Chaucerian Comedy and Criseyde

Published: Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 90-104.

Description: Recently critical emphasis has been upon the sustained irony in the tragic tale of TC. Along with it is a peculiarly Chaucerian kind of comedy that may best be labeled "bodily laughter," because although it laughs "at" the body, it does so out of sympathy in order to affirm, not to deny, the body's values. Unlike the prototypical Boccaccian heroine, Chaucer's creation is endowed with a sense of humor.; Further, the poet makes fun of her quintessential femininity, as it was seen in the Middle Ages, perhaps in stereotype. Even in the increasingly sad Books IV and V, her comic values remain. For a worthy continuation of this kind of comedy we look to CT and to WBP.; Though Alison of Bath is different in many ways from Criseyde,she nevertheless shares many attributes, including the comic-pathetic one whereby both are comic heroines who go round and round on Fortune's wheel and who believe in the future, beating against the current even as they are borne back ceaselessly into the past.