Charles
Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition, pp. 175-190
Manly goes
to some pains to explain the existence of rhetoric in several of Chaucer's best
works, and concludes that Chaucer "came more and more to make only a
dramatic use of these rhetorical elements, that is, to put them into the mouths
of his dramatis personae and to use only such as might fittingly be uttered by
them." Fitting are scenes in which "the rhetoric is dramatic, is
conformed to the character, and is motivated."
"The
contention that Chaucer gradually abandoned rhetoric is statistically
questionable." More questionable yet is the assumption that rhetoric is
automatically bad. It takes only a little reflection to see that the use of
forms which the critic can describe as rhetorical is one of the principal
characteristics of poetry. The critical problem in Chaucer is not the ac
hunting for the presence of rhetorical (i.e., poetic) forms, but the
determination of whether they perform as integral parts of the poem. The fact
that Chaucer knew the rhetoric books and used their forms in the manner
prescribed has little to do with whether the forms so used have poetic value.
The common medieval teaching on poetry, it is true, calls merely for an
expression in metrical form, ornamented with stylistic devices.' But whatever
the state of theory in his time, Chaucer man-aged to produce a quantity of
poetry which far exceeds this simple prescription. Nor is this poetry always
dramatic, that is, naturalistic and psychological. The tendency of the
post-Victorian critic to submerge the problem of Chaucer's rhetoric within a
concept of art as naturalism falsifies the nature of both rhetoricand Chaucer.
The function of Chaucer's rhetoric is nowhere more demonstrable than in his
most conventional poetry.
i. The
Knight's Tale
A reasonable
sympathy with conventionalism requires our understanding that the experience of
the idealizing imagination is no less varied than that of realistic
observation, and no less true. If the themes of most of Chaucer's conventional
poems seem to converge toward the single point of recognizing supernal values
in human affairs, the nature of the pointing differs with each poem. We do not
read Chaucer, after all, for his philosophical conclusions, but for his
workings-out, his poetry. Similarly, if tradition seems to codify Chaucer's
poetry according to a fixed number of general forms in a defined area of style,
the particular structure and local style of each poem are unique.
Chaucer's
conventionalism should neither be dismissed nor taken for granted. The
criticism of the Knight's Tale has long suffered from both of these
errors."' The trouble has been in the kinds of assumptions brought to the
poem, in an attention to its poor dramatics rather than its rich symbolism, to its
surface rather than its structure. The poem is nominally a romance, adapted
from Boccaccio's Teseida. The plot concerns the rivalry of Palamon and Arcite,
Theban knights, who while they are imprisoned by Duke Theseus fall in love with
his fair kinswoman, Emilye. Arcite is released from prison and Palamon escapes;
they finally fight for Emilye's hand in a tournament. Arcite wins, but at the
moment of victory, in a supernaturally inspired accident, he is thrown from his
horse and thereafter dies. After a period of mourning, Palamon marries Emilye.
This plot has been taken to be the poem's main feature; but unless we wish to
attribute to Chaucer an unlikely lapse of skill or taste, it will not sustain
very close scrutiny. The "characterization" of Palamon and Arcite has
been widely invoked as a key to the poem. In one view the two knights have
quasi-allegorical status, representing the Active Life versus the Contemplative
Life. But there is little agreement upon which knight is actually the more
contemplative" or the more admirable: if Palamon, the ending is poetic
justice; if Arcite, it is irony." The existence of any significant
characterization in the poem has been seriously questioned:
In the
Teseide there is one hero, Arcita, who loves and is eventually loved by Emilia,
a young woman characterized by a natural coquetry, an admiration for a
good-looking young knight, and love and sympathy for the wounded hero. Palemone
is a secondary figure, necessary to the plot because he brings about the death
of Arcita. 176 177
The story is a tragedy, caused by the mistake of Arcita in praying
to Mars rather than to Venus. In Chaucer's story there are two heroes, who are
practically indistinguishable from each other, and a heroine, who is merely a
name. In the Italian poem it is possible to feel the interest in hero and
heroine which is necessary if one is to be moved by a story. . . . In Chaucer's
version, on the other hand, .. it is hard to believe that anyone can sympathize
with either hero or care which one wins Emelye.
