 1.363-65, 57; Achill. 1.472 , 57; Achill. 1.542-43, 57; Achill. 1.5 60- 61 , 57; Achill. 1.592 , 57; Achill. 1.640-45, 57; Achill. 1.792- 802 , 59; Achill. I .846-47, 60, 60n; Achill I.856-57, 61; Achill. I.873-74, 61; Achill. 1.885-88, 61; Achill. 1.938, 62; Achill. 1.939, 62; Achill. 1.947-48 ,40 ; Achill. 1.954-55,41; Achill. I. 960, 4 I, 62; Achill. 2.23-30,63; Achill. 2.25-26 , 41; Achill. 2.27-30, 66; Achill. 2.5 0 - 84,65; Achill. 2.78-85,64; Achill. 2.84-85, 66; Achill. 2.167, 64 Silvae, 49 Thebaid, 19,49,51-52,73-79,81,86, 93, 99; individual book: Theb. 12, 86, 89n. 21; passages cited: Theb. 6.5 1 3- 1 7,7 8; Theb. 12.665-76,75, 93 Stefanini, Ruggiero, 49n . 4 Stilnovisti, 105 Stohlmann, Jurgen, 38, 38n, 43 Storm, Melvin, 94n . 27

Index Stultus amor, 16,33, 33n . 4, 103, 128, 17 1, 18 9 Suicide, 143 Summit, Jennifer, 100, Ioonn. 41-42 Sweeney, Robert Dale, 5on. 9 Sychaeus, 2, 178 Tarrant, R. J., I6n. 30 Taylor, Karla, 5, 5n . 7, I07n T ereus, 95n. 28. See also Philomela; Procne Teseo, 19-20,77,79,81-9°,1°3, III, 188. See also Ariadne; Boccaccio, Teseida; Chaucer, Knight's Tale; Ovid, Heroides 10; Phaedra; Statius, Thebaid; Theseus Teucer,65 Thebes, 19,49,54,75,77-78,81, 86-88,91-92,94,99, I88;~arof the Seven against, 75, 77,82-83 Thersites, 151 Theseus, 7, 18-19, 62n, 75-81 , 8In. 13, 82-86,91-99,101-2, 111,114, I38-39,I55,I6I,I84,I88-89·See also Ariadne; Boccaccio, Teseida; Chaucer, Knight' s Tale; Ovid, Heroides 10; Phaedra; Statius, The-baid; Teseo Thetis, 39, 4 1, 55-59, 64-6 5, 72-73. See also Achilles; Statius, Achilleid Thisbe, 143 Thompson, N. S., 128, I28n, 129, I29nn·37-38,I86n·5I Timor, 143. See also Fear Traube, Ludwig, 34, 34n . 42 Triumph: of Glory, 106-7, 109-10, 117; of Love, 109-10, 121; of Wealth, 109; of~isdom, 106 Troilus, 20, 3 2n . 34, 13 1-33, 13 6 , 139-43, 145-5 0 , 15 2-53, 157, 190. See also Boccaccio, Filostrato; Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Cri .. seida; Criseyde; Troiolo Troiolo, 131, 138, 141, 147, 149-50. See also Boccaccio, Filostrato; Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Crise ida; Criseyde; T roilus

21 9

Trojan horse, 60 Trojan War, 3, 17,20,39,44,55,66, 68-69,68n.3I, 116-18, 152, 164, 179-80 Troy, fall of, 3, 136, 175, 178 Tydeus, 82 Ulysses, 18-19,4°,43,47-55,57, 59-69,72,77,82,86-89, III, 116-17, 141-43, 188. See also Boc .. caccio, Amorosa Visione; Boccaccio, Teseida; Dante, Inferno 26; Diomedes; Ovid, Heroides I; Pene .. lope; Statius, Achilleid Valmaggi, Luigi, 50n Vatican Library, 35 Venus, 99, 126, 178, 181; as guide in Amorosa Visione, 106; temple of, 3, 177 Verducci, Florence, 24, 24n. 10,25-26, 25 n . II, 27n. 19, 95, 95 n . 29,9 6 , 9 6n ·3 2 Vessey, David, 76n. 3 Virgil, 3, 9-10, 16,20, 56n, 172-73, I73n. 38, 185, 191; as character in Commedia, 47,51-54,63,67-68, 72-73, 109 ~orks:

Aeneid, 1-2,7, 10, 15,22,27,51,54, 73,94,108,118,17 1-7 2 ,174,19°; individual books: Aen. 1,65, 65n. 27,118, 178-79; Aen. 2,175,177; Aen·4, 3,16,74,173,17 8 ,181-8 3; Aen. 6, 2; passages cited: Aen. 1.459-63, 180; Aen. 1.464-65,3; Aen. 2.42-44,60, 60n; Aen. 2.49, 60, 60n; Aen. 2.73 6-44, 175-76; Aen. 4.23, 73n. 36; Aen. 4. 1 7 2 , 182; Aen. 4.173-97, 7n; Aen. 4.338-39, 173, 182. See also Aeneas; Creusa; Dido; Ovid, Heroides 7 Culex, 165 Georgics, 74; passage cited: Georg. 4.5 2 5-2 7, 73, 73 n . 37 Visible speech, 107

220

Wallace, David, 93n, 94n. 28,104, I04n·3 Watkins, John, 9, 9n. 12 Webb, Henry, 9In. 24 Wetherbee, Winthrop, IS, Isn. 28, SI, SIn. 13,S2n, 77, 77 n , lOIn. 44, 13 6 , 13 6n . 13 Whitfield, J. H., 49n . 4 Wife of Bath, I I, lOIn. 43 Wilkinson, L. P., 22, 22n. 4, 34n . 44 Williams, R. D., 2n, 3n Wimsatt, J ames I., 169n. 2S

INDEX

Windeatt, B. A., 132n. 4, 142n, 149, 149n , ISO, IS6, Winsor, Eleanor, 23, 23 n . 7 Wit, 190, 191 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 2S, 2sn. 13 Women: abandoned (see Abandoned women); catalogs of, 20, 166, 166n. 16; as objects, IS3; traffic in, IS2, IS2n Wright, Constance, 3S, 3Sn . 47 Zaggia, Massimo, 4Sn