An earlier draft of Chapter II of The medieval tradition of Thebes : history and
narrative in the OF Roman de Thèbes, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Lydgate, by
Dominique Battles. New York : Routledge, 2004.
Chapter
II: Boccaccio’s Teseida
and
The
Destruction of Troy
Whenever scholars approach the subject of history in Boccaccio’s Teseida,
they invariably turn to Thebes. This
is understandable. The two main protagonists of the poem, Arcita and
Palamone, are descended from the royal house of Thebes; the poem picks up where
Statius’ Thebaid leaves off, with Theseus’ attack on Thebes at the end
of the Theban war; and one of the most memorable scenes of the poem is set in
Thebes, when Arcita escapes imprisonment in Athens and returns to Thebes only
to find a shell of his former home. These elements, coupled with the
numerous and dense allusions to Statius’ Thebaid, have led scholars to
view the Teseida as a sequel to the Thebaid, as Boccaccio’s
fictional expansion of Theban history, and in many ways it is. However,
the subject of history in the Teseida also includes future events, with
respect to the poem’s timeframe, namely the Trojan war.
In 1339, Giovanni Boccaccio began writing
what he claimed to be the first epic in the Italian language.
He chose as his subject matter the events between the end of the Theban war and
the beginning of the Trojan war, an uncharted chapter in ancient history
indicated only by signposts in both the literary and historical accounts of
ancient history available to him. Approaching this period as a
transitional moment in history, Boccaccio created his Teseida as a
fusion of elements from the Theban and Trojan wars: he borrows characters,
episodes and narrative circumstances from the Theban conflict, as recorded by
Statius, as well as from the Trojan conflict, as preserved in a variety of
classical and medieval sources; he designs the main action of the poem (a
conflict between two kinsmen over possession of a woman) in such a way that it
combines the mode of conflict at Thebes (civil strife) with the source of
conflict at Troy (a woman), so that it becomes both a repeat of the Theban
conflict and a rehearsal for the Trojan conflict; he populates the armies of
the opposing sides with personnel from both the Theban and Trojan wars; and he
manipulates epic type-scenes to guide the narrative out of one conflict and
into another. The result is what I call a “transitional epic” designed to
both substantiate the rather nebulous period between the Theban and Trojan wars
and to construct a precise relationship between these two conflicts.
From the early middle ages on, poets and
thinkers attempted, with variable success, to join the histories of Thebes and
Troy. The relationship between the Theban and Trojan wars was partially
explained by the paradigm of Providential history established by St.Augustine
of Hippo. In his City of God, Augustine locates the human race
within two spiritual spaces, or “cities, speaking allegorically,..one of which
is predestined to reign with God for all eternity, and the other doomed to
undergo eternal punishment with the Devil.” The
one occupies the heavenly city, which emanates from “love of God,” while the
other occupies the earthly city, which “created itself by self-love.” As the
heavenly city experiences eternal bliss, the earthly city, by contrast, is
locked into a pattern of dominion and fall. Each historical city on earth
is but another incarnation of that earthly city. Thus, “the city of Rome
was founded to be a kind of second Babylon, the daughter, as it were, of the
former Babylon.”
The rise of Rome, he goes on, coincided with the fall of Babylon, and “these
two powers present a kind of pattern of contrast, both historically and
geographically....All other kingdoms and kings I should describe as something
like appendages of those empires.”
In other words, all earthly cities take part in a cycle of rise and decline;
the demise of one gives rise to another whose own demise resembles that of the
previous one, and all earthly cities suffer a similar fate. While Augustine
argues emphatically that human beings can freely choose membership in the
heavenly city over membership in the earthly city by choosing the path of
righteousness, nevertheless he concludes that earthly history tends to fall
into a repeating pattern of disaster precisely because human beings
consistently choose to the path of error and false belief.
This understanding of history as
destructive repetition governs the versions of Theban and Trojan history
available to Boccaccio. Thebes, like Troy, had become another famous
destroyed city. For example, the incipits and explicits of
manuscripts of the OF Roman de Thèbes and the OF Roman de Troie
announce a link between the destruction of Thebes and that of Troy; Thebes
becomes the “root” (racine) of Troy, and these two works more often than
not appear together in the same manuscripts. This link
between the two cities survives into the prose redactions of the Thèbes
and Troie. For instance, a somewhat late (15th c.) example of the Histoire
ancienne jusqu’à César appears to reproduce the explicit of MS P of
the OF Roman de Thèbes which places the destruction of Thebes twenty
years before the Trojan war.
Additionally, Boccaccio’s personal copy of Statius’ Thebaid (Bibl.
Laurentiana MS. Plut. 38.6) bears the title “Statius Thebaydos ystoria
destructionis Thebarum” [“The Thebaid of Statius: the history of the
destruction of Thebes”], a heading frequently assigned to histories of
Troy.
Similarly, in his Filocolo, written some five years earlier, Boccaccio
himself aligns the destructions of Thebes and Troy in a mural in king Felice’s
palace, which includes depictions of “la dispietata rovina di Tebe”
[“the pitiless destruction of Thebes”] and “l’altra distruzione della superba
Troia” [“the other destruction of proud Troy”] (II.32). The tragedy
of Thebes in this mural centers around the physical destruction of the city of
Thebes, reflecting a distinctly medieval interpretation of Theban
history. For Statius, the tragedy of the Theban war always lay in the
issue of civil war, in “fraternas acies alternaque regna,”(I.1) [“The
strife of brothers and alternate reigns”] to which the city of Thebes forms a mere
backdrop.
However, medieval poets and audiences, Boccaccio among them, locate the tragedy
of the war, instead, in the destroyed remains of the city itself, and viewed it
as an earlier instance of the misfortune that struck Troy. Thebes and
Troy came as a pair, and both cities, despite their vastly different histories,
were united in a common fate that reflected a pattern of historical repetition
which bears the hallmark of Augustinian historiography.
However, Augustine’s model of secular
history and the medieval vernacular accounts of ancient history that it
influenced do not specify the precise causal link between the Theban and Trojan
wars. Both cities rise to prominence, experience a siege and suffer
destruction, but the parallels between the nature of the Theban conflict and
that of Troy seem to end there. One represents a civil war, the other a
war between two foreign powers; one revolves around possession of a throne, the
other around possession of a woman; and no single individual or event at Thebes
seems to have laid the foundation for the Trojan war. Thus, in the
medieval accounts of Thebes and Troy, it is not at all clear exactly how
Thebes formed the “root” of Troy. In his Teseida, Boccaccio sets
out to forge that link by creating an intervening conflict between the Theban
and Trojan wars which bears some resemblance to both conflicts.
I begin by asking the question, how would
a poet in early fourteenth century Naples imagine and construct a chapter in
ancient history which had received so little prior coverage? After all,
the accounts for Theseus’ reign in Athens between the Theban and Trojan wars
were scarce and brief. Theseus’ campaign against the Amazons appears only
as a headline in the well-known Latin universal histories of Orosius and
Eusebius.
Ovid mentions Theseus in connection with Helen (later Helen of Troy), and with
his participation in the Calydonian Boar hunt, and with the battle between the
Lapiths and the Centaurs, and with his defeat of the minotaur. But
he makes no mention of his defeat of the Amazons. Later medieval
vernacular histories, such as the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, give
equally scant coverage to Theseus. In fact, the Amazon episode in the Histoire
ancienne highlights Hercules’ encounters with this race of women warriors
over Theseus’ encounters with them, quite a different picture from Boccaccio’s
account.
For the most part, therefore, Boccaccio had limited historical or literary
material from which to reconstruct the temporal gap between the Theban and
Trojan wars, not to mention Theseus’ activities during this period.
Boccaccio would begin, then, by reviewing
the events immediately surrounding this period in history, the events of Thebes
and Troy. For Theban history, he could turn to his copy of Statius’
Thebaid and the commentary on the Thebaid by Lactantius
Placidus.
He might also turn to the OF Roman de Thèbes of 1154-6, or a prose
redaction of the Thèbes which had been incorporated into a vernacular
universal history, copies of which we know existed in Naples during Boccaccio’s
years there.
(As the seat of the Angevin Empire, Naples was saturated with French influence,
with French and Provençal figures occupying many religious and secular posts.) For
Trojan history, Boccaccio could consult the same universal chronicles, or, for
the more expanded version, Guido delle Colonne’s Historia Destructionis
Troiae, a text well-known to Boccaccio and from which he borrowed
extensively for his earlier work, Il Filocolo. Or he
might turn to Guido’s source, Benoît de Saint Maure’s OF Roman de Troie,
which also circulated in abbreviated prose redactions as part of the Histoire
ancienne.
He might also consult Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, whose accounts of
the Trojan war from opposite sides were accepted as eye-witness testimony by
medieval readers. There was also, of course, the account of Troy in
book II of the Aeneid. (Homer was, as yet, unavailable to
Boccaccio as to medieval readers in general.) He
might also consult Ovid for additional versions of ancient history, namely his Metamorphoses,
Heroides and Fasti, all of which Boccaccio knew. With these
sources, Boccaccio could reconstruct the period of Theseus’ reign in Athens
using accounts of the events immediately preceding and following that period,
accounts of the Theban and Trojan wars. The result of this enterprise in
historical reconstruction, Il Teseida, contains as much Trojan material
as Theban material. In fact, Troy dominates the very first book of the Teseida.
Having summarized the “crudeltate”(1,13)
[“excessive cruelty”] of the Amazonian kingdom in refusing to admit any men
into their domain, Boccaccio depicts Teseo mobilizing an army to attack them,
preparations that recall those of Menelaus’ army for the siege of Troy.
In Athens, “commosi adunque e popoli dintorno” [“all the neighboring
tribes”] gather and load up the “sopra le navi già apparecchiate/cavalli e
arme ciascun caricava con ciò che a fare oste bisognava” [“waiting ships
with horses and weapons and whatever else is needed to wage war”] (1.17).
Boccaccio then imitates the epic convention of the launching of ships, in this
case (as in the case of Troy) those of “la greca gente” [“the Greek
nation”] headed for Scythia (1.18-20). From this point on, Teseo’s army
becomes known as “the Greeks” (Greci). Arriving at the shores of
Scythia, however, the Greek army is prevented from disembarking, as they see “un
bel castel vicino al mare/sopra una montagnetta, onde calati/i ponti, genti
vidono avvallare/bene a cavallo armati” (1.47) [“well-armed troops mounted
on horses descending upon them over lowered drawbridges from a splendid castle
set on a small mountain near the sea”]. Barraging the ships with a hail
of arrows, darts and missiles, so that “‘l ciel n’era coverto” (1.54)
[“the sky was darkened”], the women-warriors keep Teseo’s men trapped on their
ships, while the slaughter turns the water and sea foam red with blood
(1.56). Eventually, enough men disembark to challenge the women
hand to hand until the Amazons begin to retreat. Soon, all the women flee
back to the castle gates and to the safety of their fortress, which Boccaccio
characterizes as a fortified city:
Era la terra forte, e ben murata
da ogni parte, e dentro ben guarnita
per sostener assedio ogni fiata,
lunga stagion, ch’ella fosse assalita;
però ciascuna dentro bene armata
non temeva né morte né ferita;
chiuse le porti al riparo intendeano
e quasi i Greci niente temeano. (1.78)
supplied enough to withstand a long season of siege every
time they were attacked. Well armed and safely inside, they feared
neither death nor injury. Once they closed their doors, they retreated to
their shelter and hardly feared the
Greeks at all.]
Scholars have long contested the
importance of Book One of the Teseida, the Amazon episode.
Indeed, Book One seems to demand justification for its presence in the Teseida
precisely because Boccaccio announces it as a digression from the main action
of the poem (i.e. the story of Arcita, Palamone and Emilia) (1.6, gloss).
Robert Pratt suggests that Boccaccio intends Book One “merely to bring the
three main figures of the plot onto the stage.” And,
in fact, Boccaccio himself explains that he includes the events of Book One to
show “onde Emilia fosse venuta ad Attene” (256) [“whence Emilia came to
Athens”] (48). Some feminist critics, among them Carla Freccero,
view Book One as Boccaccio’s attempt to establish a prototype in the poem for
the masculine containment of the “autonomous and resistive femininity in the
form of Amazons.” Taking the perspective of medieval allegoresis, Janet
Levarie Smarr reads Book One as the “restoration of proper order” by Theseus
over the “insurrection of the passions against the control of reason” displayed
in the Amazons’ insurrection against men. David
Anderson argues that Boccaccio intended Book One primarily “to introduce his
positive exemplum, Theseus” and to “set up his main action as a
continuation of the Thebaid itself.” While
all of these explanations inform our understanding of the opening of the Teseida,
none of them fully accounts for the particular configuration of characters and
action in Book One, perhaps the most epic segment of the poem. Much of
the uncertainty has, I think, to do with a misidentification of the source(s)
for Book One.
Scholars have identified two ancient
sources for Book One of the Teseida: Aeneid XI and Thebaid
V, both of which depict female warrior societies. Carla Freccero traces
Teseo’s derisive address to his men in this scene to Tarchon’s speech in Aeneid
XI just prior to the death of Camilla, Virgil’s woman warrior. While
there exists an undeniable similaritiy between these two speeches, this single
speech in Aeneid XI fails to account for the larger structure and
project of Teseida I, even if, as Freccero suggests, Boccaccio had
Camilla in mind when he designed Ipolita and her Amazon kingdom. For this
larger picture, David Anderson and Disa Gambera look to Thebaid V, in
which Hypsipyle recounts the rise to power of the Lemnian women, for the
source of Book One of the Teseida.
Hypsipyle tells of how the women murdered their husbands and fathers,
established control over the island, and then fought against the incoming
ship of the Argonauts. To be sure, Boccaccio borrows a number of details
from this episode in the Thebaid. Like the Lemnian women,
Ipolita’s Amazons kill their husbands and fathers in order to secure power, and
like the Lemnian women who fight off Jason’s incoming ship, Boccaccio’s Amazons
fight off Teseo’s incoming ships.
However, there are several obstacles to
viewing Thebaid V as the primary source for Book One of the Teseida,
despite the fact that it, too, portrays a matriarchal society. The
perspective and choreography of Boccaccio’s siege at Scythia are entirely
different from what we find in Statius, as are the women themselves.
First of all, Statius relates the exploits of the Lemnian women as a
first-person narration of past events, whereas Boccaccio relates the Amazon
episode using an omniscient narrator to tell of current action. Secondly,
Statius relates the scene from the point of view of the Lemnian women, whereas
Boccaccio relates the episode from the perspective of the invading Greek army.
Thirdly, the Lemnian women fight off a single ship (Jason’s), whereas the
Amazons face an entire fleet of ships. Fourthly, Statius ends the battle
between the women and the Argonauts abruptly with the Argonauts overcoming the
women and marrying them promptly. There is no siege following the battle
on the shore, and no mention of a fortified city. Finally, the Amazons in
Boccaccio do not share the same blood-lust that the Lemnian women exhibit;
instead, as Gambera points out, they “act very much like Teseo and the Greeks
who have come to attack them.” They
anticipate Teseo’s attack and carefully plan for retaliation like any
well-trained army - quite unlike the Lemnian women.
A more likely main source for Boccaccio’s
episode of Teseo and the Amazons is a medieval Troy narrative: Guido delle
Colonne’s Historia Destructionis Troiae of 1287. Many details
suggest that Boccaccio modeled this episode on Guido’s description of the
establishment of the siege at Troy.