In this
approach the lack of characterization is the story's greatest weakness; what
remains is merely an elaborate and now archaic game:
Chaucer saw in the Teseide a plot which, with some alterations,
could be used effectively to present one of those problems of love which the
votaries of courtly love enjoyed considering . . . which of two young men, of
equal worth and with almost equal claims, shall (or should) win the lady?
Stated in such simple terms, the problem may seem foolish, but to readers who
could be interested in such questions of love . . . this problem would be no
doubt poignant. . . . Obviously in so far as the ideas of courtly love have
passed into oblivion since the middle ages, narratives in which they are basic
cannot appeal to modern taste."
Long ago,
Root suggested the possibility that the poem was not written under the
assumptions of naturalism:
If we are to read the Knight's Tale in the spirit in which Chaucer
conceived it, we must give ourselves up to the spirit of romance; we must not
look for subtle characterization, nor for strict probability of action; we must
delight in the fair shows of things, and not ask too many questions. Chaucer
can be realistic enough when he so elects; but here he has chosen otherwise....
It is not in the characterization, but in the description, that the greatness
of the Knight's Tale re-sides. . . . (It] is preeminently a web of splendidly
pictured tapestry, in which the eye may take delight, and on which the memory
may fondly linger."
Root's conclusion
shares in the general critical distrust of the poem; while recognizing its
texture he depreciates its meaning, as if these rich materials could not at the
same time be the carefully chosen, well-ordered machinery of serious poetry.
Generations of readers have made this the most perennially valued of the Tales.
But neither Root's nor the naturalistic interpretations begin to suggest the
depth and complexity which one would expect to find in a work with such a
reputation. Now although it is not always necessary to proceed inductively from
style to reach a satisfactory interpretation of a poem, the method is sometimes
useful in making clear certain assumptions with which the poem should be
approached. In the Knight's Tale, furthermore, form and style are so functional
that they point directly to the meaning.
The pace of
the story is deliberately slow and majestic. Random references to generous
periods of time make it chronologically slow. Though Chaucer omits a great deal
of the tale originally told by Boccaccio in the Teseida, he frequently
resorts to the rhetorical device of occupatio to summarize in detail
events or descriptions in such a way as to shorten the story without lessening
its weight and impressiveness. Further, there is an extraordinary amount of
rhetorical descriptio in the poem, all of which slows the narrative. The
description of the lists is very detailed, and placed so as to give the
impression that we are present at their construction, an operation that appears
to consume the full fifty weeks that Theseus allows for it. The narrator's
repetitious "saugh I," and his closing remark, "Now been thise
lystes maad" (2089), cooperate to this effect.
We can
hardly fail to note, too, that a great deal of this descriptive material has a
richness of detail far in excess of the demands of the story. At first glance,
at least, many passages appear to be irrelevant and detachable. For example, we
have sixty-one lines of description of Emetrius and Lygurge; yet so far as the
action of the poem is concerned, these two worthies do practically nothing.
Like the
descriptions and narrator's comments, the direct discourse in the Tale
contributes to its slowness. There is virtually no rapid dialogue. Speeches of
twenty-five or thirty verses are normal, and one, the final oration of Theseus,
takes more than a hundred. More than length, however, the nondynamic quality of
the speeches is characteristic of the whole poem's style. Many of them have
only a nominal value as action or as the instruments to action. Formal,
rhetorical structure, and a function comparatively unrelated to the practical
necessities of the dramatic situation are the rule. This is true even where the
speech is addressed to another character. For instance, when old Saturn is
badgered by his granddaughter Venus to aid her in her conflict with Mars, he
replies as follows:
"My deere doghter Venus," quod Satume, [2453]
"My cours, that hath so wyde for to turn,
Hath moore power than woot any man.
Myn is the drenchyng in the see so wan;
Myn is the prison in the derke cote;
Myn is the stranglyng and hangyng by the throte,
The murmure and the cherles rebellyng,
The groynynge, and the pryvee empoysonyng;
I do vengeance and pleyn correccioun,
Whil I dwelle in the signe of the leoun.
