^{Note 1 in page 85} PMLA, liii, 38–63. He has recorded the “literature” so thoroughly that it is cited here only when essential. For a little shot at analyzing the “romantic” I venture to point to Speculum, viii, 295 ff.

^{Note 2 in page 85} G. L. Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry, pp. 109, 112; “the first novel, in the modern sense, that ever was written in the world, and one of the best,” “an elaborate psychological novel”; earlier also, 1909, in Date of Troilus (p. 56).

^{Note 3 in page 86} Young (p. 39) quotes a critic or two to this effect.

^{Note 4 in page 87} E.g., W. G. Dodd's Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower (Boston, 1913), pp. 129–208, and also C. S. Lewis' more brilliant and mature The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), e.g., pp. 183, 192, 194. Miss C. B. West's Courtoisie in Anglo-Norman Literature (Oxford, 1938) though clearer in thinking would gain through still clearer definition. Long after this paper was written, the secretary of the MLA sent me an advance copy of T. A. Kirby's Chaucer's Troilus: A Study in Courtly Love, well-informed and meritorious (La. Univ. Press, 1940).

^{Note 5 in page 87} De Amore Libri Tres; the most accessible edition is by Amadeo Pagès (Castellon de la Plana, 1929). He and “the system of courtly love” have been taken by moderns too formally and solemnly; though undoubtedly his book shows some genuine human insight, he must have been trivial and obsequious, like a polite abbé (one may guess) in the society of Louis XIV. A book on the growth of romantic love from (say) the eleventh century on would be a contribution to the history of modern man. It would require more learning in historical writings than in pure literature; medieval literature on the subtler side was more stereotyped and doctrinaire than modern; would demand even more of insight, knowledge of life, and imagination; and would be far beyond the powers of doctorandi. At any rate the last word has not been said, hardly the first, about “courtly love.” The misunderstanding is due to a survival of the picturesque, inhuman, and subtly patronizing notion of the middle ages which began some 150 years ago. Modern discussions of “courtly love” seem to advance far from history and human reality, and to become encysted in literary criticism and a formalism which is little based on reality.

^{Note 6 in page 88} Hypertrophy of lyric and the constant harping on some of these matters are due to the literary usages of the recent past, and there are phrases, details, and proportions which show reminiscence of even the “courtly love” tradition. See i, 818, 917–921, 957, 979; ii, 503, 1217; iii, 161, 199, 970, 1786. Such explanations as in ii, 27–48, show recognition of the strangeness to actual Edwardian England of the usages of “courtly love” and of Naples. It may be doubted if the first seemed much more intimately natural than the second. Chaucer's dwelling on his own inexperience in love has nothing to do of course with “courtly love,” is meant merely to head off chaff against his own unromantic personality and physical build while reading aloud among his own social superiors (i, 15–18, etc.).

^{Note 7 in page 88} Mr. Dodd ignores this fact (Courtly Love, pp. 61, 68, 72, 130–136).

^{Note 8 in page 89} The alternative of marriage is considered by Troilus in both Boccaccio (iv, 69) and Chaucer (iv, 554–560), and rejected on hardly sufficient grounds, but not on these. In the former, one ground is that Criseida ranks beneath him,—significantly omitted by Chaucer, and very likely used by Boccaccio not because of Italian convictions but because he was in his own foolish youth.

^{Note 9 in page 90} Trans. Roy. Soc. of Lit., Ser. 2, xxx, 87–92; Kittredge Anniv. Papers, pp. 340–341; MP, xxxiii, 367–373.

^{Note 10 in page 91} It is hard to grant any such direct causative influence of Le Roman de la Rose as Mr. Lewis sees, ingenious as some of his parallels are. Both poems portray such age-old human fact as had been openly recognized since the twelfth century; that is all. Influences on the characterization from Chaucer's other reading are as a fact insignificant.

