Medieval Go-Betweens and Chaucer’s Pandarus (review)

In this lucid study, Gretchen Mieszkowski traces the literary traditions of the go-between that influence Chaucer’s representation of Pandarus in Troilus and Criseyde. By drawing upon a variety of sources, from Latin comedy, to chivalric romance, to Old French fabliau, Mieszkowski amply demonstrates the deep literary roots of the tradition Chaucer engages with his go-between. From the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, Mieszkowski finds two distinct forms of go-between stories: that which furthers idealized love, and that which represents sex as conquest. As she maintains, Chaucer draws from both branches of the go-between form, thereby complicating his own poem’s affiliation beyond classification. If readers have puzzled over Pandarus’s disturbing agency in this doomed love affair, Mieszkowski concludes that lack of critical closure arises from the poem’s engagement with the dual tradition of the literary go-between.

Although this book is motivated by critical questions about Troilus and Criseyde, its bulk is occupied with a thoroughgoing account of the different stories that constitute the two go-between threads Mieszkowski identifies in English and continental sources. Mieszkowski invites readers familiar with particular stories to skip individual summaries, but the cumulative effect she amasses is quite impressive. Part I, ‘Choreographing Lust,’ considers the Latin comedy Pamphilus and the Old French fabliau Auberee alongside eleven other stories that constitute this strand of representation. Juxtaposing these stories affirms the centrality of the Old Woman figure, showing her abject social condition and her alienated moral standing across this form. By considering these stories alongside a fabliau such as Dame Sirith, or in conjunction with a figure like Jean de Meun’s La Vielle, Mieszkowski demonstrates more clearly the perilous situation that the love object, almost always a young woman, faces in a repeated scenario of sexual exploitation. Using the Old Woman as a scapegoat for the victimization of women, Mieszkowski demonstrates the ways in which these stories displace their violent misogyny by diverting attention from its patriarchal sources.

Part II, ‘Choreographing Love,’ assembles fourteen stories to delineate the major features of this narrative trajectory. As she explains, stories of elevated desire use the go-between in romanticized ways: lovers are so enamored that they cannot speak, and beloveds are so timorous that they cannot respond. Go-betweens thus fulfill the function of desire while preserving the integrity of both partners. Lovers remain innocent, as do the go-betweens who serve their cause. Once again, Mieszkowski treats more and less well-known stories, putting Chretien deTroyes’s Cliges in contact with romances that were influential in their own day, such as the prose Lancelot. Even if these stories share the same genre, she shows that some depart in marked ways from the go-between tradition established within chivalric romance. Partonope of Blois illuminates the dangers of the go-between’s power with its character, Urake: while seeking to convince her sister, Melior, to reconcile with Partenope, she drives Melior nearly to suicide, almost derailing the love plot through her deceptive manipulations. By showing diversity within a regularized form, from romances that burlesque the go-between structure to those that allegorize the primary love relation, Mieszkowski gives a comprehensive picture of the idealized go-between, from Chretien to Boccaccio.

This book thus fulfills its major purpose by assembling the body of resources that constitute the tradition from which Chaucer’s Pandarus emerges. Even so, Part III, ‘Choreographing Lust and Love,’ does less to connect Chaucer’s poem to the variety of sources amassed than one might wish. Indeed, most of Mieszkowski’s focus is directed to a detailed reading of Chaucer’s poem, particularly those scenes that echo the ‘go-between for lust’ tradition. In the bedroom scenes, particularly those that have disturbed critics who see Pandarus’s intervention as lurid, potentially even incestuous, Mieszkowski accounts for Pandarus’s behavior by suggesting Chaucer’s indebtedness to Old Women go-betweens. She makes a few direct connections, but she does not...