Myn is the ruyne of the hye halles,
The fallynge of the coures and of the walles
Upon the mynour or the carpenter.
I slow Sampsoun, shakynge the piler;
And myne be the maladyes colde,
The derke tresons, and the castes tilde;
My lookyng is the fader of pestilence.
Now weep nalnoore ..."
And finally,
the rest of the speech, a mere eight verses, is devoted to promising Venus his
aid. We can safely assume that Venus knows all about her grand-father. The
long, self-descriptive introduction, therefore, must have some function other
than the dramatic.
Going on now
to the nature of the action, we find that while the chivalric aspects of the
scene are described with minute particularity, there is very little in the
Knight's Tale of the intimate and distinctive details of look, attitude, and
gesture that mark some of Chaucer's more naturalistic poems. It is replete with
conventional stage business. There are swoons and cries, fallings on knees, and
sudden palenesses; there is a symphony of howls, wails, and lamentations.
When we look
at the form in which these materials are organized, we find symmetry to he its
most prominent feature. The unity of the poem is based on an unusually regular
ordering of elements. The character grouping is symmetrical. There are two
knights, Palamon and Arcite, in love with the same woman, Emilye. Above the
three and in a position to sit in judgment, is the Duke Theseus, who throughout
the poem is the center of authority and the balance between the opposing
interests of the knights. In the realm of the super-natural, each of the
knights and the lady has a patron deity: Venus, Mars, and Diana. The conflict
between Venus and Mars is resolved by the elder Saturn, with no partiality
toward either. In the tournament each knight is accompanied by one hundred
followers headed by a particularly notable king, on one side Lygurge, on the
other Emetrius:
In al the world, to seken up and doun, [2587]
So evene, withouten
variacioun,
Ther nere swiche compaignyes tweye;
For ther was noon so wys that koude seye
That any hadde of oother avauntage
Of worthynesse, ne of estaat, ne age,
So evene were they chosen, for to gesse.
And in two renges faire they hem dresse.
This
arrangement of the two companies in two renges is one of many details of
symmetry of scene and action in the poem. At the very beginning we find a
uniformly clad company "of ladyes, tweye and cweye, / Ech after
oother" (When Palamon and Arcite are found in the heap of bodies at
Thebes, they are "liggynge by and by, / Bothe in oon armes" (ton). We
find that they are cousins, "of sustren two yborn" (1019).
In the scene
following the discovery of Emilye, each offers a lyric on the subject (1104
if., m8 ff.). When Arcite is released from prison, each delivers a complaint in
which even the vocabulary and theme are symmetrical:
"0 deere cosyn Palamon," quod he,
"Thyn is the victorie of this aventure."
"Allas," quod he, "Arcita, cosyn myn,
Of al oure strif, God woot, the fruyt is thyn."
In the
second part, the narrator divides his attention between them, in alternate
descriptions; and in the fight subsequent to their meeting they are evenly
matched:
Thou myghtest wene that this Palamon [1655]
In his fightyng were a wood Leon,
And as a crueel tigre was Arcite .. .
Theseus
appears, "And at a stert he was bitwix hem two" (1705). He sets the
conditions of the tournament in round numbers: " `And this day fifty
wykes, fer ne ner, / Everich of you shal brynge an hundred knyghtes ...' "
(1850-51). In the third part the narrator describes the making of lists, in the
same place as where the first fight occurs. The lists are circular in shape, a
mile in circumference. They are entered from east and west by identical marble
gates. The altars or temples of Mars and Venus are situated above these gates.
Northward (and equidistant from the other two, no doubt) is the oratorie
of Diana. The three temples are described in succession, and each description
is subdivided in the same way: first the wall-painting with its allegorical
figures, and then the statue of the deity itself.
179
)
LI)
The symmetry
of description continues with parallel accounts of the two rival companies,
each containing a portrait of the leading king. (2117-89). Then follow the
prayers of the principals: Palamon to Venus, Emilye to Diana, Arcite to Mars.
The prayers are made in careful order at the hours dedicated by astrology to
those deities," and each prayer is answered by some supernatural event.