^{Note 11 in page 91} ii, 510–511, 1627, 1692–1701.—What here follows, which is condensed so far as possible, may be imperfectly proportioned because dwelling most on what has been hitherto less regarded. Some of the greatest beauties are ignored, merely because familiar.

^{Note 12 in page 91} ii, 1079–80, iii, 398.

^{Note 13 in page 92} iv, 953–1078; similarly Criseyde's talk on false felicity (iii, 813–836, from Boethius like the other) is “sentence,” not fully characteristic of her. Both passages are reasoned and scholastic, not the poetic heightening of what is already in his people which of course a poet always may give them. Chaucer used them as his own mouthpieces more than a modern would do.

^{Note 14 in page 92} iii, 397, 409–413, 425–426.

^{Note 15 in page 92} Fil., i, 23, iii, 87. But the strongest suggestion of this (iii, 1653–55), except the omission of what Boccaccio has to the contrary, is also in Boccaccio (iii, 62).

^{Note 16 in page 92} ii, 158, 171, 181, 417, 740, 1627; iii, 1775; v, 1804.

^{Note 17 in page 92} i, 444, 463–466, 470–472. This reappears in his later despair (iv, 1506 ff., 1600 ff.).

^17a Chaucer so states, at the end (v, 1765–69).

^{Note 18 in page 92} Later, the most extreme case (aside from iv, 219 ff.) is his need of a cane for walling (v, 1222,—like Old Age in the Romance of the Rose) not so long after Criseyde failed him the tenth day. The emotionality and weakness are directly from the Italian and Boccaccian tradition (not so much from “courtly love”), and are reduced; he does not faint in public, as in Fil., iv, 18.

^{Note 19 in page 92} v, 260, 617–627. Chaucer's entering into Troilus' melancholia, as into Dorigen's in Fkl. T., is one more indication of his sensitive temperament. Other insights are in Troilus' idealizing of his lady (producing his humility), and what he had planned to say at the first meeting going clean out of his head (iii, 83–84). No one can say whether these were put into the poet's mind by the “courtly love tradition”; they certainly come from human truth.

^{Note 20 in page 93} One might raise the question whether a masculine man, of some maturity as Troilus obviously is, would even desire a complete confidante (male, at least); and whether this is not one of the few echoes of “courtly love” (Andreas Capellanus, p. 61), possibly also of the literary usage of the confession (MP, xxxiii, 372). Though at times wavering between his own plans, and except when doing what no one else could do for him, he leaves every single step in the affair to Pandarus' initiative.

^{Note 21 in page 93} See the Concordance under these words, and under die, live (with a negation).

^{Note 22 in page 93} v, 461–462, 617–627.

^{Note 23 in page 93} See J. S. Graydon, Defence of Criseyde, PMLA, xliv, 141–177. But he writes of the pair as if they had really lived, with little regard for the literary climate where their ghostly existence belongs.

^{Note 24 in page 94} Though some have wished to think a much later date settled, I gave in 1935 many further reasons for this opinion in MLN, l, 277–289.

^{Note 25 in page 94} See MP, xviii, 123–128. The Knight's Tale, derived much later from Boccaccio, shows no such seriousness about the love-agonies of Arcite and Palamon; and they have little or nothing of the “courtly lover.”

^{Note 26 in page 94} See MP, xxxiii, 370–371, 373–374; Fkl. T., 1086 (“Chese he, for me, wheither he wol lyve or dye”).

^{Note 27 in page 94} v, 85–175, 771–1043.

^{Note 28 in page 94} Nor for Mr. C. S. Lewis' “we can almost see the handsome, blackguardly jaw thrust out” (Allegory of Love, p. 188).

^{Note 29 in page 94} See also my article in Anglia, xxxvii, 81–85, 107–108. This touch is, however, in Benoit's Roman de Troie, ll. 13591 ff. (Constans), whence Chaucer may possibly have recalled it, though this seducer's lie may have been as time-honored in Chaucer's day as later. It is not in Guido, who despises women too much to suggest excuses.