Boccaccio, like Guido, relates this scene from the perspective of the invading
Greek forces; Boccaccio’s “Greci,” like Guido’s Greeks, anticipate
resistance when landing on the shore; Guido indicates that the Trojans had been
planning for the coming Greek assault, while Boccaccio depicts Ipolita rallying
defensive forces to meet the coming Greek offensive. Boccaccio, like
Guido, depicts the launching of a fleet of ships from Greece and both authors
have their armies pass through Tenedos. (There is no launching of ships
in Thebaid V since only one ship, Jason’s, is involved in the attack on
Lemnos.) Guido, like Boccaccio, then has the Greek ships arrive at the
scene of combat (in Guido’s case Troy) only to face a throng of mounted, armed
soldiers who, upon seeing their approach, “inordinato cursu festinant ad
litus” (XIV, 120) [“hastened down to the shore at an inordinate speed”
(XIV], 116). The Greeks are unable to disembark as “densantur nubes in
aere ex emissione continua sagittarum”(XIV, 121) [“a cloud of arrows in a
continuous stream darkened the sky” (XIV, 117)]. Those few Greeks who
attempt to scramble to the shore are promptly slain so that “vicine aque
litoris interfectorum cruore rubescunt” (XIV, 121) [“the water near the
shore was red with the blood of the slain” (XIV, 117)]. After finally
gaining the shore, the Greeks manage to force the Trojans to retreat. At
this point, “Troyani ergo ciuitatis portas duris firmant repagulis”
(XIV, 126) [“the Trojans accordingly secured the stout gates of their city with
bolts,”] while the Greeks fastened their ships and “obsidionem in multa
commoditate...firmauerunt” (XIV, 126) [“made the siege permanent with great
ease” (XIV, 122)], just as Boccaccio’s Amazons retreat into their fortified
city and prepare for an assault. A
listing of the salient parallel motifs will make this relationship clearer:
|
Motif 1. Launching of fleet of ships 2. Anticipation of resistance 3. Throng of soldiers rushing to shore 4. Cloud of arrows darkens sky 5. Water at shoreline stained red with blood 6. Retreat into city, establishing of siege |
|
Historia XIV, 114 115 116 117 117 126 |
|
Teseida I, 18-20, 40 21-39 47 54 56 78 |
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Thus in its narrative perspective, scale of operation, battle
tactic, and choreography, Teseo’s attack on Scythia shares far more detail with
Guido’s account of the beginning of the Greek siege of Troy than with Statius’
account of Jason’s attack on Lemnos. In this way, Boccaccio opens his
sequel to the Theban war with a scene that imitates the beginning of the Trojan
conflict.
In fact, throughout the scene, Boccaccio
foreshadows the future siege of Troy. For instance, Boccaccio has Teseo
anticipate an inordinately long campaign while strategizing the siege at
Scythia:
Esso, ch’ognor con sollecita cura
al suo più presto spaccio più pensava,
imaginò che, se ‘ntorno alle mura
di quella terra il suo campo fermava,
e’ potrebbe avvenir per l’avventura
che sanza utile il tempo trapassava;
però che quando pure elli avvenisse,
poco avea fatto perché lor vincesse. (1.83)
considered that if his camp remained along the walls of
that land,
time would pass, perhaps, without any advantage. For,
even if
the women should sally forth, he would have done little to
subdue them.]
Should the Trojan overtones of Book One
not be clear enough, Boccaccio ends the scene by making an explicit comparison
between Ipolita and Helen: once Teseo defeats the Amazons and claims
Ipolita as his wife, he looks upon her and thinks “‘Costei trapassa
Elena,/cui io furtai, d’ogni bellezza piena’” (1.130) [“‘She surpasses
Helen, whom I abducted, and who was the epitome of all
loveliness.’”] Thus in several subtle and some not so subtle ways,
Boccaccio configures Book One as a preview to the Trojan war. In doing
so, he invokes the nature of the conflict at Troy (i.e. a war between two
rivals over a woman) as a vital context for understanding his sequel to the
Theban war, that is, the conflict he is about to portray between Arcita and
Palamone over Emilia. Thus, at the very outset, he begins forging the
connection between Thebes and Troy that he will pursue throughout the rest of
the poem.
Another powerful, and far more obvious,
Trojan presence occurs in Book Six of the Teseida with the catalog of
warriors. After Palamone and Arcita are discovered fighting in the grove,
Teseo commands that they reconvene in one year’s time and settle their dispute
with two armies of equal size. Men arrive from all over Greece to
participate in the battle, providing the occasion for an epic catalog.
Such catalogs of warriors typically serve as an inclusive, universalizing
device.
As a roster of men from disparate regions who have gathered for a common cause,
the epic catalog showcases and celebrates the collective martial talent of each
army. Boccaccio models his catalog on the earlier catalog of warriors in Thebaid
IV, and in this way situates his Teseida within the larger tradition of
classical Latin epic. He, too, shows men arriving from “every country” (per
tutti) and representing “Furvi altri assai e popoli e contrade,/tanti
che ben non gli saprei contare” [“many other peoples and districts, so many
that I really would not know how to count them”] (6.13 and 6.64).
However, Boccaccio departs from that tradition in some important and revealing
ways. First, he brings together personnel from two conflicts, Thebes and
Troy, rather than one. As the survivors of the Theban war encounter the
future heroes of Troy, we witness not a single, coherent army so much as a
changing of the guard between one conflict and another. Secondly, he uses
the tragedy of the earlier Theban conflict to foster ambivalence about the
future conflict at Troy, and this comes across immediately in the episode.
The catalog of warriors in Book Six is as
much exclusive as inclusive of martial talent; it records who is
not present as much as who is present. It marks the extensive losses of
the recent war at Thebes by including only lesser characters from the Thebaid,
the remnants of the Theban conflict. For example, the catalog opens with
king Ligurgo (Lycurgus), “ancora lagrimoso/per la morte d’Ofelte” (6.14)
[“still weeping and dressed in black for the death of Opheltes
[Archemorus]”]. Lycurgus, who took in Hypsipyle, appears in Book
Five of the Thebaid, a book quite removed from the main action of the
poem, and is not a major figure in the Theban conflict. Following him, we
see Foco (Phocus) and Telamone (Telamon), the long lost sons of Hypsipyle,
again lesser figures in Theban history (6.19). Flegiàs (Phlegias)
of Pisa, another lesser Theban player, appears alongside them. The theme of
absence and loss repeats itself at the end of the catalog where Boccaccio lists
mythological figures who could not make it: Narcissus has already turned into a
flower, and Leander has already drowned, while Erysichthon has already died
from hunger following Diana’s curse (6.62-3).
Though Boccaccio mentions them in good humor, he ends the catalog, as he begins
it, by marking absences. In place of the Theban absentees come the future
heroes of Troy, as yet untested.
In contrast to the air of recent
misfortune surrounding the Theban figures of the catalog, Boccaccio presents
the Trojan figures in the inexperienced bloom of youth. For example, in
order of appearance, we see Pelleo (father of Achilles and whose wedding
spawned the Trojan conflict), here “giovane ancora” [“still young”] and
carrying an axe of Thermadon which Ovid associates with the death of Achilles
(6.15-17).
Shortly afterwards, Agamemnon appears, already showing “degno...degli
onori/ch’ebbe da’ Greci nella ossidione/a Troia fatta” (6.21) [“that he was
worthy of the honors he received from the Greeks in the siege of Troy”].
Following him comes Menelao, “giovinetto” [“a young man”] dressed
beautifully though “sanz’alcuna arme” [“without [any] armor”], and
worthy to be Venus’ lover (a possible allusion to the Judgement of Paris in
which Venus’ promise sparked the abduction of Helen by Paris (6.23)).
Then come Castor and Pollux, Helen’s brothers, who bear on their shields the
story of Leda and the Swan, alluding to their common origin (along with Helen)
from the same egg (6.25). (Castor and Pollux die before reaching Troy, a
detail which Boccaccio mentions in 8.25). Further along the ranks,
“giovane Nestore” [“young Nestor”] arrives from Pylos, “la cui
etate/nelle vermiglie guancie il primo fiore/monstrava, poco ancora seminate/di
crespo pel” [“showing the first bloom of his youth in rosy cheeks still
barely covered with curly hair”], in contrast to his role at Troy as the aged
general (6.30). After Nestor comes Evandro (Evander), who will later show
Aeneas the site that will become Rome. In this scene, he is “prospero
e regnante” [“still reigning and prosperous”], though, as Boccaccio’s notes
indicate, “poi ne fu cacciato” [“later he was expelled”] from his
kingdom in Arcadia (6.35 and gloss). Further along, Ulisse (Ulysses)
appears, “giovinetto ancora molto” [“still a young man”] and sent by his
father, Laertes (6.44). He brings with him Diomede (the son of Tydeus)
who will later join Ulysses on a diplomatic mission to Troy. And after
him, comes Sicceo (Sichaeus), “poi fu sposo dell’alta Didone” (6.45)
[“who later became the husband of noble Dido”]. Thus we see the future
heroes of the Trojan conflict and its aftermath in an earlier stage of their
careers, still new recruits in the historical tapestry.
As part of his larger project of creating
a transitional epic about the historical episode in ancient history between the
Theban and Trojan wars, Boccaccio constructs a catalog of warriors who gather
for the conflict at Athens out of personnel from those two other conflicts
immediately preceding and following it. Theban ranks give way to new
Trojan recruits. This blend of two armies also enables Boccaccio to
reflect on the Trojan war, for he modifies the traditional use of the epic
catalog as a solidarity-building device for a conflict whose outcome remains
unknown.
Into the rather carefree gathering of Trojan talent, Boccaccio introduces an
element of foreboding by evoking the casualties from the recent tragedy at
Thebes, whose losses he records through blank omission. The fact that
only minor players from the Theban scene appear reminds us of all who did not
survive; there is simply no one left from that war to recruit at Athens.
Against the desolate backdrop of Thebes, Boccaccio presents the inexperienced
Trojan recruits as yet unaware of the similar disaster that awaits them at
Troy.
Another way that Boccaccio figures the Teseida
as a transitional epic between Thebes and Troy involves the figure of Helen,
who constitutes an absent presence throughout the narrative. In both the
text and the glosses, Boccaccio uses Helen’s history (both her past and her
future with respect to the poem) for both chronological and typological
purposes, that is, the events of her life serve to both establish the timeframe
of the poem and to provide a paradigm with which to understand the events it
relates. As already noted, she first appears in the narrative as a former
love-interest of Teseo, as he recalls his earlier abduction of Helen when he
gazes upon his new conquest, Ipolita (1.130). Later in Book Five, Teseo
agrees to pardon Arcita and Palamone for breaking their pledges to him because,
he says, “‘io già innamorato fui/e per amor sovente folleggiai...[ma] perdon
più fiate acquistai/...a cui la figlia già furtai’” (5.92) [“‘I once fell
in love and committed follies for love....[but] received pardon...through the
mercy of him [Tyndarus] whose daughter I once stole’”]. Again, at the
funeral games of Arcita, Boccaccio recalls this early encounter between Theseus
and Helen. As Teseo participates in the palestral games, we learn that
earlier he had surpassed all others at this game, “e ben lo seppe Elena”
(11.62) [“as Helen well knew”], and Boccaccio’s glosses provide the full
details: Helen had been seized by Theseus while she was playing this
game. Theseus’ mother then returned her to her brothers, Castor and
Pollux, while Theseus was off ravishing another maiden (glosses to 1.130, 5.92,
7.4, 11.62). In all, Theseus’ encounter with Helen is mentioned in the Teseida
a total of eight times, hardly a passing reference.
Boccaccio then brings us into the historical present of the poem in Book Twelve
where he indicates that Helen is now the wife of Menelaus, who too will lose
her through abduction (12.67 and gloss).
By recalling Helen’s early abduction by
Theseus (which really has no immediate bearing on the circumstances of the
poem), Boccaccio sets up a pattern of historical repetition: Teseo’s capture of
Ipolita recalls his previous capture of Helen, whom he recalls as he looks upon
Ipolita. Likewise, Teseo’s pardon of Arcita and Palamone for a crime
motivated by desire recalls Tyndarus’ pardon of Teseo’s own crime of abducting
Helen, which was also motivated by desire; Teseo uses Tyndarus’ gesture of
pardon as a model for his own pardon of Arcita and Palamone. By weaving
this episode in Helen’s past into the poem, Boccaccio makes his own fictional
episode of royal pardon repeat an earlier episode of pardon in ancient
history. Thus Helen’s past foreshadows the present of the poem.
Helen’s past also foreshadows the future,
beyond the timeframe of the Teseida. Helen’s story
solidifies the link between Theban and Trojan history as Boccaccio previews key
aspects of Helen’s experience at Troy in the figure of Emilia. The
associations between Helen and Emilia surface during the combat between Arcita
and Palamone. For instance, Pollux, Helen’s brother, fights so well in
the struggle over Emilia, that, Boccaccio tells us, “per Elena a Troia/al
grande Ettor donata molta noia” (8.25) [“he would have given great Hector
considerable trouble at Troy for the sake of Helen”]. This remark makes
the present conflict over Emilia prefigure the future conflict over
Helen. Similarities between the two women (and conflicts) intensify when
Emilia laments her role in the battle between Arcita and Palamone:
“Deh, quanto mal per me mi diè natura
questa bellezza di cui pregio fia
orribile battaglia, rea e dura,
che qui si fa sol per la faccia mia!
La quale avanti ch’ella fosse oscura
istata sempre volentier vorria,
che tanto sangue per lei si versasse,
quanto qui veggio nelle parti basse.” (8.98)
price of which had to be horrible, wicked, and ruthless
conflict waged
here only because of my face! How heartily I wish
that it might have
been kept veiled always, rather than that so much blood
should be
spilled for it, as I now see here in this place below.”]
Emilia’s teichoscopia, or “viewing from the walls,”
anticipates Helen’s sentiments while observing the Trojan war from atop the
walls of Troy. Like Helen, Emilia is “‘con le forze di molti/chesta da
due’” (8.104) [“‘sought by two with the forces of many’”] on account of her
beauty, her face. And, like Helen, she laments “‘quante madri, padri,
amici e frati,/figliuoli e altri, me maladicendo’” (8.100) [“‘how many
mothers, fathers, friends, brothers, sons, and others will curse me’”].
The connection between Helen and Emilia
arises again at Arcita’s funeral as Menelaus gazes upon Emilia as she enters
into the temple and “la reputò sì di bellezza piena,/che la prepose con seco
ad Elena” (12.67) [“thought her beauty so perfect that in his mind he
preferred her to Helen”]. This desire that he now feels for Emilia is
precisely what will bring him to Troy on account of Helen. Thus Emilia
becomes an object of desire and conflict very much like Helen will later become
at Troy.
Boccaccio, therefore, uses the absent
presence of Helen in the Teseida in order to foreshadow the Trojan
war. Events of Helen’s history are both repeated and foreshadowed in the
events of the poem. In Ipolita, Helen’s past experience is repeated as
she becomes another love conquest for Teseo. In Emilia, Helen’s future
experience is anticipated as Emilia becomes a contested love object much like
Helen herself.
However, Boccaccio uses Emilia to affect a
transition of another kind. As some critics have noted, she replaces the
throne of Thebes as the source of conflict between two Theban kinsmen, but
Boccaccio also uses a beautiful woman as a substitute for the throne of Thebes
in order, more precisely, to establish a connection between the source of the
Theban war and that of the Trojan war. In
Emilia, Boccaccio creates a typological link between Theban and Trojan history
at the root level of motivation: he implies that a fundamental covetousness
underlies both the struggle between Eteocles and Polynices over the Theban
throne and that between Menelaus and Paris over Helen. The love triangle
of the Teseida combines the combatants of Thebes (in Palamone and
Arcita, the Theban kinsmen) and the source of conflict of Troy (a beautiful
woman). At the same time, Boccaccio reduces both conflicts to nothing
more than cupiditas, since throughout the Teseida both the throne
of Thebes and Helen of Troy assume the mere importance of an indifferent young
woman, or, as Teseo calls it, “si poca di cosa” (7.5) [“such a small
thing”].
Thebes and Troy come together again in a
pattern of destructive repetition in Book Four, when Arcita goes into
exile. Leaving Athens, Arcita heads into Boetia and arrives at the
deserted ruins of the city of Thebes (4.12ff). Seeing that “tutta
quella regione/esser diserta allora d’abitanti” (4.13) [“the entire region
was deserted of inhabitants”], Arcita launches into an ubi sunt lament
for his former home. In the process, he catalogs the major historic
landmarks of Thebes, not simply those pertaining to the recent war, but also
the landmarks relating to the city’s founding. He mentions “le case
eminenti/del nostro primo Cadmo”(4.14) [“the eminent house of our first
Cadmus”], Semele’s (Cadmus’ daughter) chambers where she had lain with Jove
(4.14), the rooms of Alcmena (mother of Hercules) (4.15), the “eccelsi segni
ancora/de’ popoli silvestri libiani” (4.15) [“lofty banners of the wild
Libyan people [who had been conquered by Bacchus, the god the Thebes]],”
“Laius,” “sorrowing Oedipus” and their children (4.16). He laments:
“Nessun qui al presente ne dimora:
li re son morti, e voi, tristi Tebani,
dispersi gite, e n’ cenere è tornato
ciò che di voi fu già molto lodato.” (4.15)
He concludes that only “io e Palemone,/né altro più, del
sangue d’Agenore rimasi siamo” (4.17) [“Palamone and I, no one else, remain
of the blood of Agenor [father of Cadmus]]”.