Internally, too, the three prayers show a striking similarity of design, each
beginning with rhetorical pronominatio and continuing with a reference
to the deity's relations with the opposite sex, a self-description by the
speaker, a humble assertion of incompetence, a request for assistance, and a
promise to worship. The spectators enter the lists and are seated in order of
rank. The combatants, Palamon and Arcite, with banners white and red
respectively, enter the field through the gates of Venus and Mars.
After
Arcite's death, his sepulcher is described. It is erected "ther as first
Arcite and Palamoun f Hadden for love the bataille hem bitwene"
(2858-.59). This is also where the lists were built.' The funeral procession,
like the procession to the lists, is characterized by precise order, and the
details of the funeral are full of the same kind of ordering:
. the Grekes, with an huge route, {2951]
Thries riden al the fyr abouce
Upon the left hand, with a loud shoutynge,
And thries with hir speres claterynge;
And thries how the ladyes gonne crye .. .
Further
elements in the poem's symmetry of structure and scene could readily be brought
forward.
Chaucer's
modifications of the Teseida seem to have been made precisely in the interest
of the kind of organization I am describing. By selection and addition he
produced a poem much more symmetrical than its source. Chaucer even regularizes
the times and places of the incidents in Boccaccio. He adds the character
Emetrius, the parallel descriptions of Emetrius and Lygurge, and the
description of Diana's temple." His crowning modification is the equalization
of Palamon and Arcite.
These
general and inescapable observations on the nature of the poem make clear how
it must be approached. The symmetry of scene, action, and character grouping,
the slow pace of the narrative and the large proportion of static description,
the predominantly rhetorical kind of discourse—along with a lack of subtle
discrimination in the stage business—all indicate that the tale is not the best
kind in which to look for either delicate characterization or the peculiar
fascination of an exciting plot. Subtle delineation of character is neither
called for in the poem's design nor possible of achievement through the
technical means Chaucer largely employs. There is neither rapid dialogue, nor
psychological analysis, nor delicate and revelatory "business" in the
poem. Nor does the Knight's Tale amount to much as plot and story interest go.
Its value depends little on the traits that make a good story: a swift pace,
suspense, variety, intrigue. Its main events are forecast long before they
occur" The structure of the poem, indeed, works against story interest.
Symmetry in character grouping, movement, time and place, supports the
leisurely narrative and description in producing an over-all sense of rest and
deliberateness. The general intention indicated by the poem's materials and
structure lies in a different direction. Its grouping and action, rather than
existing for any great interest in themselves, seem constantly to point co a
nonrepresentational, symbolic method. There is a decisive correlation of all
its elements on this level.
The Knight's
Tale is essentially neither a story nor a static picture, but rather a sort of
poetic pageant. Its design expresses the nature of the noble life,
That is to seyn, trouthe, honour, knyghthede, [2789]
Wysdom, humblesse, estaat, and Neigh kynrede,
Fredom, and al that longeth to that art .. .
The story is
immediately concerned with those two noble activities, love and chivalry, but
even more important is the general tenor of the noble life, the pomp and
ceremony, the dignity and power, and particularly the repose and assurance with
which the exponent of nobility invokes order. Order, which characterizes the
structure of the poem, is also the heart of its meaning. The society depicted
is one in which form is full of significance, in which life is con-ducted at a
dignified, processional pace, and in which life's pattern is itself a
reflection, or better, a reproduction, of the order of the universe. And what
gives this conception of life its perspective, its depth and seriousness, is
its constant awareness of a formidably antagonistic element—chaos,
disorder—which in life is an ever-threatening possibility, even in the moments
of supremest assuredness, and which in the poem falls across the pattern of
order, being clearly exemplified in the erratic reversals of the poem's plot,
and deeply embedded in the poem's texture."
The
descriptive sections of the Tale support this interpretation perfectly, not
only in the long passages that come immediately to mind, but also in the short
flights that interrupt the narrative more than is warranted by what little
information they add to the mere story. By contributing to currents that run
continuously throughout the poem—currents that make up the main stream of the
noble life—these superficially "irrelevant" descriptions achieve a
secure position in the poem's pattern, and ultimately contribute in an
important way to its meaning.