^{Note 30 in page 95} He tells her he would rather all three were hanged than that he should be Troilus' bawd; “I am thyn em; the shame were to me” (ii, 352–355; also 411–420; but he makes no such pretense with Troilus,—i, 1037–40; iii, 249–259, 273).

^{Note 31 in page 95} The fact is that the basis of the moral standard in the poem is uncertain and fluctuating,—partly of England, partly of Naples, partly of literary tradition. The first of the three is clearest in iii, 274–280.

^{Note 32 in page 95} i, 622–672, 711–718; ii, 57–63, 98–99, 1105–06; iv, 397–399 (assuredly there is no suggestion of “courtly love” here). Had he been a real person, one might guess him to have been extremely homely, and tactful enough to make a joke of himself (i, 714; ii, 99, 1107; iii, 555, etc.).

^{Note 33 in page 95} i, 561–564, 868, 1037–40; ii, 150–151, 505; v, 281–286, 1170–76.

^{Note 34 in page 95} ii, 939, 1094, 1303, 1464–65, 1637; iii, 227, 964; iv, 350.

^{Note 35 in page 96} iii, 239 ff., 262, 396, 402–403, 415, 1618–19.

^{Note 36 in page 96} iii, 979–980, 1135–41, 1188–90, 1557–75.

^{Note 37 in page 96} iii, 261; cf. 393–406, 415.

^{Note 38 in page 96} Almost from the beginning of the separation (v, 505–509) his secret skepticism as to Criseyde's ever returning shows his experienced perception. Earlier he offers characteristic consolation (iv, 393–431); trivial, without conviction, but from his own shallow depths.

^{Note 39 in page 96} i, 561–564, 868–870; ii, 97, 110–112, 157 ff., 505, 1010 ff., 1628 ff.; iii, 208–210, 484–486, 694–697, 792–798 (knowing that pity is akin to love, and that an imaginary alienation promotes passion, he tells Criseyde that Troilus suspects her with Horaste; undoubtedly an invention of his, for the truth is never in him,—cf. ii, 353).

^{Note 40 in page 96} iii, 235 ff., 1616–38.

^40a “He lovesd intrigue for its own sake. He claimed no reward but the satisfaction of putting it through,” says Lloyd George of one of George V's courtiers.

^{Note 41 in page 97} ii, 818, 1229; iii, 596–598.

^{Note 42 in page 97} i, 178–182 (Criseida is less sensitive,—i, 27), 285–293; ii, 87 ff., 146–147, 254, 275 ff., 386 ff., 897–898, 1199, 1284; iii, 85–86, 155–158, 211–212, 638–643; v, 181–194, 728, 864–868.

^{Note 43 in page 97} But it would be a grievous error to assume every keen lifelike touch as wanting in the Filostrato. The natural and ironical scene in which Criseyde's women-friends first congratulate her on escaping the siege, then condole for leaving them, is there almost word for word (iv, 680–730; Fil., iv, 80–86).

^{Note 44 in page 97} ii, 151, 271, 386–387, 462, 589–590, 694 ff., 743 ff., 771 ff., 780, 1177–78, 1213–14 (she never wrote a letter before), 1289 ff.; iii, 85–88, 155 ff.; iv, 669–670, 1254–1414 (also v, 1628). Her opining that fear invented the gods might be explained in too many ways to be ascribed to intellectual skepticism (iv, 1408), but still it is in the picture.

^{Note 45 in page 97} iv, 1527–31, 1555–82.

^{Note 46 in page 97} ii, 478–179, 885–903, 1723; iii, 267–273, 568–581 (she may suspect, no more), 750–1197; v, 975–978 (here one must take her loved husband in speaking to Diomed as a mere surrogate for Troilus). The spiced wine for Diomed (v, 852) of course is mere hospitality.

^{Note 47 in page 97} ii, 1562, 1723; iv, 1672 (this last specially significant because said of Criseida not Troilo in Fil., iv, 164–165; another refining of Criseyde beyond Criseida is in v, 981–982, compared with vi, 30).