Several possible sources may have served
as a basis for Arcita’s visit to the ruined city of Thebes. Boccaccio may
have based Arcita’s exile on that of Polynices in the OF Roman de Thèbes
or a prose redaction of it. Statius, of course, and the OF poet after
him, also has Polynices go into exile. (Boccaccio, like the OF poet, has
Arcita search out a new court in which to serve). However, I
propose that a more likely model for this scene in terms of structure and mood
is Caesar’s similar detour through the ruined city of Troy in Lucan’s Pharsalia,
a work quite familiar to Boccaccio.
Having just defeated Pompey, Caesar pauses
to do some sight-seeing. Arriving at the shores of the ancient city of
Troy (9.961), Caesar makes a tour of the “exustae...Troiae” (9.964)
[“charred Troy”]. So dense is the overgrowth of vines that “ac tota
teguntur/Pergama dumetis: etiam periere ruinae” (9.968-9) [“all Pergamum
now was choked with thorny thickets: everything had perished - even the
ruins”]. Here, too, we get a catalog of historic landmarks: “Hesiones
scopulos” (9.970) [“Hesione’s crag”] [where Leomedon’s daughter was chained
to await the sea monster], “Anchisae thalamos” (9.971) [“Anchises’
honeymoon cottage”], the cave of Paris’ judgement (9.971), the spot where
Ganymede was whisked into heaven by Jove (9.972), and the peak where “luxerit
Oenone” (9.973) [“Oenone sobbed”]. Caesar steps over the Xanthus, now
reduced to an “in sicco serpentem puluere riuum” [“rivulet snaking
through dry dust”], and unknowingly tramples “manes Hectoreos”
[“Hector’s ghost”] walking through the tall grass (9.974-977). “Ueneranda
uetustas” (9.987) [“awesome antiquity”] had deteriorated into rubble; “discussa
iacebant/saxa nec ullius faciem seruantia sacri” (9.977-978) [“stones lay
scattered, no air of mystery about them”]. Caesar completes his tour with
a prayer to the gods of former Troy (“di cinerum” (9.990) “gods of the
ashes”) to whom he vows that he and his people “‘moenia reddent Phrygibus’”
(9.998-999) [“‘[will] build Phrygian walls anew’”] should the gods help him
take control of Rome. With his victory, he says, “‘Romanaque Pergama
surgent’” (9.999) [“‘a Roman Pergamum shall rise’”].
Caesar’s detour through the ruins of Troy
participates in Lucan’s larger project of challenging Virgil’s “myth of
Rome.” Where Virgil’s Aeneid relates the story of Rome’s rise from
humble origins to Imperial greatness, Lucan’s Pharsalia tells the story
of Rome’s inexorable decline and collapse, what Gian Biago Conte calls the
“anti-myth of Rome.” Conte points out how Lucan organizes his narrative of the
civil war between Caesar and Pompey around a series of prophecies that reveal
Rome’s immanent collapse. The scene at the ruined city of Troy
foreshadows the ruin that awaits Rome now that Pompey is dead and the Republic
doomed.
Lucan aligns the two cities when he has Caesar promise the “gods of the ashes”
to rebuild Troy in the form of Rome. Throughout the poem, Caesar views
himself as the successor of Aeneas, as his prayer to the “‘di...Aeneaeque
mei’” (9.991) “Aenean Hearth-gods of mine” expresses. But in
his determination to make Rome rival Troy in greatness, he fails to anticipate
that Rome will suffer the same fate as Troy.
Just as Lucan uses the ruined city of Troy
to foreshadow the coming ruin of Rome, Boccaccio uses the ruined city of Thebes
to foreshadow the coming ruin of Troy. Boccaccio, of course, does not
align Thebes and Troy overtly the way Lucan aligns Troy and Rome, but Troy,
nevertheless, dominates the scene of Arcita’s wanderings for a number of
reasons. First, the scene in Lucan’s Pharsalia from which
Boccaccio derives this scene is set in Troy. Troy was on Boccaccio’s
mind. Secondly, Arcita heads directly from Thebes to the courts of
Menelao (Menelaus) and Pelleo (Peleus), the seedbeds of the Trojan
conflict. After all, it was at Peleus’s wedding feast that Eris threw the
apple inscribed “for the fairest,” which led to the judgement of Paris, which
led to the abduction of Menelaus’ wife, which caused the Trojan war.
Thirdly, Boccaccio draws in this scene upon the popular, Augustinian notion of
one ruined city begetting another, which we also find in the OF Roman de
Thèbes and the Roman de Troie, and in later prose redactions of
those poems. Fourth, both Lucan and Boccaccio include this scene as a
pause in the main action of the poem, a reflective retreat from the course of
current events in which the specter of history (past and future) looms
large. Troy and Rome form the bookends of Caesar’s detour; Thebes and
Troy form the bookends of Arcita’s. Finally, both Lucan and Boccaccio
conjure up in these scenes not just the recent fall of a city, but that of an
entire civilization. Lucan’s list of landmarks ranges from Troy’s
founding to its fall, as does Boccaccio’s list of landmarks for
Thebes. In this instance of Arcita’s wandering in exile, Boccaccio
has once again constructed an episode as a transition between the conflicts of
Thebes and Troy by combining the circumstances of a scene about Troy with
content derived from Theban history. Furthermore, he once again uses his
own intervening narrative, the Teseida, to interrogate the historical
and cultural preeminence of both wars by focusing on the devastating
consequences of each campaign.
Trojan history also helps to make sense of
much of the seemingly static quality of the second half of the Teseida,
perhaps the most frustrating segment of the poem for the modern reader.
With the battle over Emilia having ended in Book Eight, the battery of the plot
has expired. From this point, the narrative shifts into a series of
ceremonies (an awards ceremony, a funeral, funeral games and a wedding) in
which, as one scholar says, “quasi-epic heroism seems continually on the point
of being wholly subsumed by courtly ritual.” The
narrative seems to continue to no end. It is also at this point in the
poem that the correspondences in the main action between the Teseida and
the Thebaid documented by David Anderson begin to break down
(although Boccaccio continues to borrow material from Statius). The
apparent formlessness of the poem from Book Eight on has led more than a few
scholars to feel that Boccaccio somehow lost control over his material at this
point, leading to the poem’s reputation as a “failed epic.” If,
however, we approach the second half of the poem as a preview for the Trojan
war, it becomes clear that Boccaccio maintains his original intent for the poem
as an epic, and that he maintains very tight control over his material.
Boccaccio structures the second half of
the Teseida, from the battle of Book Eight to the ending in Book Twelve,
around a series of epic type-scenes, characteristic of Latin epic, each of
which echo Thebes and anticipate Troy, and which function collectively in the
narrative as a transition device between the two conflicts. The scenes
are as follows: 1) the formal description of a woman, or blason (not a feature
of ancient epic, but a standard rhetorical device in medieval epic and
romance), 2) funeral games, 3) the arming of the hero, and 4) battle. I
will discuss them in the order that they appear in the Teseida.
The battle of Book Eight of the Teseida
has been characterized as more of a medieval tournament than an epic battle,
despite Boccaccio’s avowed intentions of writing the first Italian epic. After
all, it operates along explicit rules with each side being assigned exactly one
hundred combatants, is presided over by a judge, Teseo, who refers to the
battle as “giuoco a Marte” (7.13) [“games for Mars”], and takes place in
an amphitheater before an audience. Moreover, unlike Latin epics,
the Teseida confines the battle neatly to a single book and a single
battle. Thus, despite his conscious imitation of classical epic models,
Boccaccio appears to diminish the most central activity of ancient epic:
war. The battle of Book Eight, therefore, seems to have less in common
with epic battle and more in common with epic (and medieval) martial games. This
is because, as Anderson has revealed, Boccaccio modeled the battle of Book
Eight on the funeral games of Thebaid VI, the games commemorating the
death of Archemorus (known to Boccaccio as Opheltes). The
result is what Anderson calls a “simulated war”, not a war but a rehearsal for
war. More importantly for our purposes, games in ancient epic serve a
proleptic function in that they preview the course and outcome of the war to
come. Statius’ games are no exception, and he announces the games in Thebaid
VI as an exercise by which “praesudare paret seseque accendere virtus”
(6.3-4) [“martial spirits may prepare to catch fire and may have a foretaste of
the sweat of war”].
Boccaccio appropriates this proleptic
function of the epic games by using his battle/games as a foretaste of war, in
this case the Trojan war. Indeed, most of the combatants in the battle
will later fight at Troy, and Boccaccio evaluates their performance in battle
(both in the catalog of Book Six and during the battle itself) not in terms of this
war, but in terms of the Trojan war. For example, Agamemnon assumes the
same leadership role here that he will later have at Troy; as noted earlier, Pollux
shows that he “per Elena a Troia/al grande Ettor donata molta noia”
(8.25) [“would have given great Hector considerable trouble at Troy for the
sake of Helen”]; Ulysses and Diomedes share the same close association in
Athens that will surface at Troy in their embassy to Priam, while Diomedes acts
with the characteristic impetuousness that he will later display at Troy.
So, too, we have the cameo appearance of Dictys (8.34), the name of the Greek
chronicler who followed Idomeneus and Meriones to Troy and who left what
medieval readers considered an eye-witness account of the Trojan war from the
Greek perspective. Appropriately, Boccaccio shows him in this single
instance attempting to rescue Minos, who, according to Dictys’ own account,
bequeathed the rule of his cities and lands to none other than Idomeneus and
Meriones.
Finally, Boccaccio interrupts the battle with Emilia’s Helenesque lament from
atop the walls discussed earlier (8.94ff.). (No such scene occurs in the Thebaid,
certainly not during the funeral games.) Boccaccio appears to have
modeled his battle on Statius’ games not simply because the games better suit
the style and scale of a medieval tournament, but also because games in Latin
epic typically function as a preview of war.
A ceremony follows the battle in which
Emilia grants prizes to the winner, Palamone. In Book Nine, Teseo
presents Palamone to Emilia to do with as she pleases. She decides to set
him free and bestows on him a series of gifts which, for the most part, include
battle gear: a sword, a quiver, arrows, a Scythian bow (recalling her own
epic origins as an Amazon), a charger, a lance, and armor crafted by
Vulcan. This scene in Book Nine has not generally been recognized as an
“arming of the hero” scene for the rather obvious reason that the battle is now
over. After all, the occasion for the splendid armor has passed, and the
armor now seems superfluous.
However, several elements in the scene
indicate that Boccaccio had in mind the epic type-scene of the arming of the
hero. First, there is no other formal arming of a hero - either Arcita or
Palamone - anywhere else in the Teseida. There is a brief mention
of the heroes having spurs placed on them just prior to battle, but there is no
catalog of the armor used by either man. This scene in Book Nine comes
the closest to a such a catalog. Second, armor crafted by Vulcan, the
Roman blacksmith god, is a very powerful signal for the epic hero going into
battle. Vulcan’s armor, in particular, which has a magical and prophetic
quality in classical epic, is typically bestowed upon the hero before, not
after, battle and generally guarantees the hero’s triumph. Aeneas, for
example, receives armor made by Vulcan just before going into battle with
Turnus. In fact (and this is my third point), Emilia’s words upon
bestowing the battle gear on Palamone echo Venus’ words as she bestows Vulcan’s
armor on Aeneas:
“...perciò che tu dei vie più a Marte
che a Cupido dimorar suggetto,
ti dono queste, acciò che, se in parte
avvien che ti bisogni, con effetto
adoperar le puoi; esse con arte
son fabricate, che sanza sospetto
le puoi portar: forse l’adoperrai
dove vie più che me n’acquisterai.--” (Tes. 9.75)
these gifts, so that should it chance that you need them,
you can use them to
advantage. They have been made with skill, so you may
bear them without
qualm. Perhaps you will make use of them where you
will gain much
As a recipient of Vulcan’s armor, and as “più a
Marte che a Cupido dimorar suggetto” [“more the subject of Mars than of
Cupid”], Palamone clearly follows in the footsteps of the ancient epic hero.
However, what distinguishes Boccaccio’s
arming of the hero from previous examples in classical epic is the placement of
this scene within the larger narrative. It would seem that Boccaccio
intends this scene of the arming of the hero to anticipate a war other than the
one in Teseo’s Athens, and, in fact, Emilia’s own words point to a future
battle when she says, “‘forse l’adoperrai dove vie più che me n’acquisterai’”
(9.75) [“‘Perhaps you will make use of them where you will gain much more than
me’”]. Since there is no further armed conflict in the Teseida
after Book Eight, Boccaccio primes the reader in this scene, as elsewhere, for
a future conflict beyond the scope of his own poem, and in the chronology of
ancient history, that can only mean the Trojan war, a war which will also
revolve around the possession of a beautiful woman.
Boccaccio follows up this episode with
another epic type-scene: the funeral games of Book Eleven. Very
briefly, funeral games occur in ancient epic when a prominent figure dies and
sports competitions are held in his honor for which prizes are given (e.g.
Anchises of the Aeneid). In this case, the games are held in
honor of Arcita (11.18-29), whose funeral just prior to the games contains
numerous echoes of Archemorus’ funeral in Thebaid VI. At first,
however the funeral games in Book Eleven seem to suffer from the same
purposelessness as the arming of the hero scene did before it for the simple
reason that the battle has already taken place in the Teseida, and thus
the funeral games would seem to have lost their function as a preview of the
war.
However, the funeral games of the Teseida
do anticipate war, the Trojan war, and we can see this by looking through the
roster of winners, all of whom have some connection with Troy and its
aftermath:
Idas (11.59) (who sailed with Jason and the Argonauts in the expedition that
sparked the first destruction of Troy (an event related by Dares and Dictys and
by Guido delle Colonne), Theseus (11.62) (who abducted Helen prior to her more
famous abduction by Paris), Castor and Pollux (11.59 and 64) (the brothers of
Helen of Troy), Agamemnon (11.68), the famous Greek general on the battlefield
of Troy; Evander (11.66) (later allied with Aeneas, and the one who guides
Aeneas around the area that will later become Rome). Thus, through these
winners, Boccaccio previews the Trojan conflict in all its stages: 1)
“First sack of Troy” indicated by Idas, whereby the young Priam’s sister
Hesione was abducted, 2) “Abduction of Helen” indicated first by Theseus,
whose earlier abduction of Helen is alluded to in the games, and second by
Castor and Pollux, for after the first attack on Troy, Paris abducts
their sister, Helen (allegedly in revenge for the abduction of Hesione), 3)
“Siege of Troy” indicated by Agamemnon, who commanded the Greek forces on the
Trojan plain, and 4) “Fruition of Troy” indicated by Evander, who was
instrumental in Aeneas’ enterprises as recounted in the Aeneid.
Thus the winners of the games of Book Eleven represent each phase of the Trojan
conflict, from its inception to its fruition.
Boccaccio employs a final type-scene in
the last book of the Teseida, Book Twelve: a blason, or a catalog of
female beauty, in this case Emilia’s. While the blason belongs to the
romance tradition rather than to the tradition of ancient epic, we do find them
in medieval adaptations of ancient history, such as Guido delle Colonne’s Historia
Destructionis Troiae, thus it is by no means unusual for Boccaccio to
employ one in his own adaptation of classical Latin epic. Book
Twelve presents a peaceable resolution to the conflict of the Teseida.
Mourners cease their grieving for Arcita, Palamone marries Emilia, and the
numerous kings and nobles who participated in the conflict return home.
In every way, this seems a happy ending as the optimism of romance appears to
triumph over the destructive threat of epic, of Theban history. As part
of his description of the wedding festivities of Palamone and Emilia, Boccaccio
pauses in the main action of the episode to describe Emilia in a formal blason
(12.52ff.), comparing her various features to fruits and flowers, praising each
for its good proportion.
The content of the blason of Emilia is
unremarkable, a textbook example of descriptio applied to female beauty,
proceeding from head to toe, focusing mostly on the face and skipping over
indescribable parts (12.63). Such descriptions of female beauty constitute
a rhetorical commonplace in medieval romance and in the poetic handbooks of the
twelfth century. Of course, there are numerous and wonderful variants
of this device throughout the middle ages (especially in the works of Chaucer),
but this blason of Emilia is not one of them. Yet the various critical
discussions of this particular blason all focus on its rather ordinary content
while overlooking its extraordinary function within the larger narrative of the
Teseida.
One constant in the tradition of the
blason, certainly for narrative, is that it occurs early in the story,
generally when the woman first appears or shortly thereafter. There is a
simple reason for this: beautiful women generate narrative.
Conflicts and quests so often revolve around them. Thus, for instance,
Guido delle Colonne describes Helen from head to toe early in Book Seven of his
Historia. Emilia would appear to prove no exception to this rule
since without her there would be no Teseida. Why, then, would
Boccaccio wait until the end of the poem to describe her beauty (the very
source of the conflict)? Why end his narrative with a device that
normally launches a narrative?