The
portraits of Emetrius and Lygurge, for instance, have this kind of poetic
relevance although their contribution to the surface narrative is slight.
Emetrius has "A mantelet upon his shulder hangynge, / Bret-ful of rubyes
rede as fyr sparklynge" (2163-64). Lygurge wears
A wrethe of gold, arm-greet, of huge wighte, [2145]
Upon his heed, set ful of stones brighte,
Of fyne rubycs and of dyamauntz.
Unlike the
portraits in the General Prologue, here the imagery is organized around no
three-dimensional conception of personality; it is conventional, framed in the
flat, to express the magnificence that befits nobility. I have noted that after
all the description of these two kings they hardly figure in the narrative. The
inference, however, is not that the portraits are a waste and an excrescence,
"merely decorative," but that they perform a function that is not
directly related to the action and is independent of the question of character.
They contribute first to the poem's general texture, to the element of richness
in the fabric of noble life. More specifically, Chaucer solves the problem of
describing the rival companies by describing their leaders; not Palamon and
Arcite, but their sup-porting kings." Their varicolored magnificence, like
Theseus' banner, makes the whole field glitter up and down—black, white,
yellow, red, green, and gold. Their personal attributes—the trumpet voice of
Emetrius, the great brawn of Lygurge, their looks, like lion and griffin—give
both a martial quality that we are to attribute to the whole company. About the
chariot of Lygurge run great, white, muzzled hunting dogs, big as bullocks.
Emetrius' pet animals are a white eagle, lions, and leopards. The fact that
these animals are tame only makes the comparison with their masters the more
impressive. And practically every other derail is a superlative, the quality of
which contributes to martial or royal magnificence.
In some of
the descriptions in the Knight's Tale, Chaucer is at his very best as a poet:
[975]
The rede statue of Mars, with spere and targe,
So shyneth in his white baner large,
That alle the feeldes glyteren up and doun;
And by his baner born is his penoun
Of gold ful riche, in which ther was ybete
The Mynotaur, which that he slough in Crete.
Thus rit this duc, thus rit this conquerour,
And in his hoost of chivalrie the flour .. .
Even in so
short a passage, the power bestowed on this description suggests a function
deeper than mere ornament. It links with a score of other passages as an
expression of Theseus' preeminence in war and chivalry.' For instance the very
opening of the poem, with its compressed but powerful description of the
conquest of the Amazons and the marriage of Ypolita, is devoted to this end,
and the texture of the following incident of the mourning women of Thebes,
which acts as a kind of prologue to the Knight's Tale proper, widens and
perpetuates our notion of Theseus as variously the ruler, the conqueror, the
judge, and, not least, the man of pity. Among many subsequent details, the
magnificence of the lists and of Arcite's funeral is directly associated with
Theseus' dispensations.
The
establishment of this preeminence is essential to the meaning of the poem and
is carried out in many aspects of it. There is an obvious correspondence
between the quality of these descriptions and the position of Theseus as the
central figure in the poem's pattern of characters. And like the descriptions,
the speeches in the poem have a great deal of metaphoric value. If they do not
operate very effectively in the interest of plot and characterization—Theseus
has been likened to Polonius!—it is because they serve other and more poetic
ends; they too contribute to the pattern of tones and values which is the real
substance of the poem. Those of Theseus again show him as representative of the
highest chivalric conceptions of nobility. As the most noble human figure he
presides over the events and interprets them. His final oration is a
masterpiece of dignity. Theseus assembles his parliament, with Palamon and
Emilye, to make an end of the mourning for Arcite. The speech is carefully and
formally introduced:
Whan they were set, and hust was al the place, [2981]
And Theseus abiden hadde a space
Er any word cam fram his wise brest,
His eyen sette he ther as was his lest,
And with a sad visage he liked stille,
And after that right thus he seyde his wille .. .
