^{Note 1 in page 14} On this point in connection with the Canterbury Tales see Donaldson's stimulating “Chaucer the Pilgrim,” PMLA, LXIX (1954), 928–936. I am indebted to Professor Donaldson for several suggestions made orally to me which I have woven into this article—notably the root idea of n. 14 below.

^{Note 2 in page 15} For what they are worth, I give the following statistics on the first book. All Chaucer quotations are from the edn. of F. N. Robinson, Boston, 1933. The following passages seem to me to belong wholly or partially to the narrator as commentator: 11.1–56 (proem), 57–63, 100, 133, 141–147, 159, 211–217, 232–266, 377–378, 393–399, 450–451 (a direct rapport remark), 492–497, 737–749 (doubtful), 1086–92. Excluding 11. 737–749, we find that 141 lines out of 1092 may be said to be comments by the author as commentator. Roughly 12% of the lines of the first book (one line in 8¼ lines) belong to the commentator.

Even allowing for subjective impressions, 10% would certainly be fair. This is a remarkably high percentage I should say. The proem I shall analyze below. The other remarks bear on his sources, moralize, establish a mood of acceptance, indicate distance and pastness and refer to fate and destiny. For overt references to fate and providence in the poem, see the list in Eugene E. Slaughter, “Love and Grace in Chaucer's Troilus,” Essays in Hettor of Waller Clyde Curry (Nashville, 1955), p. 63, n. 8. 3 See Morton W. Bloomfield, “Chaucer's Sense of History,” JEGP, li (1952), 301–313.

^{Note 4 in page 17} Although irrelevant to the point I am making about the sense of distance in the journey to or through the spheres, there is some question as to the reading and meaning here (v.1809). I follow Robinson and Root who take the reading “eighth” rather than “seventh” as in most manuscripts. Boccaccio uses “eighth,” and there is a long tradition extending back to classical antiquity which makes the ogdoad the resting place of souls (see Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins, East Lansing, 1952, pp. 16–17 ff.). Cf., however, Jackson I. Cope, “Chaucer, Venus and the ‘Seventhe Spere’,” MLN, LXVII (1952), 245–246. (Cope is unaware of the ogdoad tradition and also assumes that Troilus is a Christian.) There is also the problem of the order in which the spheres are numbered. If the highest is the first then the eighth sphere is that of the moon, the one nearest the earth. Root believes Chaucer is following this arrangement. However, as Cope points out, Chaucer in the opening stanza of Bk. in names “Venus as the informing power of the third sphere” and therefore must be using the opposite numbering system. Troilus then goes to the highest sphere, that of the fixed stars.

E. J. Dobson (“Some Notes on Middle English Texts,” Eng. and Ger. Stud., Univ. of Birmingham, I [1947–48], 61–62) points out that Dante, Paradise xxii, 100–154, which is Boccaccio's (and hence Chaucer's) source for this passage in the Teseide, makes clear that the emendation to “eighth” is justified.

^{Note 5 in page 18} Needless to say I am not using this phrase in the sense given it by Edward Bullough in his “ ‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and an Aesthetic Principle,” Brit. Jour, of Psychol., v (1913), reprinted in A Modern Book of Esthetics, An Anthology, ed. Melvin Rader, rev. ed. (New York, 1952) pp. 401–428. He refers to “distance” between the art object on the one hand and the artist or audience on the other. The distance here referred to is within the poem, between the character-narrator Chaucer and the events.

^{Note 6 in page 19} Chaucer sets himself the problem of interpreting Criseyde's action here by his sympathetic portrayal of her character and by his unblinking acceptance of the “facts” of his history. Boccaccio evades it by his pre-eminent interest in Troilus. Henryson gives Troilus an “unhistorical” revenge. Shakespeare has blackened Cressida's character throughout. Christopher Hassall, in his libretto for William Walton's recent opera on the subject, makes Criseyde a victim of a mechanical circumstance and completely blameless. Only Chaucer, by a strict allegiance to the “historical” point of view, poses the almost unbearable dilemma of the betrayal of Troilus by a charming and essentially sympathetic Criseyde.

^{Note 7 in page 19} The only exception is to be found in the Robinson text where at iii. 1165 we find the reading in a speech by Criseyde “by that God that bought us both two.” I am convinced that the Root reading “wrought” for “bought” is correct. It would be perfectly possible for pagans to use “wrought” but not “bought.” If we admit “bought” it would be the only Christian allusion put into the mouths of the Trojan characters and would conflict with the expressedly pagan attitude of these figures. I now take a stronger position on the matter than I allowed myself to express in “Chaucer's Sense of History,” JEGP, LI (1952), 308, ii. 17. Various references to grace, the devil (i.805), a bishop (ii.104), saints' lives (ii.118) and celestial love (i.979) need not, from Chaucer's point of view of antiquity, be taken as Christian.

^{Note 8 in page 21} See n. 2 above.

^{Note 9 in page 22} Policraticus, ii, 22, ed. C. C. I. Webb (Oxford, 1909), i, 126. The translation is by Joseph B. Pike, Frivolities of Courtiers (Minneapolis, 1938), p. 111. Incidentally it should be noted that Calchas' foreknowledge through divination is on a basic level the cause of the tragedy.

^{Note 10 in page 22} “We are looking on at a tragedy that we are powerless to check or avert. Chaucer himself conveys the impression of telling the tale under a kind of duress” (G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and his Poetry, Cambridge, 1915, p. 113).

^{Note 11 in page 23} On this dispute in the 14th century, see L. Baudry, La querelle des futurs contingents (Paris, 1950), and Paul Vignaux, Justification et prédestination au XIV ^e siècle (Paris, 1934).

^{Note 12 in page 25} I am aware, of course, that this famous speech was added only in the second or final version of the poem as Root has clearly shown. I do not think that this point is of much relevance to my argument one way or another. Inasmuch as we can probably never know why Chaucer added the passage, one explanation is as good as another. We must take the poem in its final form as our object for analysis. My case, which is admittedly subjective, does not rest on this passage. It may be that Chaucer felt that by adding this speech he was making clearer a point he already had in mind. Or it is possible that it was only on his second revision that he saw the full implications of his argument. Or finally it may have occurred to him that by bringing Troilus closer to his own position before the end, he would deepen the significance of what he wished to say. These explanations for the addition are at least as plausible and possible as any other.

^{Note 13 in page 25} The location of this speech is not, I think, without significance. The end of pagan or purely natural religion is blind necessity, and in its “church” this truth can best be seen.

^{Note 14 in page 26} Another triangle has its apex in Pandaras who is, of course, the artist of the inner story as Chaucer is of the outer one and as God is of the created world. Pandarus works on his material—Troilus and especially Criseyde—as his “opposite numbers” do with their materials. All are to some extent limited—Pandarus by the characters of his friend and niece and by political events; Chaucer by his knowledge and by history; God by His rationality. All this is another story, however; my interest here is primarily in the triangle with Troilus as apex.