By focusing, instead, on its placement at
the end of the Teseida, it appears that Boccaccio introduces the blason
of Emilia as a narrative hinge joining both the end of his narrative and the
beginning of the story of Troy, and the wars of Thebes and Troy at the opposite
ends of the Teseida. First, Boccaccio, quite self-consciously,
calls attention to his strategic placement (or mis-placement) of the blason
through a formal rubric: “Disegna l’autore la forma e la bellezza di Emilia,
e prima invoca l’aiuto delle Muse”(12.51) [“The author describes the
appearance and beauty of Emilia, and he first invokes the help of the
muses”]. He marshals the rhetorical tradition of such formal
descriptions, a tradition that would normally place it at the beginning of a
narrative, not at the end. Secondly, Boccaccio bookends the blason with
images of Thebes on one end and Troy on the other, and specifically the sources
of those conflicts: at the beginning of the blason, he invokes those
muses “la quale Anfioni/astate a chiuder Tebe” (12.52) [“who helped
Amphion enclose Thebes”], recalling the beginning of Theban history, the
construction of the city which became the source of conflict; at the end of the
blason, Boccaccio depicts Menelao gazing upon Emilia and comparing her to Helen
(12.67), the source of the Trojan conflict. The reference to Helen
situates the ending of the Teseida at the very beginning of the Trojan
war (Menelaus and Helen are still together at this point). Finally,
Boccaccio situates the blason in the epic, not romance, tradition in the stanza
that follows: the wedding celebrations include musicians as skilled as
the “Anfion tebeo” [“Theban Amphion”] and songs so well-written
that “sarebbero stati/belli a Caliopè” [“they would have been lovely to
Calliope,”] the muse of epic poetry (12.72). Thus, despite the
closure of conflict promised by this “romance ending,” the celebrations themselves
announce a continuation of epic concerns - of war, and the only war on the
horizon at the end of the Teseida is the Trojan war.
Perhaps the most ingenious way that
Boccaccio manipulates epic type-scenes as a structuring device for his epic
involves his placement of them as a group, for when we chart the sequence of
these scenes as they occur in the Teseida, we see that they occur in
precisely the reverse of the order in which they would normally appear in
classical Latin epic (and much of medieval romance). Examined
within the exclusive parameters of the poem itself, these four episodes seem to
lock the narrative into a series of false starts whereby the hero receives his
armor after the battle is over, and where the funeral games showcase warrior
talent that will serve no greater challenge, and where the heroine is admired
only after her fate has been sealed through marriage. Since the outcome
of the Athenian affair has been resolved by Book Eight, episodes which typically
generate narrative become stripped of their potential to foster mystery and
suspense. Thus the second half of the Teseida seems to turn into
one never-ending state function.
However, by approaching the Teseida
as a transitional epic which attempts to fill the temporal gap in ancient
history between the sieges of Thebes and Troy, it becomes clear that Boccaccio
enacts on the level of narrative structure the same transition that he is
trying to achieve on the chronological level. The following chart compares
the arrangement of these scenes in two Roman epics with their arrangement in
the Teseida:
Order of Type-Scenes
Statius’ Thebaid
Virgil’s Aeneid
Boccaccio’s Teseida
Blason
--
--
Book 12
Funeral Games Book
6
Book
5
Book 11
Arming of
Hero
--
Book
8
Book 9
Battle
Books 7ff.
Books 9ff.
Book 8
In the first half of the Teseida (excluding Book One),
Boccaccio mirrors the narrative sequence of the first half of Statius’ Thebaid,
moving from the beginning of the conflict between two Theban kinsmen to the
tournament (which corresponds to Statius’ funeral games of Thebaid
VI). At this point, he reveals the outcome of the struggle at Athens, but
does not end the poem here. In the second half of the Teseida,
Boccaccio continues to borrow from Statius, but abandons the narrative
structure of the Thebaid. In its place, he substitutes a series of
type-scenes common to Latin epic, but unfolds each of them in reverse order, so
that the poem ends the way most classical and medieval narratives begin. Taken as a
sequence, the four epic type-scenes punctuating the second half of the Teseida
(the battle, the arming of the hero, the funeral games and the blason) move the
narrative from the end of one conflict to the beginning of another. In
the meantime, Boccaccio fills these episodes with Trojan personnel and
allusions to the Trojan war, thus affecting a narrative transition into the
siege of Troy. Boccaccio’s highly imaginative use of epic type-scenes in
the second half of the Teseida has gone largely unnoticed precisely
because it defies the narrative logic of ancient epic, but we see that the poem
in its entirety is thoroughly grounded in that tradition, from beginning to
end.
We see, then, that Troy forms a vital
subtext for understanding Boccaccio’s Teseida. He shapes the
opening campaign of the poem to resemble the opening offensive at Troy,
modeling Book One on Guido delle Colonne’s account of the establishment of the
siege at Troy. He aligns the figures of Ipolita and Emilia with Helen of
Troy, making Ipolita’s experience repeat Helen’s experience prior to Troy, and
making Emilia’s experience foreshadow Helen’s future experience in the Trojan
conflict. He models Arcita’s exiled wandering into the ruined city of
Thebes on that of Caesar’s wandering through the ruined city of Troy in Lucan’s
Pharsalia, reaffirming the popular medieval pairing of Thebes and Troy
as two destroyed cities. He enlists into this conflict at Athens men who
will later appear at Troy, and previews their future performance in both the
catalog of warriors and in the battle itself. He arranges a series of
epic type-scenes in reverse order so that they anticipate an event beyond the
span of the poem itself, and infuses each of them with allusions to Troy.
Thus, in addition to being a restaging of the Theban drama, the Teseida
also becomes a dress rehearsal for the Trojan drama.
What, then, is Boccaccio saying about the
nature of Thebes and Troy? A common theme in all three conflicts,
Thebes, Athens, and Troy, that Boccaccio fosters is a fundamental disproportion
between the causes and the consequences of conflict. Boccaccio had plenty
of precedent for such a judgement about Thebes and Troy. Statius speaks
of the “paupere regno” (1.151) [“pauper realm”] for which Eteocles and
Polynices are willing to fight to the death. A similar sense of
disproportion infuses Guido delle Colonne’s account of the Trojan war when he
speaks of the “original cause” of the war from “trifling” and “unimportant”
things (namely a misunderstanding between Jason and king Laomedon) which
nevertheless “troubles human hearts.” And
in his own brief account of the Trojan war in De Claris Mulieribus,
Boccaccio stresses Helen’s unworthiness for the deaths she causes, claiming
that the Greek princes “thought more of Paris’ insult to Menelaus than of
Helen’s lustfulness.” Boccaccio’s Teseida dramatizes the spirit of these
assessments of the Theban and Trojan wars in the conflict at Athens over
“si poca di cosa” (7.5) [“such a small thing”], over love of a
woman. The Teseida, therefore, heightens the tragedy of Troy by
giving us insight into its underlying cause, its “root.”
Which is not to say that the Teseida
is written entirely in a minor key. Quite the contrary. Boccaccio,
in fact, offers us a hiatus from the grinding progress of ancient history as
one disaster after another. After all, in its broadest outlines, the poem
undoes many of the mistakes of the past (and future). Teseo, unlike the
Greek commanders at Troy, manages to avoid a protracted siege, and gains the
woman with minimal resistance. Arcita and Palamone break the Theban curse
of mutual destruction, and the object for which they contend, Emilia, survives
the conflict, unlike the city of Thebes at the close of the Theban war.
The Greek commanders in the Teseida return home at the end by “il
cammin suo più corto” (12.83) [“the shortest route”] (an allusion to the nostoi)
without getting lost at sea or being murdered by their wives. The Teseida
explores the possibility of alternate outcomes to familiar events of ancient
history, to the events of Trojan as well as Theban history.
But the very presence of these variations
of familiar historical scenes recalls their originals, many of which are about
to take place in the timeline of mythical history, scenes which the poet cannot
change. Hence the tragedy of Teseo’s statement of consolation to the
beleaguered warriors following the battle that “Questo ch’è stato, non
tornerà mai/per alcun tempo che stato non sai” (9.59) [ “what has happened
here will not come again in any future time”]. These events will
come again and, similarly, for “si poca di cosa.”
More than anything, the Trojan dimension
of the Teseida enables us to reassess the poem as the work of a mature
artist rather than that of an overly-ambitious youth. To be sure,
Boccaccio finished the Teseida at the age of twenty-eight, while still a
young man, and well before his international best-seller, the Decameron (1351),
and for this reason it belongs among his “early works.” However, the
achievement of the Teseida reveals a young poet already in command of a
wide variety of texts and traditions, including the tradition of historical
epic, which he manipulates in highly creative and effective ways. Of
course, not all aspects of his experiment in epic may seem equally effective;
for instance, his rather unorthodox use of epic type-scenes has never, to my
knowledge, been reproduced, and perhaps with good reason. However, the
Trojan mantle of the Teseida affirms that we can indeed take seriously
Boccaccio’s claim to writing the first Italian epic. With its unusual
blend of Theban and Trojan events and themes in an imaginary recreation of the
period intervening these two conflicts, the Teseida provides the missing
volume on the shelf of ancient history.
and
The
Persistence of Thebes
Geoffrey Chaucer took up the matter of
Thebes in two works composed within several years of one another, The
Compleynt of feire Anelida and fals Arcite and the Knight’s Tale. Their
similarities suggest that these two poems may represent drafts of the same
work, but many scholars cite the differences between the two works as evidence
that they represent separate narratives that happen to share a common
historical setting. That common historical setting forms the subject of the
present chapter, for despite the numerous differences between the Anelida
and the Knight’s Tale, both works attest to Chaucer’s desire to revisit
Thebes in its original, ancient form, to revive Thebanness as a historical and
imaginative force. Chaucer’s two Theban poems constitute separate
phases of a single poetic enterprise to restore a classical, Statian,
definition of Theban identity. Chaucer’s restoration of Thebes involved
several key innovations.
To begin with, Chaucer is the first medieval adaptor of the Theban legend to
completely isolate Theban history from Trojan history. As I
discussed in chapter two, the OF poet conflates the stories of the Theban and
Trojan wars by recruiting personnel from the Trojan conflict into the ranks at
Thebes, by altering the landscape of Thebes and its outlying area so that it
resembles Troy, and by redesigning some key military strategy employed by the
Thebans to make it resemble that used in the Trojan war. Additionally, he
distinguishes the opposing sides of the conflict at Thebes as “the Greeks” and
“the Thebans” (despite the fact that the Thebans are Greek) in imitation of the
later conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans. Thus various aspects
of the Theban war in the Thèbes anticipate the Trojan war.
Boccaccio, too, includes a great deal of Trojan material in his Teseida,
choosing as his timeframe the transitional period between the Theban and Trojan
wars. Boccaccio establishes a causal connection between the two
conflicts, a connection lacking in medieval chronicle accounts of ancient
history and vague in the OF Roman de Thèbes. He achieves this
transition by including a host of Trojan personnel in the Teseida, by
refocusing the conflict between his two Thebans around a woman (the issue at
Troy) rather than a city, and by modeling Emilia’s predicament as a victim of
her own beauty, and as the object of conflict between two armies of rival
suitors, on that of Helen of Troy. Thus, Boccaccio’s Teseida
integrates material from accounts of both Thebes and Troy. Chaucer,
however, removes all traces of Troy from his Theban works, the Knights’s
Tale especially. In fact, as we shall see, Trojan material
constitutes the bulk of what Chaucer excised from his Italian source. In
doing this, Chaucer focuses entirely on Theban concerns and dilemmas.
Secondly, Chaucer is the first medieval
adaptor of the Theban legend to reverse the tendency to view the conflict
anachronistically. The OF poet re-configures the Theban conflict as a
medieval crusade, transforming the side of Pollinices into an army of crusaders
and the side of Ethiocles into a host of infidels. In this respect, the
Theban war becomes a medieval conflict framed by the medieval Christian
concerns of the twelfth-century poet and audience. Similarly, Boccaccio,
while classicizing the setting of the Teseida in many ways, nevertheless
gives his Theban heroes access to essentially Christian experience through the
lens of medieval Christian romance.
Through loving Emilia, Boccaccio’s heroes (especially Arcita) go through a
process of suffering, awakening, repentance and reconciliation that echoes the
Christian experience, and this process enables them to overcome the most
destructive aspects of their Theban heritage. Unlike his medieval
predecessors, Chaucer situates his narrative in a distinctly pagan past and
denies his characters access to Christian revelation, the absence of which in
the tale has aroused much critical discussion.
Although Chaucer’s characters frequently employ the language of Boethian
philosophy and of medieval romance, they inhabit a world whose modes of thought
are ultimately non-Christian and, therefore, they fail to undergo the kind of
transformation that Boccaccio’s heroes experience.
Thirdly, Chaucer is the first medieval
adaptor of the Theban legend to represent Thebes as a living, functioning city
well beyond the end of the Theban war. The destruction of Thebes, as we
have seen, had symbolic importance in the medieval imagination in the same
manner as the destruction of Troy. Thebes, like Troy, became another
ruined city in a line of ruined earthly cities, reflecting the Augustinian
model of secular history as a series of disasters. Thus at the end of at
least one manuscript of the Roman de Thèbes we have the city of Thebes
sitting as a burned out shell until the beginning of the Trojan war; the poet
links Thebes and Troy as two ancient cities which arrived at the same
end. Boccaccio’s Teseida also represents Thebes as a destroyed,
uninhabitable city after the conclusion of the Theban war, perhaps best dramatized
by Arcita’s exilic wandering through the ruins of Thebes. Boccaccio’s
emphasis on the ruined state of Thebes underscores his larger project of
severing his Theban heroes from their blighted history.
Chaucer, however, maintains the city of Thebes as an inhabited, working city in
both his Theban works. The Anelida is set in the city of Thebes
just before Theseus’ final attack, and Anelida herself is involved romantically
with a Theban citizen, Arcite. Whether or not Chaucer intended to depict
the destruction of the city in a continuation of the poem, he clearly wished to
explore life within the city of Thebes while it still stood. In the Knight’s
Tale as well, Chaucer represents Thebes as a functioning city well after
the war, and makes Palaemon the new leader of Thebes at the end of the tale;
this constitutes perhaps his most concrete departure from the medieval Theban
tradition. The range and extent of Chaucer’s innovations within the
Theban tradition have gone largely unnoticed due to misunderstandings
surrounding his relationship with his Theban sources, notably the Teseida.
Several scholars have argued,
convincingly, that Chaucer models his Knight’s Tale more closely on the Thebaid
of Statius than on Boccaccio’s Teseida.
Robert Haller, in his study of the Knight’s Tale as an epic (rather than
a romance), demonstrates that Chaucer translates the Statian rivalry over a
throne into a rivalry over love. Palaemon and Arcite fight over
possession of Emelye with the same vehemence and determination with which
Polynices and Eteocles fight over possession of the city of Thebes. In effect,
Chaucer has made “love take the place of the usual political center of the
epic.”
Expanding on Haller, David Anderson documents how Chaucer reproduces the
narrative pattern in the Thebaid (while borrowing characters from the Teseida)
and therefore eliminates the segments of the Teseida that do not pertain
directly to the theme of fraternal strife. For instance, he drops Boccaccio’s
opening sequence of Theseus’ campaign in Scythia, returning to the brief,
Statian treatment of Theseus’ campaign. Similarly, he reduces the role of
Emelye, thus imitating Statius’ estimation of Thebes as a “starveling realm” (“Pugna
est de paupere regno” Thebaid, 1.151), whose price is
disproportionate to the reward. In
this respect, Anderson concurs with Haller that Chaucer resurrects the conflict
between Polynices and Eteocles in that of Palaemon and Arcite.
Finally, Chaucer preserves (indeed expands) the influence of the pagan
gods in human affairs in accordance with the well-known Servian definition of
epic.
Anderson concludes that Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is an “open imitation
not of Boccaccio’s narrative, but, like Boccaccio’s narrative, of Statius.” Winthrop
Wetherbee identifies the often grotesque descriptions of combat and death in
the Knight’s Tale as typical not only of ancient epic in general but of
the Thebaid in particular, the bloodiest Roman epic. These
studies demonstrate that Chaucer sought to return to the narrative strategies
and themes of the Thebaid more than those of the Teseida.