The speech
itself is adapted from Boethius. It is a monologue of sentence and doctrine in
the medieval manner. The progress of it is logical and orderly:
Theseus
cakes up first principles, then general examples from nature, and finally the
matter in hand. Chaucer makes no effort to conceal its scholastic character. As
a parliamentary address it is not outside the realm of possibility; but this is
the least justification for it. A deeper one is its perfect agreement, in
organization and content, with the principle of order which Theseus both
invokes and represents throughout the tale. In a sense the representative of
Fate on earth, the earthly sovereign interprets the will of the divine one:
"Thanne may men by this ordre wel discern [3003]
That thilke Moevere stable is and eterne.
"What maketh this but Juppiter, the kyng,
The which is prince and cause of alle thyng,
Convertynge al unto his propre welle
From which it is dirryved, sooth to tells?
And heer-agayns no creature on lyve,
Of no degree, availleth for to stryve.
Thanne is it wysdom, as it thynketh me,
To maken vertu of nccessitee,
And take it weel that we may nat eschue . .
The king is
an inveterate enemy to rebellion: "And whoso gruccheth ought, he dooth
folyc, / And rebel is to hym that al may gve" (3045-46). The principal
representative of chivalry espouses a highly idealistic conception of the value
of a good name:
"And certeinly a man hath moost honour
To dyen in his excellence and flour,
When he is sikcr of his goode name;
Thannc hath he doon his freend, ne hym, no shame.
And gladder oghte his freend been of his deeth,
Whan with honour up yolden is his breeth,
Than whan his name appalled is for age,
For al forgeten is his vassellage.
Thanne is it best, as for a worthy fame,
To dyen whan that he is best of name."
The actions
and speeches by the central figure are the normative ones in the poem. Those of
Palamon and Arcite are lesser and contributory, in the sense that they only
provide the questions and the elements of variety which are to be resolved; it
is Theseus who expounds the resolutions. The knights' actions are, in fact,
exemplary of life as it is lived. In this light, it is important to
differentiate carefully between the balance of tone that Chaucer preserves in his
treatment of them and the more or less direct evidences of satire and of
tragedy which many critics have seemed to find there. Theseus' speech on the
loves of Palamon and Arcite (1785-1820), for instance, has prompted the
suggestion that here Chaucer revolts against the courtly code which the knights
represent." First of all, it must be seen that the poet is not here
dealing with courtly love per se, but only with love, on a par with chivalry,
as one of the persistent facts of the noble life. The tournament is held, we
remember, "For love and for entrees of chivalrye" (2184). The
emphasis, however, is not as in the courtly allegory, where the inner life is
explored and where the action revolves about the pursuit and defense of the
lady's rose. The lady in the Knight's Tale is merely a symbol of the noble
man's desires. And the question of love is never in debate here. We take love
in this society for granted, and then go on to discover how faithfully
experience in love exemplifies the partial blindness of all earthly experience.
Love, we find, can create dissension between sworn brothers; can make a man
lament his re-lease from prison; make him forsake safety and native land; and,
after unending toll of time and strength, it can leave him bloody and desirous
of death. Theseus' speech on love, as his speech on Arcite's death, is
normative and judicial; and to the noble, the mature mind, the paradoxically
impractical quality of love is both laughable and admirable. The rivalry and
consequent exploits of Palamon and Arcite are so impractical, and yet so much a
reflex of their knightly spirits, that there is something to be said on both
sides. Theseus' speech, therefore, is a mature appraisal, not an adverse
criticism, of courtly love; certainly not a reflection of Chaucer's
"strong revolt against the code."
The
leavening, balancing element of common sense is signalized here, as it is
usually signalized in Chaucer, by a lapse of the high style and the
introduction of colloquialism:
"But this is yet the beste game of alle, [18o6]
That she for whom they han this jolitee
Kan hem therfore as muche thank as me.
She woot namoore of al this hoote fare,
By God, than woot a cokkow or an hare!"
With all
this humorous ventilation of the subject, however, the real power of love is
not denied:
"But all moot ben assayed, hoot and coold; [181I]
A man moot been a fool, or yong or oold,-
I woot it by myself ful yore agon,
For in my tyme a servant 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 has, I yow foryeve
al hoolly this trespaas ..."