^{Note 48 in page 98} ii, 387, 408, 462, 666–679. The beautiful line ii, 651, as the poet himself indicates (666–675, does not show “love at first sight.”

^{Note 49 in page 98} ii, 408, 499–504, 603–604, 651, 673–675, 884, 899–903, 1592.

^{Note 50 in page 98} i, 108; ii, 124, 302–303, 426–427, 449–450, 770, 1101, 1128; iv, 671–672.

^{Note 51 in page 98} Especially ii, 1470–78 (it is not true that her first impulse when pressed is always to give way; but legal and money matters are beyond her ken, and she values peace); also ii, 123, 708–714 (soft people are specially prone to self-deception; also in bk. v).

^{Note 52 in page 98} iii, 481, and p. 89 above.

^{Note 53 in page 98} i, 284; iii, 106.

^{Note 54 in page 98} 825; though iv, 10–28, 1415–20, v, 766–770, like i, 1–4, 54–56, allude to what everyone knew was coming.

^{Note 55 in page 98} v, 842. This is the fourth day in Filostrato (vi, 9; she weakens the first day in Guido, bk. xx), and she gives Diomede at least equal encouragement. But Chaucer's change does little to help; essentially hereabouts he follows Boccaccio.

^{Note 56 in page 99} 956–1015, especially 986, 993, 995–1004.

^{Note 57 in page 99} There is almost shocking contrast with the exquisite corresponding scene (ii, 687–812) where she first ponders her course with Troilus, though there too for a moment she has prudential thoughts.

^{Note 58 in page 99} v, 1051–85, 1593–94. Much of it shows Chaucer's extraordinary insight; intensely lifelike self-deception (1594), a feeling of sickness is the refuge of a weak nature from selfreproach, and so is the resolution to be true to this last lover at least (1071),—to which Henryson was to add the dramatic irony that she was not to have the chance.

^{Note 59 in page 99} v, 1424–30, 1605–15.

^{Note 60 in page 99} v, 766, 1086–88.

^{Note 61 in page 99} J. L. Shanley will convince few informed readers that the epilog is implicit in the whole poem (ELH, vi, 271), except so far as in most medieval literature a Christian philosophy is more or less implicit (as well as, in much of it, the late medieval conception of mundane instability, as set forth by H. R. Patch in The Goddess Forlund). To no greater extent would Chaucer's auditors be prepared for the sudden transcending in the epilog, though they accepted it more readily than we. I add that Shanley's article is well worth weighing. He rightly thinks that the emptiness and fragility of sensual love voiced in the epilog might also be felt earlier. But it is felt only at rare intervals; if one stands off and views the silhouette of the whole poem, its long-range totality, not a mere half-dozen passages viewed alone (one of the commonest errors in scholarship), one cannot think this its chief meaning. No warm human medieval, or modern, if asked whether the love had been worth while, would say No. Till the end there is no sign that Chaucer felt any painful contrast except that between the preceding joy and the miserable outcome. After his complete surrender to the traditional tale the Christian sense in the epilog has every appearance of an afterthought negation. But the poem is no less moving and human for not being fully integrated, and Chaucer is the more human, the less purely statuesque. I say no more of all this, since this is not my subject.

^{Note 62 in page 100} This ilke ferthe book me helpeth fine,

^{Note 63 in page 101} Chaucer himself betrays a momentary awareness of the unexplained conflict between the Criseyde of the end and earlier. In the proem to iv discussed above, ll. 19–21 lament that earlier authors should find cause to speak harm of Criseyde; if they lie, the shame is theirs not hers. This is as if he momentarily were so possessed by the actuality and perfections of his own Criseyde that he cast doubt on the actuality of the other, and at least would fain shift the responsibility for her. He is very aware of the paradox he is involved in through his creation of a fastidious Criseyde who must end so cheaply. Originally of course this woman is nothing at all except a loose jilt. (Some of the above was pointed to by G. P. Faust in a paper at the M.L.A. meeting of 1939.)