However, the Thebaid-centered approach
to the Knight’s Tale raises a number of questions. If Chaucer
wished to revive the pre-Boccaccian Theban experience, then why does he not
return to the narrative devices of plot and character of Statius’ Thebaid,
as the Old French poet had done, for instance? Why not treat the affairs
of Polynices and Eteocles? Why use Palaemon and Arcite as substitutes for
Eteocles and Polynices when he could simply use the Theban brothers
themselves? If he wanted to revisit the nature of the conflict in the earlier
chronological period of Statius’ Thebaid, why does he adhere to
Boccaccio’s post-Theban war timeframe? And why does he retain Boccaccio’s
substitution of rivalry over love for rivalry over a throne only to reinscribe
the nature of the earlier, political conflict onto the love affair? In
short, why bother with Boccaccio?
The nature and extent of Chaucer’s
response to Boccaccio’s treatment of Theban history in the Teseida
continues to be underrated. The most dominant theory framing discussions
on the relationship between Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Boccaccio’s Teseida
is what I refer to as the “quarry theory.”
Briefly, this theory defines the Teseida as merely a repository of raw
materials for Chaucer. Devoid of much literary merit in its own right,
the Teseida nevertheless provided Chaucer, the true artist, with a kit
of useful material and ideas. This theory begins with Robert Pratt’s
early assessment of the poem as “lacking unity and power of theme, design and
execution...but possessing numerous effective descriptions and elevated
passages of poetry.” Its estimated value to medieval literature as a whole, and
to Chaucer in particular, resembles that of an especially large florilegium.
Such is the prevailing critical assessment of the poem, as itemized here by
W.A. Davenport:
Il Teseida offers a good range of possibilities to
the adaptor, a choice of styles,
material suitable for excision (some of which is actually
identified by the author),
literal, natural behavior woven in with the historical
strangeness of the
matter, a dual story of sad and happy outcome, exotic
pictures and noble
speech, moral, religious and philosophical themes.
Implicit in the quarry theory is the belief that the “real story” of the Teseida
involves only the love triangle between Arcita, Palamone and Emilia, precisely
the portion that Chaucer excerpted. The historical and mythographic
material, on the other hand, plays no meaningful part in the love affair and
represents, instead, Boccaccio’s “lengthy amplification” of the story.
Because Boccaccio intended the Teseida as an epic, and epics tend to be
long, he “larded his narrative” with details about the Theban and Trojan wars
and trivia about the pagan gods. Chaucer cut
this material, reducing the poem to its “bare essentials,” because, as critics
argue, he saw it as extraneous to “the story.” Thus
the omissions Chaucer made to his Italian source “are important changes but not
substantive ones.”
Chaucer becomes, therefore, the master confronting the apprentice. As
Helen Cooper remarks, Chaucer, as the experienced poet in full command of his
craft, “makes Boccaccio’s rambling and unfocused romance-epic a perfectly
balanced and tightly symmetrical work of deep human significance.”
Chaucer, the assumption goes, saw neither structure nor deep human significance
in the Teseida; he removed the excess (history) and, left with the basic
plot, added a philosophical dimension wholly lacking in his Italian source.
A second theory concerning the source
relationship between the Teseida and the Knight’s Tale is
what I call the “cleared path” theory. The consensus in these studies is
that Chaucer used Boccaccio’s Teseida predominantly as a tool for
accessing the Thebaid. David Anderson claims that Chaucer’s use of
the Teseida “is governed by an interest in doing again what Boccaccio
had already done before, even while acting within the smaller space permitted
by the frame of the Canterbury Tales.”
Chaucer, he suggests, wanted primarily to travel the same literary path back to
Statius cleared by Boccaccio. Winthrop Wetherbee refines this argument
further when he claims that “the Knight’s Tale can be described as
working back through Boccaccio...to a confrontation with a more authentic,
historical version of its Theban-Athenian material represented by the Thebaid
itself.
According to Wetherbee, Chaucer not only wished to follow the same path as
Boccaccio, but to go further than Boccaccio did back to Statius, and he
demonstrates that Chaucer recuperates a more ancient (more Statian) treatment
of Theban themes than Boccaccio. Concurring with Anderson and Wetherbee, James
McGregor claims that “Chaucer’s innovation…is not thematic; Teseida and
the Knight’s Tale share similar themes and similar points of view.” These
scholars suggest, therefore, that Chaucer borrows Boccaccio’s narrative
apparatus but circumvents the Teseida’s ideological underpinnings out of
a greater interest in the Thebaid.
Undoubtedly, this scholarship comes as a
long overdue corrective to what David Anderson calls “the narrow focus on Teseida-Knight’s
Tale” to include the larger literary tradition of Thebaid.
Moreover, it ascribes greater overall value to the Teseida in Chaucer’s
literary consciousness, and does much to dispel the prevailing view of the Teseida
as the “baggiest of baggy monsters, to use Anderson’s term. However,
like the “quarry theory,” the “cleared path” theory maintains that Chaucer
viewed the Teseida as essentially disposable, as something to be used in
the short term on the way to more distant goals, whether that goal be medieval
philosophy or ancient history.
I argue, instead, that Chaucer did, in
fact, find great value in Boccaccio’s Teseida, and that his Theban
poems, particularly the Knight’s Tale, engage and challenge that Italian
source directly and continuously throughout. Chaucer’s attitude towards
the Teseida is far from neutral, as current critical opinion might
suggest, and his Theban works constitute his response to Boccaccio’s attempted
transformation of Theban history. We find this response behind the most
salient critical observations on the Knight’s Tale, including its
distinctly pagan world-view and its concern with divine purveiaunce (the
divine plan). Critics have tended to view these features of the tale as
Chaucer’s innovations, or “additions,” when, in fact, we find precedents for
these in his Italian source.
Chaucer’s innovation lies, instead, in how he challenges Boccaccio’s handling
of these same concepts.
These concepts lie in the historical
content of the Teseida, the portion all too quickly relegated by critics
to “background.” In fact, the Teseida’s historiographic program
creates the significance of the “foreground” of the poem, the love
triangle. The rivalry between Arcita and Palamone derives its meaning
from its participation in a long history of Theban, familial rivalries, a
history that Boccaccio broadcasts at several points throughout the Teseida.
Additionally, Emilia’s role as love object gains increasing resonance from how
it overlaps with Helen’s role at Troy as the source of conflict between two
contending armies of rivals in love, armies comprised largely of men who will
later appear on the battlefield of Troy. By substituting a woman for a
city as the source of conflict, Boccaccio creates a transition between Theban
and Trojan history. He merges the mode of Theban conflict
(fraternal strife) with the object of the Trojan conflict (a woman), and thus
repeats Theban history as he prefigures Trojan history. Athenian society
emerges from the Theban historical pattern of fraternal strife only to fall
unawares into the equally destructive historical pattern that will consume
Troy. Thus, far from providing a mere “background” to the story, the
historiographic material in the Teseida determines the very meaning of
the story. It makes what would otherwise be a rather uneventful love
story into a work of deep human significance.
Chaucer’s Theban poems are equally
muscle-bound with history. In adapting the Teseida into the Knight’s
Tale, Chaucer does not enrich the romantic component in any way; he does
not add scenes in which the two heroes interact with Emelye, scenes that would,
at least, render the love interest more plausible. If anything, he
impoverishes the love interest even further by making Emelye a less compelling
figure than Boccaccio’s Emilia; we have less access to her private thoughts and
feelings than in Boccaccio. Moreover, he reduces Arcita as a hero,
stripping away much of the interiority that makes him so interesting and,
indeed, powerful in the Teseida. Thus, Chaucer does not modify the
love plot all that much in his version of the story. By contrast, he
enacts very sweeping changes to the historical context of the story. Not
only does he shave away the historical material of Troy in order to gain a more
narrow focus on Thebes, but he changes the directions that Thebes itself had
begun to take.
In his handling of Theban history in the Teseida,
Boccaccio stages an experiment in nature vs. nurture with regard to the Theban
character. He invents a new generation of Thebans, Palamone and Arcita,
removes them from Thebes, exposes them to new, beneficial influences (namely,
love) and allows them to respond positively to those influences by reconciling
themselves to one another after a potential repeat performance of Theban
criminality. One of them survives the conflict (unlike Eteocles and
Polynices) as does the object of their contention, Emelye (unlike the city of
Thebes in the Theban war). Nurture prevails as the more formative
influence, and Theban criminality is eradicated. Boccaccio, therefore,
resurrects the pattern of Theban history in order to reverse it.
Boccaccio transforms Theban history
ostensibly through the intervention of romance: his heroes fall in love,
are changed by that love and subsequently alter their actions.
However, in the Teseida, as in much of medieval romance, the romance
experience mirrors the Christian experience; Boccaccio transforms Theban
history by granting his Theban heroes Christian insight. Despite its
pre-Christian setting, the Teseida explores an essentially Christian
understanding of love as a Divine gift with the power to alter the course of
history. Boccaccio’s characters, while nominally pagan, undergo
transformations of consciousness that mimic the experience of Christian
conversion.
Arcita (and later Palamone) suffers, experiences an awakening of compassion,
repents and finally reconciles himself to his enemy; in short, he has the
quintessential Christian experience. Moreover, while earthly love for a
woman may provide the impetus for this experience, the love exerts far more
influence over the relationship between the Theban cousins themselves than
between either of them and Emilia, and the cornerstone of their experience is
suffering, another hallmark of Christian heroism.
Boccaccio makes Palamone and Arcita into
victims, not perpetrators, of the Theban curse. At every turn, we see
them suffering: they are rescued from certain death from the battlefield
outside of Thebes; they are imprisoned; they succumb to the despair of
circumstance and then to the despair of love; they fall victim to the pattern
of Theban strife (which Arcita articulates at length); they are again wounded
in conflict at Athens; Arcita dies; Palamone grieves; and then the poem ends in
a marriage, the first reprieve from suffering. No prior Theban narrative
or commentary on the Thebaid depicts either Eteocles or Polynices as
passive victims. Eteocles and Polynices embody the destructive pattern of
Theban history; their persons and their history are the same. Boccaccio,
however, separates his Thebans from their Thebanness by making Palamone and
Arcita victims, not simply perpetrators, of their own history, and by doing so
he elicits sympathy for his Theban heroes. Throughout the poem, they come to
watch their own history encroach upon their lives and they struggle to separate
themselves from their past.
The experience of love enables Arcita and
Palamone to achieve this separation and to avoid the fate that destroyed their
ancestors. On his deathbed, Arcita describes the transformative effect
love has had on him in terms loaded with Christian resonance:
“El [amor] m’insegnò a divenire umile,
esso mi fé ancor sanza paura,
esso mi fé grazioso e gentile,
esso la fede mia fé santa e pura,
esso mostrò a me che mai a vile
io non avessi nulla creatura,
esso mi fé cortese e ubidente,
esso mi fé valoroso e servente” (10.23).
and gentle, it made my faith holy and pure. It showed
me that I should never
hold any creature in contempt, it made me courteous and
obedient, it made
me valiant and steadfast.”]
The Anelida
and the Return to Thebes
Chaucer’s first move in recuperating
Theban historical and racial identity involved restoring the city of
Thebes itself. Boccaccio had gone to great lengths to distance his Theban
heroes from Thebes. First, he removed them to Athens, away from the
corrupting seat of Theban crime. Second, he destroyed the very fabric of
the city itself as a symbol of that crime. In Chaucer’s first Theban
poem, however, we are back in Thebes. More importantly, the Theban
setting he creates in the poem is distinctly corrupt in a way that all medieval
audiences would appreciate, for Chaucer recreates not the ancient landscape of
the Thebaid, but the medieval, and eastern, landscape of the OF Roman
de Thèbes, an area firmly under the control of Infidels.
The most substantial and interesting
studies of Chaucer’s use of the Thèbes concern its relationship to
Chaucer’s Troilus, not to his Theban poems. This
has been the case especially since Alain Renoir first argued that the version
of the Thebes story Criseyde reads at the beginning of Book II of the
Troilus is, in fact, the OF Thèbes, not Statius’ Thebaid,
thus establishing the most concrete record of Chaucer’s familiarity with that
poem. The studies examining Chaucer’s use of the Thèbes is his
Theban works have been both fewer in number and more tentative in their claims. This
is understandable, given that Chaucer did not compose a full-length adaptation
of the Thèbes as he did with some of Boccaccio’s works.
Complicating matters is the question of whether Chaucer knew the OF poem itself
or only a Middle French prose redaction, for the latter omits substantial
material from the verse Thèbes pertaining to its twelfth-century
historical context, constituting an altogether different version of the Thebes
story. In the discussion that follows, I add my own tentative
observations to those of others pertaining to Chaucer’s knowledge of the French
tradition of Thebes. Chaucer, I feel, did indeed know the OF Thèbes
(as well as a prose redaction) and modeled the geographic and political setting
of his first Theban poem, the Anelida, far more on the Thèbes
than on any other Theban narrative available to him.
While Chaucer’s Anelida draws its
timeframe (Theseus’ actions at the end of the Theban war) and one of its main
characters, Arcite, from Boccaccio’s Teseida, it derives its political
landscape from the OF Roman de Thèbes. Critics have generally
accepted that Chaucer replicates the historical setting of the Thebaid,
incorporating some Boccaccian overlay.
However, several important details indicate that Chaucer sought to reproduce
the Eastern political landscape of the OF Thèbes which, as we saw in
chapter two, is modeled on the political terrain of the First Crusade.
Thebes in the OF poem lies in the East, in the Holy Land, and relies for its
defense on various pagan and Muslim peoples including Turks, Persians, Slavs,
Syrians and Moors, among others. Additionally, Thebes in the OF poem is
not the lone city it is in the Thebaid; it presides over an entire
region, and participates in a network of alliances between various eastern
peoples. Moreover, many of Ethiocles’ councilors within the city come
from other parts of this region and preside in the city for the duration of the
war. In the Anelida and Arcite, Chaucer reproduces this political
landscape. We see Creon, for instance, taking control of not only the
city of Thebes, but of an entire region:
And when the olde Creon gan espye
How that the blood roial was broght a-doun,
He held the cite by his tyrannye
And dyde the gentils of that regioun
To ben his frendes and wonnen in the toun.
So, what for love of him and what for awe,
The noble folk were to the toun idrawe. (ll.
64-70, italics mine)
The setting of the OF Thèbes also
accounts for Chaucer’s choice of heroine. Among these foreign gentils living
in Thebes is Anelida, queen of Ermony, which most critics interpret as
“Armenia.” This reference to Armenia has puzzled scholars of the poem,
since Armenia appears extraneous to the Theban setting of the poem.
Armenia does not figure in Statius’ Thebaid, of course, but it does
constitute one of the many eastern territories allied to Thebes in the Roman
de Thèbes. One of the “miex de Thèbes” (“best of
Thebes”) accompanying queen Jocasta and her daughters into negotiations with
Adrastus is the son of the king of Armenia (4114).
Elsewhere in the Thèbes, king Adrastus summons an Armenian physician to
tend to Thideüs’ wounds (1877-8). It is highly probable, therefore, that
Chaucer derived the Armenian-Theban connection from the OF Thèbes, and
the Armenian presence in the OF poem as an eastern territory involved in Theban
politics explains why Chaucer would include Anelida, queen of Armenia, in his
Theban narrative without any further explanation as to why an Armenian would be
in Thebes in the first place.
It also bears mentioning that in Chaucer’s own day Armenia, and to some extent
Thebes, was still embroiled in crusading politics as it underwent various
shifts between Islamic, Mongol and Christian rule, all the more reason why
Chaucer, in evoking the crusading landscape of the OF Thèbes, might
choose to include an Armenian in this poem.
Another important clue to Chaucer’s use of
the Roman de Thèbes in constructing the political landscape of Anelida
and Arcite lies in his designation of the opposing sides of the recent
Theban war as one between the peoples “Of Thebes and Grece” (53).
The dichotomy of Greeks vs. Thebans does not belong to the Thebaid:
Statius does not, and would not, distinguish Thebes from the rest of
Greece. Throughout the Thebaid, the conflict involves the followers
of Eteocles and those of Polynices. In his Teseida, Boccaccio
refers to the great onslaught of the “Lernean” (by which he means “Greek”)
people against the Thebans (2.10) (which he very likely derived from the Thèbes),
but he does not situate Thebes in an eastern political landscape. In the Thèbes,
however, the poet re-designates the opposing sides along regional and political
lines, and establishes a dichotomy of Greeks vs. Thebans (very much in
imitation of the later conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans). The
“Greeks,” we have seen, include men skilled in crusading, while the “Thebans”
include people from an array of eastern peoples. Thus Chaucer’s first
step in restoring Theban identity involves restoring Thebes itself, and, more
importantly, a version of Thebes that locates the sources of corruption as much
in the geographical and political setting as in the Theban people.