This kind of balance, if it precludes
satire, does not of course rule out the possibility of irony. Indeed, such a
tone is consonant with Theseus' maturity and dignity. But the several touches
of this sort in the poem, and the tensions within its structure that might also
be called ironic, neither point to the moral superiority of one knight nor
support a tragic attitude toward either of them. It is true that, while Chaucer
equalized the Palemone and Arcita of the Teseida, he carefully preserved a
certain difference between them. One serves Venus, the other Mars. One prays
for Emilye, the other for victory. But it does not appear that by preserving
this distinction Chaucer implies any moral preference. As the whole background
of the Tale shows, the worship of Mars is no less important an aspect of the
noble life than the worship of Venus. To Arcite go the honor in war, the
magnificent funeral, and the intangible rewards brought out in Theseus'
oration. To Palamon goes Emilye; in her are described the rewards that accrue
to him as the servant of Venus. That the differentiation between the knights is
ultimately a source of balance rather than of conflict can be seen even at the
beginning of the poem. Palamon sees Emilye first, but his claim is balanced by
Arcite's contention:
"Thyn is affeccioun of hoolynesse, [1158]
And myn is love, as to a creature .. .
Now this distinction is not clearly
carried out beyond the passage in question, although it has been expanded by
critics to allegorical and morally significant proportions. And even if it did
exist as a sustained and fundamental difference between the knights, it would
not create a moral issue in the poem."
What further deadens any possibly
moralistic or tragic implications in the fate of Arcite is a touch of Chaucer's
lightness. Were Arcite's death ultimately attributable to some moral
disjointedness of his own, we should expect it to be made abundantly clear. But
in a literature in which the advent of death is one of the most powerful
instruments of moral exemplum, Chaucer goes far out of his way to stifle any
such construction. In describing Arcite's death, he involves the reader not in
moral conclusions, but in complicated physical data with associations so cold
and scientific that no moral conclusion can possibly be drawn 2743-58). The
spirit of moral noncommitment is brought out clearly in the final lines of the
narrator's comment, where again we see the leavening, commonsensical element
expressed through colloquialism:
Nature bath now no
dominacioun. [2758]
And certeinly, ther
Nature wol rat wirche,
Fare wel phisik! go ber
the man to chirche!
This al and som, that
Arcita moot dye . .
The critic must be on his guard here not
to exaggerate the meaning of this digression, not to convert a deftly
administered antidote for tragedy into an actively satiric strain. This would
be to mistake Chaucer's balance for buffoonery. Immediately following this
passage comes Arcite's most elevated speech. Were the narrator's remarks to be
read as a satiric comment on Arcite's death, the whole noble fabric of the
speech, and of the poem too, would crumble.
If Palamon and Arcite exemplify legitimate
attitudes of equal value, and balance or supplement each other in providing not
moral conflict but variety, we must look not at the relationship between them,
but rather at their common position in relation to the universe, to find the
real moral issue in the poem. And Chaucer expresses this issue not only through
a tension between the poem's symmetrically ordered structure and the violent
ups and downs of the surface narrative—too plainly to be seen to require
elaborate analysis,—but also through a complication of texture, in the weaving
of darker threads among the red and gold.
I have already suggested that the poem's
speeches, like its descriptions, are largely part of its texture; many of them
are less important as pointing to specific psychological characteristics that
issue in direct action than as elements in broader organizations, with deeper
and more ulterior relevance to what goes on in the poem. Thus we have from
Palamon and Arcite a considerable number of lyrics, some of them contributing
only to the poem's general background of conventional love and chivalry, and
others, more important, in which love lament melts into poetry of a more
philosophical kind, and brings us to the heart of the issue. This latter
characteristic of the poem's texture supports the view that love, which has
been too often regarded as the poem's central theme, is used only as a vehicle
of expression, a mode of experience of the noble life, which is itself the
subject of the poem and the object of its philosophic questions. Thus, in the
magnificent death speech of Arcite the lyric of love merges with the
philosophical, the lady addressed becomes part of the speech's descriptive
imagery, and the theme of love itself is subsumed in the category of all
earthly experience:
187
"Naught may the woful spirit in myn
herte [2765]
Declare o point of Ale my sorwes smerte
To yow, my lady, that I love moost;
But I biquethe the servyce of my Boost
To yow aboven every creature,
Syn that my lyf may no lenger dure.