^{Note 64 in page 101} This essential, the familiarity of the story, is ignored in this connection by almost every critic; it was emphasized by the present writer in 1926 in a review of R. K. Root's edition (Sat. Rev. of Lit., iii, 362). A recent writer is surprised that no one has thought to recognize “a sly hint as to the dénouement” many hundreds of lines later. Sly hints were not needed. Would that “sly” might be abolished from Chaucer criticism!

^{Note 65 in page 102} The soundest study of Criseyde in print (which came to my attention after this paper was written) seems to me to be that by A. Mizener, in PMLA, liv, 65–81 (though not without haziness and forcing things).

^{Note 66 in page 102} i, 113–123; ii, 1450–56, 1480–82; iv, 176–182, 214 (only the first passage is in the Filostrato).

^{Note 67 in page 102} ii, 1422–29, 1486–87, 1548–50, 1569–75, 1611–12; also not in Boccaccio.

^{Note 68 in page 102} iv, 82–91, 667–668, 1366–1414.

^{Note 69 in page 102} ii, 1449, 1559–60, 1604–10, 1667–80, 1703–08.

^{Note 70 in page 102} ii, 813–931.

^{Note 71 in page 102} Smiles in Chaucer would make an attractive study, if one is not too solemn. They are in life far more civilized, subtle, and complex in origin than laughs. It is significant that the word never occurs in the Bible. See Univ. of Calif. Chronicle, July, 1923, 393–395.

^{Note 72 in page 102} iii, 409–411; v, 1450–1533.

^{Note 73 in page 103} Chaucer's interest in dreams is worth study. Aside from their traditional use as a frail irresponsible frame for fanciful narration, he shows actual uncanny insight. Troilus directly on awaking will feel as if he were falling (v, 258–259), which we may take as a continuation of his dream; I am told, by those who know, that dreams of falling are characteristic of anxiety neurosis, assuredly Troilus' case. I suspect a psychologist would see symbolism in the Wife of Bath's pretended dream of her lover about to kill her and of her bed full of blood (W.B.P., 577–581); “blood bitokeneth gold,” but perhaps other things as well. I recall here too Chaucer's insight into fixed melancholy (p. 92 above). One trained in modern psychiatry will find much of deep interest in Chaucer. Another possible insight justified by modern medicine is this. At the end (v, 1212–32) after Criseyde's defection, utterly despairing and bodily wasting away Troilus says to those who show concern, “his harm was all about his heart,” “he felt a grievous malady about his heart.” The reader may take this perhaps rightly as mere evasion based on medieval psychology, as well as on what we still call “sinking of the heart.” But some people know of the steady local malady and pain without other cause sometimes produced in the neurotic by psychic stress, pain which with medieval belief in the heart as seat of emotion might well be localized in or near it. This is confirmed for me by several highly competent physiologists and psychologists. “False angina,” hard to distinguish from true angina pectoris, is due to psychic causes. The quarterly Psychosomatic Medicine is now in its second year.

^{Note 74 in page 103} Criseyde in her trepidation calls people “goosish” (iii, 584); even this does not necessarily refer to plebeians. But the poet shows small respect (iv, 141–217) for Priam's “parlement” (certainly less select than the protagonists), to the English analog of which he himself was to belong some ten years later. Of mixed social background himself, we cannot deny that he may have thoroughly enjoyed the eminently select company in the poem. Later he showed less narrow interests. But most medieval writers, like many moderns, found aristocrats the more interesting people.

^{Note 75 in page 104} M.P., xviii, 128–134.

^{Note 76 in page 104} The fact that he follows some of the rhetorical usages recommended by medieval rhetoricians does not prove him their mere pupil; his literary ambition was touched off not by dry and dead rhetoricians but by the ancients and their more vital followers.