Chaucer’s next move in recuperating Theban
history and identity from Boccaccio’s reforms involves borrowing and
re-corrupting Boccaccio’s hero, Arcita. In contrast to Boccaccio gentle
and visionary hero, Chaucer’s “Theban knight” (210), Arcite, seems decidedly
dishonorable.
Chaucer clearly draws the name “Arcite” from Boccaccio’s Teseida, but
Arcite undergoes a dramatic character transformation in the translation
process. In Boccaccio, Arcita, a Theban rescued by Theseus from the
battlefield outside Thebes, receives the poet’s full sympathy, despite his
criminal ancestral stock. Upon becoming aware of the destructive pattern
of Theban history, Arcita promises to break the Theban curse once and for all
by attempting to pursue a peaceful alternative to the combat with
Palamone. This awareness arises out of his experience in loving Emilia:
love of Emilia extends to love of Palamone, and enables him to transcend the
fratricidal impulses that repeatedly drove his ancestors to ruin. As a
figure of redemption, Boccaccio’s Arcita represents a distinct break from both
Statius and the OF Thèbes; in the former, the Thebans remain doomed by
their heredity, while in the latter, they remain politically cursed because of
their dubious connections with infidels.
Chaucer, while borrowing the figure of
Arcita from Boccaccio, circumvents Boccaccio’s attempts to redeem Theban
history (and Arcite in particular), and returns to a pre-Boccaccian portrait of
the Thebans as a cursed race. Thus, Arcite is repeatedly referred to as
“fals,” and he deliberately pursues a course of “traitorie” and “trecherie,”
that of a “thef” (156, 158, 161). We never see Arcite in the course of
the poem; we only hear of him in the context of the complaint of Anelida (very
much in keeping with the tradition of the Heroides). On the other
hand, the narrator, quite independently of Anelida, incriminates Arcite for his
disloyalty, for well before Anelida launches into her lament, the narrator
himself characterizes Arcite as “fals” (141, 149, 168). Above all,
Chaucer returns Boccaccio’s hero to his city of origin, to Thebes, which still
stands and thrives. Thus we see Arcite (or hear of him) in his Theban
milieu, which by all medieval accounts is corrupt. In his Teseida,
Boccaccio moves Arcita out of Thebes permanently, perhaps as part of his plan
to sever his hero from a blighted ancestry. However, Chaucer puts Arcite back
in Thebes and allows us to see him as a Theban citizen, an identity that cannot
benefit him
Discussions about the Theban scene in the Anelida
have become inextricably bound up with the question of the poem’s state of
completion. Broadly speaking, explanations of the nature of the poem fall
into two categories: those which claim that the poem is complete, and those
which claim that it is incomplete. Generally, critics who argue for the
poem’s completeness focus on the lament portion of the work, which concludes
one stanza before the end of the poem. They argue that the final stanza of the
poem, which picks up the narrative portion of the poem, represents a scribal
addition, and not Chaucer’s, since only four of the thirteen manuscript
witnesses to the text include this final stanza (also known as the
“continuation stanza”). They argue further that Chaucer designed the poem, first
and foremost, as a complaint framed by a short tale, similar to the
Complaint of Mars and The Complaint Unto Pity.
On the other hand, those who argue for the
poem’s incompleteness tend to focus on the frame narrative of Theban history,
which appears to pick up again in the final stanza of the poem, ending abruptly
with “as ye shal after here” (357). Some
argue that Chaucer abandoned the project for any number of reasons: perhaps it
was too difficult to integrate the story of Anelida with that of Arcita and
Palamone, or perhaps it became to difficult to meet the competing generic
demands of Italianate epic and French Complaint. Lee Patterson, in an
attempt to bridge these two schools of thought on the nature of the Anelida,
argues that Chaucer deliberately left the poem unfinished. Both the
Complaint and the frame narrative, he argues, remain “ostentatiously and
deliberately incomplete.” Chaucer, he insists, sought to represent, in both
portions of the poem, “a consciousness in media res,” a view of Theban
history, in all its ugliness, that resists closure. Patterson
reclassifies the poem as a “memorial poem” that “articulates a form of
consciousness that remembers everything yet understands nothing.” The
crimes of Theban history continue to haunt the medieval understanding of
ancient history, as the crimes of Arcite haunt Anelida. Thus, for
Patterson, the poem is complete in its very incompleteness.
With respect to its Theban content,
however, all of these debates have emphasized what is not there, what
Chaucer left out either by intent or by default. However, internal
evidence in the poem as it stands provides important information about
Chaucer’s plans for handling Theban history. First, whether or not
Chaucer intended a continuation of the Anelida, details in the poem
suggest that he sought to bring together the entire Theban tradition, from
Statius to Boccaccio and including the OF Thèbes. He appears to
model the political landscape of the poem on the eastern landscape of the OF Roman
de Thèbes, making Thebes an eastern city within a larger region governed by
a loose federation of eastern peoples, and he designates the opposing sides of
the Theban war as Greeks vs. Thebans, a dichotomy that originates with the Thèbes.
He makes the heroine of the poem one of these eastern people, a queen of
Armenia, a region represented in the Thèbes but not in the Thebaid or
the Teseida. Second, Chaucer seems interested in Thebans as a
criminal race not as a reformed people (as Boccaccio proposes); while Chaucer
derives his hero (or anti-hero), Arcite, from Boccaccio, he reverses
Boccaccio’s revisionary measures on his Theban hero, restoring Arcite’s Theban
identity with all its negative associations. These associations, moreover, are
typical of the OF Thèbes (not of the Thebaid), whose poet judges
the Theban people far more harshly than Statius ever does. Statius’
tragic race becomes, in the OF poem, a race of deceitful and disloyal
worshippers of false gods, the likely ancestors of Chaucer’s “fals Arcite.”
In this first Theban work, therefore, Chaucer appears to use one medieval
source, the Thèbes, as part of a mounting effort to challenge another,
the Teseida. Finally, part of Chaucer’s exploration of Theban
criminality entails revisiting Thebes as the scene of the crime: Chaucer
takes us back into the city of Thebes, a place Boccaccio keeps at a safe
distance. Thus, complete or incomplete, the Anelida tells us much
about Chaucer’s misgivings about Boccaccio’s handling of the Theban
legend. His misgivings later came to include, though less directly,
aspects of the OF Roman de Thèbes as well, as we see in the Knight’s
Tale.
The Knight’s Tale and Boccaccio’s Theban
Experiment
Chaucer redoubled his efforts to challenge
Boccaccio in his second Theban poem, the Knight’s Tale. This meant
entering into the Teseida much more fully, borrowing more characters,
more of the setting, and the central plot device of the love triangle. It
also appears to have meant abandoning the material of the OF Thèbes, for
there is virtually no hint of the French poem in the Knight’s Tale.
While he continues to maintain the city of Thebes as a functioning city and to
explore the criminality of the Theban character, he relies more on Statius for
this material than on the French tradition. He, nevertheless, remains in
continuous dialogue with Boccaccio’s Teseida.
A large part of the misunderstanding
surrounding Chaucer’s “use” of the Teseida derives from a
misunderstanding of precisely what Chaucer dropped from the Teseida.
Representative critics like Helen Cooper tend to generalize the content of the
excised material as simply “the heroic sections of legendary history and
military campaigns.” However, if we look more carefully at the edited material,
we find that Chaucer removed the Trojan component of the Teseida.
He cuts Theseus’ opening campaign against the Amazons, which Boccaccio modeled
on Guido delle Colonne’s account of the opening offensive at Troy. He
also cuts the catalog of warriors from Book Six of the Teseida, and, in
doing so, eliminates all Trojan personnel from the story. Nor
do Trojan figures appear in the funeral games, which Chaucer reduces to a mere
phrase (l. 2959-60). He cuts Emilia’s lament of Book Eight of the Teseida,
during the battle scene, thus eliminating the teichoscopia that links
her experience with Helen’s as a victim of her own beauty. Gone, too, are
all references to Theseus’ early relationship with Helen (which Boccaccio
mentions eight times in the Teseida); in fact, Chaucer never refers to
Helen at all in the Knight’s Tale. Similarly, Chaucer cuts
Arcita’s tour through the ruined city of Thebes, a scene that Boccaccio uses to
foreshadow the coming destruction of Troy. Chaucer’s Arcite stops in his
exile at Thebes (still a functioning city), never venturing, as Boccaccio’s
hero does, to the courts of Menelaus and Peleus, the seedbeds of the Trojan
War. Finally, Chaucer removes Boccaccio’s closing allusion to the nostoi
at the end of the story of Troy whereby the warriors depart for home by
sea.
We cannot know for certain whether Chaucer
would have recognized all the sources for the passages of the Teseida
that he cuts, although we do know that he read these authors. He borrowed
from Guido delle Colonne for the Legend of Good Women, where he mentions
him by name twice (1396 and 1464). Chaucer also mentions Guido as an auctoritas
for Trojan history in the House of Fame (1469), and he draws upon
Guido’s Historia for his Troilus and Criseyde.
Likewise, Chaucer had at least some familiarity with Lucan’s Pharsalia, the
source of the scene for Arcita’s wandering in the Teseida. He
mentions him by name several times in his works, and refers to Lucan’s account
of Julius Caesar in the Monk’s Tale (2718), although his account differs
from Lucan’s.
Of course his familiarity with these texts does not presuppose that he would
have recognized Boccaccio’s adaptation of key scenes from them. What we
can say for certain, however, is that none of the copious Trojan material in
the Teseida made its way into the Knight’s Tale, including the
very obvious references to Trojan personnel and to Helen. As a result,
unlike Boccaccio’s Teseida, nothing about the Knight’s Tale
appears to anticipate the Trojan conflict, although chronologically, for both
poems, the Trojan war is immanent. In this respect, Chaucer is unique
among medieval adaptors of the Theban legend, since both previous medieval
Theban narratives attempt to join Theban and Trojan history to some
degree. Thus, Chaucer’s first step in challenging Boccaccio’s handling of
Theban themes involves shaving away all of the Trojan material from Boccaccio’s
sequel to the story of the Theban war. Having isolated the Theban
component of the Teseida, Chaucer begins undoing Boccaccio’s intricate
transformation of Theban history.
In the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer
re-stages Boccaccio’s experiment in nature vs. nurture with regard to the
Theban character, but, unlike Boccaccio, he deems nature (not nurture) to be
the dominant and persistent shaper of Theban behavior. Thus, the very
same plot line that brings about change and reconciliation in Boccaccio’s poem
brings about continued violence and contention in Chaucer’s poem. Using
the same non-Theban setting that served as a reform camp for Boccaccio’s
heroes, Chaucer moves the Theban propensity for destructive and competitive
relationships, unchanged, into a new arena. He wished to explore the
authentic Theban experience in the private lives of its latest generation (as
invented by Boccaccio), and to explore how Theban criminality might manifest
itself once removed from the historical seat of Theban crime, the city of
Thebes. In order to capture the authentic Theban (and ancient)
experience, however, he had to remove Boccaccio’s chief mode of intervention,
Christianity, for once Boccaccio had “redeemed” the Theban cousins with
experience akin to Christian insight, they ceased to be Thebans. Thus
Chaucer restores a Theban identity to Palaemon and Arcite by restoring their
pagan identity.
Of course, given the powerful
interconnectedness between the genre of chivalric romance and medieval
Christianity, it may seem difficult to determine whether the insights that
Boccaccio had allowed his heroes, and which Chaucer denies his heroes, are
specifically Christian or whether they simply derive from the romance treatment
of love as a transforming and refining power. Did Chaucer, in other
words, perceive the experience of Boccaccio’s heroes as the Christian
experience first and foremost? I argue that Chaucer did, in fact, remove
specifically the Christian intervention into Theban history from the Teseida,
and perhaps the best evidence for this is the fact that in the Troilus
Chaucer replicates the transformative effects of love on a pagan hero that we
find in the Teseida, including all of the language of religious
devotion. The fact that he does not replicate this transformation in the Knight’s
Tale indicates that he very deliberately sought to eliminate the Christian
dimension of this experience even while telling the story of a love triangle.
To further illustrate Chaucer’s
elimination of the Christian dimension of Boccaccio’s Teseida, I turn to
a scene in the Knight’s Tale that reflects not so much on the figures of
Palaemon and Arcite but rather on Theseus. This is an especially useful
illustration because it concerns a figure in the poem who is not
undergoing any “transformation” because of earthly love and, therefore, the
Christian overtones of his experience are more readily disentangled from
discourse of cupiditas. In the Teseida, Teseo, after
discovering the two young Thebans in the grove, forgives their open violation
of his terms concerning imprisonment and release, and in doing so he reflects
on his own similar experience as a young man in love:
“...però ch’io già innamorato fui
e per amor sovente folleggiai,
m’è caro molto il perdonare altrui,
perch’io perdon piu fiate acquistai,
non per mio operar, ma per colui
pietà a cui la figlia già furtai;
però sicuri di perdono state:
vincerà il fallo la mia gran pietate. (Teseida,
5.92)
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 [Tyndareus]
whose daughter [Helen] I once stole. And so you can
be certain
of my pardon. My great compassion will triumph over
your wrongdoing.”]
“A man moot ben a fool, or yong or oold;
I woot it by myself ful yore agon,
For in my tyme a servant [of love] was I oon.
And therfore, syn I knowe of loves peyne
And woot hou soore it kan a man distreyne,
As he that hath ben caught ofte in his laas,
I yow foryeve al hooly this trespaas...” (Knight’s Tale,
1811-1818)
In Book Three of the Teseida,
Boccaccio employs a prison cell, a space of suffering and deprivation, as the
first stage for reforming the Theban character. Here, Palamone and
Arcita, newly entranced by Emilia, begin redirecting their attention away from
earthy and timely things towards transcendent and timeless things, towards love,
and this starts the process of reconciliation between the Theban cousins in the
poem. The capacity of love to transcend historical contingency
offers an escape from historical reality, and these competing realities of the
internal vision of love and the external circumstances of history come to
occupy separate spheres in the poem. As Palamone and Arcita observe Emilia, the
weight and distress of their literal, historical circumstances quickly
evaporates:
Era a costor della memoria uscita
l’antica Tebe e ‘l loro alto legnaggio,
e similimente se n’era partita
la ‘nfelicità loro, e il dammaggio
ch’avevan ricevuto, e la lor vita
ch’era cattiva, e ‘l lor grande eretaggio;
e dove queste cose esser soleano
Emilia solamente vi teneano (3.36).
unhappiness and the injury they had received were also
gone; that their
life was unpleasant, and that they possessed great heritage
had faded.
Where these things used to be, they held Emilia only.]
So comprehensive is their transformation that Boccaccio does
a search-and-replace of all of their literal, material distresses with
figurative ones. For instance, Palamone exclaims “E dicoti che già sua
prigionia/m’è grave più che quella di Teseo’” (3.23) [“‘I tell you [love’s]
captivity already weighs on me more heavily than that of Theseus’”], and he
insists “‘Io mi sento di lei preso e legato,../mi veggo qui imprigionato/e
ispogliato d’ogoni mia possanza’” (3.24) [“‘I see myself seized and bound
by her....I see myself imprisoned here and stripped of all my strength’”],
when, in fact, he has been literally seized, imprisoned and stripped of all
strength as a result of recent political events. Similarly, Boccaccio tells us
that “era la piaga fresca che gli accora” (3.27) [“the wound that
pierced them was still fresh”], referring here to the wound of love. But
Palamone and Arcita are, in fact, still recovering from their literal wounds
which left them near death in the recent war. Boccaccio also tells us
that “essi più dal valoroso iddio/Cupido si stringean nelle catene”
(3.32) [“they were held the more tightly in the chains of the strong god
Cupid”] than those of Theseus. Figurative chains of love have replaced
the literal chains of their prison cell. Finally, in an attempt to mask
their new source of distress, “ma di ciò molto/davan la colpa a l’allegrezza
e ‘l gioco/ch’aver soleano, e ora eran prigioni; così coprendo le vere cagioni”
(3.34) [“they blamed their condition on the fact that they were accustomed to
joyous activity and games, whereas now they were prisoners. Thus they
concealed their real reasons”] (my emphasis). Their literal, material
distresses are no longer the “real” problem. In fact, Palamone and
Arcita no longer wish to alter their literal circumstances. Boccaccio
tells us “Né era lor troppo sommo disire/che Teseo gli traesse di priogione”
(3.37) [“it was not at all their greatest desire that Theseus should release
them from prison”] for this would mean never seeing Emilia again. Thus,
in this scene, we see how Boccaccio uses the transcendent, transformative power
of love to negate literal, historical circumstances, and up until this point
the historical circumstances governing Theban life revolve around familial
conflict.