Alias, the wo! alias, the peynes stronge,
That I for yow have suffred, and so longe!
Alias, the deeth! alias, myn Emelye!
Alias, departynge of oure compaignye!
Alias, myn hertes queene! alias, 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."
Similarly, the speech of Arcite after his
release from prison shifts from personal outcry to general speculation. Here,
although Arcite mentions the paradoxical nature of men's designs with reference
to the irony of his own position, he sounds a note which reechoes throughout
the poem:
"Som man desireth for to han
richesse, [1255]
That cause is of his mordre or greet
siknesse;
And som man wolde out of his prisoun fayn,
That in his hous is of his meynee
slayn."
The parallel lament of Palamon in prison
is a variation on the same theme:
"0 crueel goddes that governe [1303]
This world with byndyng of youre word
eterne,
And writen in the table of atthamaunt
Youre parlement and youre eterne graunt,
What is mankynde moore unto you holde
Than is the sheep that rouketh in the
folde?
For slayn is man right as another beest,
And dwellcth eek in prison and arreest,
And hath siknesse and greet adversitee,
And ofte tymes giltelees, pardee.
What governance is in this prescience,
That giltelees tormenteth innocence?"
I00
The motive of misfortune and disorder is
extended in ever-widening circles of reference in the descriptions of the three
temples:
First in the temple of Venus maystow se
Wroght on the wal, ful pitous to biholde,
The broken slepes, and the sikes colde,
The sacred teeris, and the waymentynge,
The firy strokes of the desirynge
That loves servantz in this lyf enduren ..
.
On the walls of the temple of Diana are
depicted the stories of Callisto, Daphne, Actaeon, and Meleager, all of unhappy
memory. In the description of Mars's temple, the narrator is most powerful. He
sees
the derke ymaginyng
Of Felonye, and al the compassyng;
The crueel Ire, reed as any gleede;
The pykepurs, and eek the pale Drede;
The smyler with the knyf under the cloke;
The shcpne brennynge with the blake smoke;
The tresoun of the mordrynge in the bedde;
The open werre, with woundes al bibledde
..
.
In this context, the monologue of Saturn
is the culminating expression of an ever-swelling undertheme of disaster:
"Myn is the drenchyng in the sce so
wan;
Myn is the prison in the derke cote;
Myn is the stranglyng and hangyng by the
throne,
The murmure and the cherles rebellyng,
The groynynge, and the pryvee empoysonyng
. .
In Theseus' majestic summary there is a
final echo, the continuing rhetorical repetition as insistent as fate itself:
"He moot be deed, the kyng as shal a
page;
Som in his bed, som in the depe see,
Som in the large feeld, as men may see
..."
This subsurface insistence on disorder is
the poem's crowning complexity, its most compelling claim to maturity. We have
here no glittering, romantic fairy-castle world. The impressive, patterned
edifice of the noble life, its dignity and richness, its regard for law and
decorum, are all bulwarks against the ever-threatening forces of chaos, and in
constant collision with them. And the crowning nobility, as expressed by this
poem, goes beyond a gasp of the forms of social and civil order, beyond
magnificence in any earthly sense, to a perception of the order beyond chaos.
When the earthly designs suddenly crumble, true nobility is faith in the
ultimate order of all things. Saturn, disorder, nothing more nor less, is the
agent of Arcite’s death. and Theseus, noble in the highest sense, interprets it
in the deepest perspective. In contrast is the incomplete perception of the
wailing women of Athens:
"Why woldestow be deed," chile
wommen crye,
And haddest gold ynough, and Emylye?"
The history of Thebes had perpetual
interest for Chaucer as an example of the struggle between noble designs and
chaos. Palamon and Arcite, Thebans, lovers, fighters and sufferers, through
whom the pursuit of the noble life is presented, exemplify though their
experiences and express through their speeches this central conflict.