In the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer
employs the same space of Theseus’ prison cell to reinforce the Theban
propensity for violence, and he does this largely by denying them the insights
that Boccaccio allows his heroes. Palaemon and Arcite remain fixated on
the earthly, temporal realm, and because they cannot see beyond their immediate
circumstances, they cannot transcend their historical reality. Chaucer,
unlike Boccaccio, never separates love from earthly circumstance, and never allows
material circumstances to fall away in the face of desire for Emelye. For
example, as Palaemon first spies Emelye in the garden, Arcite mistakenly
attributes Palaemon’s sighs to their situation as prisoners, and insists, “‘For
Goddes love, taak al in pacience/Oure prisoun, for it may noon oother be’”
(1084-5). When Palaemon answers Arcite that “This prison caused me nat
for to crye” (1095), he appears to distinguish his new, emotional
distress from his literal distress as a prisoner, but as he falls on his knees
in prayer (mistaking Emelye for Venus), his words concern not Emelye (love),
but rather his own material circumstances:
“Venus, if it be thy wil
Yow in this gardyn thus to transfigure
Before me, sorweful, wrecched creature,
Out of this prisoun help that we may scapen.” (ll. 1104-7)
In his highly influential study of the prison imagery in the Knight’s
Tale, V.A. Kolve has argued, compellingly, that Chaucer uses the prison
cell in metaphorical terms, first as a secular metaphor for love and then as a
metaphysical image of the world.
Indeed, Palaemon’s reference to “Venus” and to the notion of transfiguration
seem to indicate a shift in perspective towards a transcendent reality.
However, in this passage, his field of vision remains fixed on this world, on
his own misery, and the fact that he asks “Venus” to release him from prison
indicates that he has undergone no internal change in consciousness that would enable
him to release himself from his literal prison, as Boccaccio’s heroes do.
While Kolve is correct when he suggests that Chaucer wants us, the readers, to
think of the prison metaphorically, Palaemon and Arcite themselves do not think
metaphorically. Chaucer’s prison is and remains a literal prison.
Arcite, too, never loses sight of their
historical circumstances when he spies Emelye. The ensuing jealous
argument between him and Palaemon concerns not Emelye, but rather their
historical relationship to one another as “cosyn” and “brother”
(1131).
In highly legalistic terms, Palamon reminds Arcite of an earlier “ooth”
(1139). They have sworn that “Til that the deeth departe shal us
tweyne,/Neither of us in love to hyndre oother,/Ne in noon oother cas, my leeve
brother,/But that thou sholdest trewely forthren me/In every cas, as I shal
forthren thee - “ (ll. 1134-38). Arcite, in his turn, first appears
to assert the Boccaccian model of transcendent, unifying love when he says “Love
is a gretter lawe, by my pan,/Than may be yeve to any erthly man” (ll.
1165-6), but this “gretter lawe” for Arcite translates into nothing more
than greater license for lawelessness in pursuing Emelye. As he exclaims
to Palaemon, “at the Kynges court, my brother,/ Ech man for himself”
(ll. 1181-2). The means for advancement apply equally in love as in other
temporal goals. Love has altered nothing in their perception of their
present circumstances. Thus, far from offering the love experience as an
antidote (a corrective) to material circumstance, Chaucer makes the love
experience of Palaemon and Arcite simply an extension of their current
historical circumstances. Love changes nothing, and the prison cell
becomes emblematic of their psychological (as well as literal) entrapment.
Hence the very different outcomes of the
scene in the parallel prison scenes in the Teseida and the Knight’s
Tale: where Boccaccio uses the prison cell to lay the groundwork for
reconciliation between the Theban cousins, Chaucer uses it to foster further
conflict in the Theban style. In Boccaccio, Arcita and Palamone do not
become rivals immediately upon seeing Emilia; there is no quarrel between them
in the prison cell. Instead, they each suffer the pains of love silently
and simultaneously. For Boccaccio, the prison cell becomes the
locus of mutual compassion and empathy between the two Thebans, and again
religious language supplies the vocabulary: while in prison, they undergo “martiri”
[“martyrdoms”’, “pianti” [“lamentations”], “aspri tormenti”
[“harsh torments”], and “noie angosciose” [“painful anguish”], not at
the hands of one another, but “in doppio” [“twofold”] at the hands of
love (3.45). For love, they endure “vigilie” [“vigils”] and “poco
cibo” [“scant food”] together (3,34), and marvel at Emilia jointly, not
competitively. Here in the prison, we see the first signs of the mutual
affection that will eventually break the Theban curse of fraternal strife, for despite
the coming rivalry over Emilia, Boccaccio has established a history of
compassion between Palamone and Arcite that resurfaces throughout the remainder
of the narrative. Later in the narrative, once conflict has been
established, Boccaccio hearkens back to the mutual compassion exhibited in this
early prison scene as a precedent for their reconciliation.
Chaucer, on the other hand, sets a
precedent of conflict in the prison scene. The prison cell becomes the
seedbed of contention, rather than reconciliation, between Palaemon and
Arcite. Rather than being the locus for the transformation of
the Theban character, the prison cell in the Knight’s Tale becomes a
petri dish for the recultivation of the familiar violent impulses in Theban
lineage, and Emilia becomes merely the latest source of fraternal
strife. Thus the love experience that unifies the two Thebans in
the parallel scene in the Teseida, here divides them, and their
assessment of their material circumstances, along with their current manner of
relating to one another, remain unchanged in this scene because no new
revelation takes place. This makes all the difference for the rest of the
narrative, for in the Knight’sTale, as in the Teseida, Palaemon
and Arcite’s interaction in the privacy of their prison cell soon takes on
historical implications.
Chaucer, like Boccaccio, employs a grove
scene to reveal the historical consequences of what transpired in the prison
cell. Once again, Boccaccio uses a new space, the grove, as a new stage
in Theban reform while Chaucer uses the same space to reinforce the Theban
propensity for conflict. Boccaccio uses the grove twice in the Teseida
(once in Book 4 and again in Book 5), but both scenes share the common purpose
of applying Arcita’s private transformation through love to his
public/historical situation as a Theban.
Both grove scenes in the Teseida
include a speech in which Arcita reveals ambivalence about his Theban heritage,
and we see him struggle between, on the one hand, embracing his royal lineage,
and, on the other, rejecting its legacy. In the first grove scene, Arcita
speaks a monologue, which is overheard by Panfil, one of Palamone’s
servants. In the second grove scene, we have a dialogue between Arcita
and Palamone. In his monologue, Boccaccio’s hero acknowledges the
wrongdoings of his race and distinguishes his own conduct from the criminal
activities of his ancestors when he says “‘per l’altrui peccato, non per
mio,/la gioia e ‘l regno e ‘l sangue mio perio’” (4.81) [“‘because of
another’s sin, not mine, the joy, and the kingdom, and the lineage
perished’”]. He expresses his ambivalence concerning his lineage
more strongly later, in the dialogue with Palamone, where he articulates
his new awareness of Theban criminality and tries to enlighten Palamone on that
subject. In this second speech, he connects their current conflict with
all Theban conflict.
“Omè, che m’era assai maravigliosa
cosa a pensar che lunon ei lasciasse
nostra vita menare in tanta posa,
e come i nostri noi non stimolasse,
de’ quali aleum giammai a gloriosa
morte non venne, che si laudasse;
ond’io mi posso assai ramaricare,
vedendo noi a simil fin recare” (5.56).
in such tranquility and that she would not incite us as she
did our ancestors,
not one of whom ever went to a glorious death for which he
might be praised.
I can feel much regret for this, as I see that we are
arriving at the same end.”]
David Anderson has noted that Arcita’s
awareness of the Theban curse that threatens him and Palamone, and his
ambivalence about his Theban lineage, distinguishes him from all of his Theban
ancestors depicted in Statius. They, by contrast, remain blind victims of
Fortune, unable to ascertain or reverse the forces that destroy them, and
therein lies the tragedy of Theban history.
Arcita’s historical awareness, however, generated by his experience in loving
Emilia, promises to break that curse. These grove scenes, especially the
second, are pivotal for the plot of the Teseida as the first
articulations of this insight into the Theban historical pattern, for, above
all, we see Boccaccio’s hero acknowledging his Theban lineage by way of separating
and liberating himself from it. This, in turn, foreshadows
the conciliatory outcome of this conflict compared to the violent outcomes of
previous Theban conflicts.
Chaucer, however, uses the grove scene to
articulate the persistence of, rather than a departure from, Theban
criminality. He compresses Boccaccio’s two grove scenes into one,
retaining the occurrence of a monologue (overheard this time by Palaemon
himself) followed by a dialogue, but he radically alters the effect of
Arcite’s two speeches, stripping them of their power to change the course of
Theban history. The change pivots on Arcite’s very different attitude
towards his own Theban lineage. Chaucer’s Arcita, like Boccaccio’s hero,
claims his royal birth in the monologue, and laments his decline in fortune
from lord to servant. But he expresses no ambivalence about that lineage.
Quite the contrary, he embraces his “‘stok roial’” (1551), and laments
not simply his own humiliation but that of his entire race:
“Allas, ybroght is to confusioun
The blood roial of Cadme and Amphioun
--
Of Cadmus, which that was the firste man
That Thebes bulte, or first the toun bigan,
Of his lynage am I and his ofspryng
By verray ligne, as of the stok roial,
And now I am so caytyf and so thral,
That he that is my mortal enemy,
I serve hym as his squier povrely.” (ll. 1545-54)
For this reason, the ensuing dialogue
between Arcite and Palaemon (who has been eavesdropping the entire time) loses
the redemptive quality of its corresponding speech in the Teseida.
In the Italian source, Arcite responds to Palamone’s hostility with a cogent
argument for reconciliation: Palamone’s killing him will accomplish
nothing since Palamone will only have to return to prison, and thus lose
Emilia; Theseus would never give Emilia to either of them, lowly as they are
now; and, besides, why should they kill one another over something beyond their
reach? He urges Palamone to follow a wiser course than their ancestors
who “‘ver lor furon tanto nocenti,/che sanza riguardar fraterno amore/fra
lor s’uccisero’” (5.57) [“‘harbored such mutual hatred that they killed one
another without regard for brotherly love’”]. Although they resolve to
fight anyway, Arcita does so only reluctantly.
Whereas Arcita’s speech in the Teseida
marks a departure from the Theban pattern of fratricide, Arcite’s corresponding
speech in the Knight’s Tale proliferates and reinforces that destructive
pattern. Arcite responds to Palaemon’s hostility with more of the
same. Lacking any insight into Theban history, Arcite and Palaemon become
its latest recapitulators, only in their case love has replaced territory as
the source of strife. Chaucer aligns political rivalry with romantic
rivalry towards the end of the grove scene:
O Cupide, out of alle charitee!
O regne, that wolt no felawe have with thee!
Ful sooth is seyd that love ne lordshipe
Wol noght, his thankes, have no felaweshipe. (ll. 1623-6)
Love hath his firy dart so brennyngly
Ystiked thurgh my trewe, careful herte
That shapen was my deeth erst than my sherte” (ll. 1564-6)
Arcite’s death from love was destined for him before birth,
just like the fates of all his Theban ancestors. Rather than offering an
escape from fate, love becomes simply another manifestation of it. Love
has changed nothing for Chaucer’s Theban heroes, which leads Robert Haller to
define the Knight’s Tale as “Chaucer’s translation of the traditional
rivalry over a throne to a rivalry over love.” The
source of the rivalry matters little for Chaucer.
Upon close analysis of these two scenes
(the prison cell scene and the grove scene) that Chaucer borrowed from
Boccaccio, it becomes clear that Chaucer approaches Boccaccio’s Teseida
as more than simply a convenient repository for raw narrative material, as
Pratt and Davenport would have us believe, and more than just a lens for
viewing Statius’ Thebaid, as Anderson suggests. I argue that
Chaucer read the Teseida and paused to consider the implications of what
Boccaccio had done to Theban history by reforming the Theban character.
Boccaccio, he saw, wished to imagine a transformation of the cycle of Theban
internecine violence rather than to study that violence as a historical and
psychological phenomenon, as Chaucer himself did. However, in curing the
Theban propensity for violence, Boccaccio had effectively ended Theban history
as a cycle of destruction by eradicating its underlying predisposition towards
conflict. His sequel to Statius’ Thebaid had eliminated the
possibility for any further adaptations of Theban material by eliminating
Thebanness as an impetus for generating narrative. If Chaucer wished to
compose his own treatment of Theban themes, as clearly he did, he had to
reverse Boccaccio’s alteration of the Theban mind. Hence he uses
Boccaccio’s own narrative apparatus for reform in order to deny even the
possibility of reform for the Theban race.
Thus Chaucer depicts Palaemon and Arcite
as perpetrators, not victims, of Theban history. The Knight’s Tale
elucidates the continuation of that history, not the transformation of
it, and Chaucer accomplishes this largely by removing their victim
status. To be sure, we see them dug out of a heap of bodies at the
beginning of the tale, but from that point on they do little to evoke sympathy:
in their prison cell, they exhibit the attitude of mercenaries, not
compatriots; in their private laments, they express jealousy at what the other
is (or might be) doing; they pray to repulsive gods; they help one another “As
freendly as he were his owene brother” (1652) only as they prepare to kill
one another in the grove; we see no evidence of negotiation, as we do in
Boccaccio, even during their one-year residence together in Thebes.
Therein lies the heart of Chaucer’s response to Boccaccio’s Teseida: for
Chaucer, nature proves superior to nurture as a shaper of the Theban character
and of Theban history. As Thebans, Palaemon and Arcite are destined to
repeat the crimes of their ancestors regardless of a new environment and
regardless of exposure to new influences.
Many critics have argued that Chaucer does
introduce a spirit of reconciliation between his Theban heroes, and they cite
Arcite’s deathbed speech as evidence. They argue
that Arcite does, in fact, learn modesty and compassion through loving Emelye
and that when he recommends Palaemon as his worthy replacement as her spouse,
he expresses genuine consilience. Again, however, if we read Arcite’s
funeral speech against its Italian source what becomes most striking is the
lack of change in heart. In the Teseida, Arcita’s final words in
which he reflects on love’s influence over him indicate that he has long since
moved beyond his early fixation on Emilia as love object. In the passage
from Book 10 quoted earlier in the chapter (10.23ff.), he speaks of how love
taught him humility, compassion, purity of faith and obedience. He does
not refer to his feelings for Emilia so much as his new general disposition
towards Creation. The same speech in the Knight’s Tale, however,
reveals that Arcite’s thinking has remained centered on Emelye alone:
“Naught may the woful spirit in myn herte
Declare o point of alle my sorwes smerte
To yow, my lady, that I love moost,
But I biquethe the servyce of my goost
To yow aboven every creature,
Syn that my lyf may no lenger dure.
Allas, the wo! Allas, the peynes stronge,
That I for yow have suffred, and so longe!
Allas, the deeth! Allas, myn Emelye!
Allas, departynge of oure compaignye!
Allas, myn hertes queene! Allas, my wyf,
Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf!
What is this world? What asketh men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave
Allone, withouten any compaignye.
Fare wel, my sweete foo, myn Emelye!” (2765-80)
Of course there is the question of
Arcite’s attitude toward Palaemon in this final hour. Immediately after
these words of devotion to Emelye, Arcite recommends Palaemon as his
replacement as Emelye’s spouse.
Again, critics are justified in hearing sounds of reconciliation between the
Theban cousins in these words. Arcite expresses respect and admiration
for his former enemy. However, upon comparison with Arcita’s funeral
speech in the Teseida, several details in Arcite’s speech diminish its
persuasiveness as an expression of genuine growth.
First, unlike in Boccaccio’s poem, there
is no evolution of sentiment building up to this speech; Boccaccio begins the process
of reconciliation between the Theban cousins as early as Book Three in the
prison cell, then pursues the process of reconciliation in the grove scenes
where Arcita negotiates with Palamone to seek an alternative to armed
conflict. Throughout the episodes where the two armies consolidate in
Books Six and Seven, and through the battle of Book Eight, we know that Arcita
participates in this war with great reluctance, because Palamone refused to
resolve their differences any other way. In the Knight’s Tale, by
contrast, Arcite only expresses a favorable disposition to Palaemon for the
first time on his deathbed. It is true that earlier in the grove scene
the two cousins assist one another in arming, which might be interpreted as a
precedent for reconciliation, but they cooperate with one another in this scene
only as they prepare to kill one another. Chaucer includes nothing in his
grove scene comparable to Boccaccio’s endearing depiction of Palamone happening
upon the sleeping Arcite and addressing him as “bello amico molto da lodare”
(5.36) [“beautiful and praiseworthy friend”].
Secondly, Palaemon simply has not earned
the praise Arcite bestows upon him. Arcite speaks of Palaemon’s “trouthe,
honour, knyghthede,/wysdom, humblesse, estaat, and heigh kynrede,”
(2789-90), but neither Palaemon nor he himself have exhibited such virtues in
the course of the poem. Nor has Palaemon earned the title “worthy to
be loved” or “gentil man” (2794 and 2797). For this reason,
Arcite’s words do not fit organically into the drama of the poem, and seem to
owe more to the demands of public occasion than to any change of consciousness
that we have witnessed.
Thirdly, Chaucer, unlike Boccaccio, never
has Arcite address Palaemon directly in his final hour. In the Teseida,
Arcita addresses first Theseus, to whom he recommends Palamone (10.17ff.), and
then Palamone himself (10.38-47). He does not address Emilia herself,
though he reiterates his love for her to Theseus and Palamone. For
Boccaccio’s two heroes, their final conversation becomes an important locus
for their reconciliation as Arcita releases the object of their contention to
Palamone, while Palamone attempts to return her, saying “tu l’acquistasti e
tu per tua l’avrai” (10.49) [“you won her and you shall have her for your
own”]. Chaucer’s Arcite, however, speaks in the presence of Emelye and
Palaemon jointly, but the “yow” of the speech is Emelye, never Palaemon.
Thus Chaucer omits an important opportunity to reconcile his Theban heroes
concretely.
Perhaps the most conspicuous clue to the
persistence of Theban strife in the Knight’s Tale is the continuing
presence of the city of Thebes itself in the narrative. Despite the
recent war, which by all previous accounts has destroyed the city, Thebes still
stands as a functioning city in the Knight’s Tale. This
constitutes one of Chaucer’s most important responses to the Theban tradition
in general and to Boccaccio in particular. According to that tradition,
the city of Thebes is destroyed in the final outcome of the war. For
medieval accounts, in particular, the image of the destroyed city of Thebes
became linked symbolically with that of Troy as yet another example of an
earthly civilization come to ruin. Both the OF poet and Boccaccio clearly
indicate the destruction of Thebes at the end of the Theban war. The
buildings are razed and the population either killed or dispersed, so the end
of the Theban war means the end of Thebes itself.
It is possible that a copy of the Middle
French prose redaction of the Roman de Thèbes, which had been available
since the thirteenth century, provided Chaucer with a source for the
preservation of the city of Thebes after the conclusion of the war. A
total of four separate versions of the prose Thèbes have been identified,
but according to Léopold Constans, all of the versions of the prose Thèbes,
including the most abbreviated ones, report the rebuilding of the city of
Thebes at the end of the Theban war under the new name “Estives”. We
cannot be certain whether Chaucer had used a prose redaction of the Thèbes as
a basis for preserving Thebes after the war. After all, he does not
depict the Theban citizens rebuilding the city, nor does he change the name of
Thebes to “Estives” or any similar name.
It is clear, however, that in the Knight’s
Tale Thebes continues to function as an inhabited city despite the recent
war there. This causes some confusion in the tale, since the state of the
city seems to shift throughout the narrative. In part one of the tale, we
see Theseus’ siege of Thebes and its effects: “And by assaut he was the
citee after,/And rente adoun bothe wall and sparre and rafter”
(989-90). Theseus tears down both the stone walls and the wooden
structures within the city. Later, Palaemon speaks of “‘Thebes with
his waste walles wyde’” (1331), restating the familiar image of the city
with its walls destroyed. However, we soon see Arcite returning to Thebes
upon his exile from Athens. In Boccaccio, of course, Arcita returns to
Thebes, but only to find it reduced to rubble. Here in the Knight’s
Tale, however, Arcite stays “a yeer or two.../At Thebes, in his contree,
as I seyde” (1381-3), a fact that the narrator seems to emphasize in these
lines. Still in prison in Athens, Palaemon speculates that Arcite “walkest
now in Thebes at thy large” (1283) and that he may now “Assemblen alle
the folk of our kynrede” (1286) and make war on Athens, implying that the
citizenry have survived. Upon his escape from prison, Palaemon ventures “Thebes-ward,
his freendes for to preye/On Theseus to helpe him to werreye” (1483-4),
doing precisely what he accused Arcite of plotting. Furthermore, in the
grove scene, Arcite laments to Juno “‘How longe...thurgh thy crueltee/Woltow
werreyen Thebes the citee?’” (1543-4), and though he appears to mean “the
Theban race” (given his catalog of Theban figures), he says “‘Thebes the
citee,’” implying that the city remains standing. Additionally,
following Theseus’ command to reconvene at the end of the year, Palaemon and
Arcite both return “To Thebes with his olde, legendary walles wyde”
(1880), referring to the ancient walls that Amphion built with the power of his
music, in this case still intact.
Perhaps the most striking example of the
persistence of Thebes as both a city and a race comes at the end of the tale,
where Theseus orders the marriage of Palaemon and Emelye in order to secure the
“obeisaunce” of the Thebans (2974) (whom Palaemon now
rules). By this new arrangement, Thebes now becomes a vassal state
of Athens. Thus Chaucer depicts Thebes as a functioning city, inhabited
by Thebans, although by all accounts the city and its inhabitants should have
been eradicated by now. In a bold departure from the Theban tradition, Chaucer
maintains the city of Thebes both architecturally and politically well beyond
the end of the Theban war.
For the most part, critics have completely
side-stepped the survival of the city of Thebes in the Knight’s Tale.
Paul Clogan, in his article on the subject of Thebes in the Knight’s Tale,
ignores this fact entirely.
Derek Pearsall explains that Thebes in the Knight’s Tale has become less
of a historical locale than a symbolic place of exile. But
in classical and medieval tradition, Thebes is not a place of exile so much as
a place from which one is exiled (e.g. Polynices leaves Thebes for
Argos). Even in Boccaccio, Arcite spends his exile at the courts of other
Greek leaders, not in Thebes itself. Only in Chaucer does Thebes become a
place of exile, and only in Chaucer does it remain standing. Chaucer, it
would seem, does not eliminate Theban influence once and for all. Robert
Haller suggests that the closing alliance between Athens and Thebes represents
a final “re-establishment of the Theban house in such a manner that its past
mistakes will not be repeated.” Haller argues that Palaemon, having overcome
the destructive effects of love and strife, will “rule in a manner quite
different from his ancestors.”
Chaucer, he asserts, subdues the destructive Theban impulse once and for
all. However, given that Chaucer, in fact, refuses to subdue the Theban
impulse towards civil violence in his two Theban heroes, it seems implausible
that an alliance between Athens and Thebes would prove sufficient to ensure
Theban compliance.
Instead, Chaucer preserves the physical
city of Thebes and, more importantly, its race, in an attempt to resuscitate
Thebanness in the wake of Boccaccio’s Teseida. Boccaccio had
redeemed the Theban character by severing Palamone and Arcita from their Theban
ancestry, experientially, geographically and politically. For Boccaccio,
Thebes and Thebans have been effectively destroyed, and Palamone, the last
remaining Theban, recognizes and repents the errors of his ancestry (not to mention
the fact that, as the only surviving Theban, there is no chance of him
committing fratricide, parricide or incest). Palamone becomes assimilated
into Athenian society, quite removed from his place and people of origin.
Chaucer, however, preserves the power center of Theban influence (the city
itself) and its perpetrators, and he makes his hero, Palaemon, its lord and
representative. Moreover, as David Anderson demonstrates, Chaucer’s
designation of Palaemon as “a kynges brother sone” (3084) makes
him a direct descendent of Polynices, son of Oedipus and brother of Eteocles,
and who, according to Lactantius’ commentary on the Thebaid, had an
incestuous affair with his sister, Antigone. Like
his father before him, therefore, Palaemon has incestuous origins.
Interestingly, Chaucer mentions this hallmark of Theban identity as Theseus
arranges the alliance between Thebes and Athens, at the very end of the
tale. Thus the conclusion of Chaucer’s Theban narrative leaves the
infrastructure of Theban influence, from its home-base to its leader, well in
place.
What does Chaucer’s revision of
Boccaccio’s Theban experiment accomplish then? First, it keeps Thebanness
alive as a narrative subject matter. As the most recent work in Chaucer’s
day to treat Theban material, Boccaccio’s Teseida had threatened to
nullify Thebes as a theme for narrative by destroying the city of Thebes as a
geographic and political power and by altering the last of the Thebans beyond
recognition. In its handling of Theban history, the Teseida tries
to suggest that given the right conditions Thebans, too, can lead normal,
productive lives and not be held hostage any longer by corrupt ancestry.
After the Teseida, subsequent narratives exploring Theban criminality
would appear redundant. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale rescues Thebanness
from potential obscurity by undoing the results of Boccaccio’s
experiment.
Secondly, Chaucer’s appropriation of
Boccaccio’s characters and story line, despite his rejection of Boccaccio’s
larger historical-literary project, enables him to explore the intimate
workings of the Theban mind separate from the events of Theban history
itself. The Teseida had forged neutral ground for the Theban
character to take a new direction. Then it designated that direction and
choreographed the journey. The new non-Theban setting freed Boccaccio
from having to contend with any on-going Theban influence over his heroes that
might sabotage his reform efforts. Chaucer uses that same neutral ground
to explore how the unreformed Theban mind might operate once out of its
familiar climate. Unlike Boccaccio, there is nothing interventionist in
Chaucer’s approach to Theban history; he allows us to observe the evolution of
a Theban-style conflict from conception to maturity in the same way that we
might observe wild animals living and breeding in captivity. The
instincts which enable them to survive in the wild continue to shape their
behavior even in an unfamiliar environment where those instincts no longer
serve useful purposes. Likewise, Arcite and Palaemon instinctively turn
to conflict even once they are removed from their native conflict-ridden
Thebes.
I do not wish to suggest that Chaucer
objected to Boccaccio’s intervention of Christian experience into pagan culture
generally. After all, in Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer imitates
Boccaccio’s blending of Christian and pagan as Troilus undergoes a conversion
experience, as a result of falling in love, similar to that of Boccaccio’s
heroes. Thus, Chaucer was clearly interested in reproducing Boccaccio’s
experiment with the pagan mind. However, Chaucer does reject Boccaccio’s
transformation of the Theban character in particular. Or, at very least,
he wanted to experiment with several different treatments of the classical
past, one which is stripped of Christian revelation, as in the Knight’s Tale,
and one which blends the themes of historical epic and Christian romance,
as in the Troilus.
Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale
constitutes, among other things, a study of the human underpinnings of a very
particular chapter in ancient history. I emphasize “particular” because
global readings of the tale, of which there are many, tend to either minimize
or generalize its Theban context. The tale becomes, for example, a study
of pagan antiquity, or an exploration of the “human condition,” or a
mirror for princes in which Theseus becomes a model ruler. To
be sure, the Knight’s Tale is all of these things and more, but it does
these things in more specific terms than such discussions suggest. To say
that the tale explores “pagan antiquity” implies that Chaucer and his audience
conceived of the classical past as a monolithic, undifferentiated chunk of
time. In fact, the stories of ancient history came down to medieval
readers, as they do to us, in chapters, of which Theban history forms a
distinct unit. Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale treats the specific concerns
of that chapter in ancient history. Likewise, the “human condition” it
explores is a uniquely Theban form of misery rooted in distorted family
relations, in which the sufferer is also the author of his own misery, unable
to apprehend, let alone alter, his contribution to his own demise. Of
course, Chaucer may, indeed, use Theban misery as a metaphor for all humanity,
but the “condition” he explores in the Knight’s Tale is, first and
foremost, the Theban condition. Finally, while Theseus may exhibit certain
characteristics of the model ruler, we observe his performance as a ruler
specifically as it relates to his need to resolve a conflict between two men
from a historically ungovernable race. A full understanding of the Knight’s
Tale, therefore, must begin with at least some consideration of its
Theban context. Chaucer’s audience would no more have overlooked the
Theban cultural connection of the Knight’s Tale than a contemporary
audience would overlook the mafia connection of The Godfather.
We see from Chaucer’s handling of Theban
material, both in the Anelida and in the Knight’s Tale, that he
wanted to engage the entire tradition of Theban narratives, from Statius to
Boccaccio. Comparing the Anelida and the Knight’s Tale, we
see that Chaucer shifted some emphases in his second treatment of Theban
material. In the Anelida, he borrowed the eastern political
landscape and military dichotomy of Greeks vs. Thebans from the OF Roman de
Thèbes. He also represents his Theban, Arcite, as “fals” and
sexually fickle in keeping with the OF poet’s portrait of Thebans as
duplicitous and often lustful infidels, and invents a fictional character,
Anelida, who comes from one of Thebes’ eastern allies. While borrowing as
well from the Teseida and the Thebaid, Chaucer seems to have
intended to set the Anelida in the terrain and ethos of the OF
poem. He changed his mind in the Knight’s Tale. There he
relies more heavily on Boccaccio’s Teseida for setting and
character. At the same time, he recuperates much of the pagan flavor of
Statius’ Thebaid as well as the unrelenting nature of the conflict
between Eteocles and Polynices. Except for a few scattered phrases and
details, he draws much less from the Thèbes here.
Despite the shifts in strategy between the
Anelida and the Knight’s Tale, Chaucer exhibits in both a desire
to return to Thebes. First, in the Anelida, Chaucer takes us back
into the city of Thebes in the final stages of the war, and although the poem
seems to use Boccaccio’s starting point in the Teseida, with Theseus’
returning from Scythia, Chaucer turns away from Theseus and brings us into the
city of Thebes within this same time frame. Boccaccio does not cover
events within Thebes during this period or any other. Then, in the Knight’s
Tale, Chaucer returns to Thebes both geographically and imaginatively: he
retains Thebes as a center of power and influence, allowing his Theban heroes
brief sojourns there, and he restores “Thebanness” to his Theban heroes, his
most sweeping revision to Boccaccio’s Teseida. We see his interest
in the story of Thebes as an distinct chapter in ancient history in his
excision of all Trojan elements in his adaptation of the Teseida; he
separates Theban and Trojan history, resisting the tendency of his medieval
predecessors to read Thebes through the lens of Troy, a lens which defuses the
characteristic futility and incomparable destructiveness of Theban
history. Chaucer liberates the ethos of Thebanness from its
Trojan entanglements, from its crusading trappings in the OF Thèbes, and
from the aims of medieval Christianity in both texts. He isolates it as a
historical phenomenon and dwells in it.
At the same time that Chaucer looks back
at Theban history, through the various medieval overlays, and into its pagan
past, he also carries Theban influence into the future by resurrecting Thebes,
Thebans and Thebanness from the grave of Boccaccio’s Teseida. In
this sense, his two Theban narratives, and the Knight’s Tale in
particular, mark an important shift in the medieval Theban tradition. We
will never know if Chaucer had planned to depict the destruction of Thebes by
Theseus’ army in the Anelida, but in the Knight’s Tale, Thebes
survives Theseus’ attack in the last phase of the Theban war. It prevails
as a seat of power, under the rulership of Palaemon, a direct descendent of
Polynices, who has, in effect, now accomplished Polynices’ mission of
recapturing Thebes. Chaucer’s fascination with Thebes, its development
and influence, continued beyond the Knight’s Tale, however, for it
resurfaces again in another of his classicizing works: Troilus and
Criseyde.
“Ja plus terre ne me sostienge, Je ja mais par femme ne vienge Si grant damage com par mei! Tant riche duc e tant bon rei E tant riche amiraut preisié En sont ocis e detrenchié! Lasse! A quel hore fui jo nee, Ne por quei oi tel destinee Que il monz fust par mei destruit?”
(22855-64) Helen’s speech here extends for much longer than
Emilia’s. See Le Roman de Troie, ed. Léopold Constans, 6 vols.
(Paris: Librairie de Firmin-Didot, 1907), vol. 3. Guido omits this
lament in his adaptation of Benoît’s Troie, but Boccaccio may well have
had access to the Troie itself.
“en perfecta mei promissa coniugis arte munera. ne mox aut Laurentis, nate,
superbos, aut acrem dubites in proelia poscere
Turnum.” (8.612-14) [“Here are the gifts I promised, Forged to perfection by my husband’s
craft, So that you need not hesitate to
challenge Arrogant Laurentines or savage Turnus, However soon, in battle.”] R.A.B. Mynors, ed., P. Vergili Maronis Opera
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald
(New York: Vintage Books, 1981). In both scenes, the armor is the work of
Vulcan and is bestowed on the hero by a female figure as a gift (i.e. not
actually placed on the hero, but granted to him). Both women indicate
that the armor can be used with confidence (without qualm or hesitation).