The Structure of Fate and the Devising of History in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde

The Structure of Fate and the Devising of History in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde Matthew Giancarlo Yale University The general topics of fate and free will in Troilus and Criseyde —or of determinism, predestination, and freedom, necessity and chance, causality and destiny, or any of these as they have been combined and recombined over the years—have been among the most productive subjects of critical and scholarly inquiry. And perhaps too much so: in 1931 Howard Patch could already complain that ‘‘words are often flung about in critical usage, until a few of them stick to a subject and grow there like barnacles, as if their attachment were foreordained and their appropriateness inevitable’’—ironically enough, the predetermined word in question being ‘‘determinism’’ itself.1 Notwithstanding his reservations , the subject of determinism (to lump together under that heading several concepts with formal distinctions) does seem foreordained by Chaucer’s fascination with it, and it has produced some of the most enduring and frequently reprinted articles, as well as some of the best thinking by Chaucerians and others. Indeed the scholarship on fate and free will in Troilus and Criseyde, and on Chaucer’s use of Boethius, is practically coterminous with the field of Troilus-criticism as a whole, such that just about every substantial study has had something to add. In addition to the foundational studies by Patch and others clarifying the philosophical arguments about determinism and arguing for Chaucer’s adoption of specific perFor their comments, criticisms, and corrections in the long development of this article , my thanks go to C. David Benson, Jessica Brantley, Stuart Davis, Frank Grady, Robert J. Meyer-Lee, Lee Patterson, and the anonymous readers for SAC. 1 Howard R. Patch, ‘‘Troilus on Determinism,’’ Speculum 6 (1931): 225, reprinted in Chaucer Criticism, vol. 2, Troilus and Criseyde and The Minor Poems, ed. Richard J. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), pp. 71–85. 227 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER spectives on the Boethian tradition,2 the subject has occasioned vigorous debate about Chaucer’s aesthetic and ethical commitments,3 and, more recently, about the ideological resonances of the poem’s generally Boethian cast.4 In all of these general matters—philosophy and ethics, aesthetics and history—the importance of fate and free will as determining categories of the poem are necessarily bound up with assessments of genre, style, and intent, and these assessments, in turn, reflect back on how we read Chaucer reading his predecessors’ renderings of the traditional story of Troilus. Thus, ironically, the fecund variability of ‘‘determinism ’’ itself determines not only our readings, but our reading of Chaucer’s readings, which largely defines his critical reception of a lengthy and well-developed literary tradition. At stake in all readings 2 See particularly Patch, ‘‘Troilus on Determinism’’; ‘‘Troilus on Predestination,’’ JEGP 17 (1918): 399–423, reprinted in Chaucer: Modern Essays in Criticism, ed. Edward Wagenknecht (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 366–84; and passim in his books The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927) and The Tradition of Boethius: A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935); and Bernard Jefferson, Chaucer and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1917). See also Morton W. Bloomfield, ‘‘Distance and Predestination in Troilus and Criseyde,’’ PMLA 72 (1957): 14–26, reprinted in Critical Essays on Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and His Major Early Poems, ed. C. David Benson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 32–43, and with an Afterword in Chaucer’s Troilus: Essays in Criticism, ed. Stephen A. Barney (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1980), pp. 75–90; John Huber, ‘‘Troilus’s Predestination Soliloquy: Chaucer’s Changes from Boethius,’’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 66 (1965): 120–25; Robert P. apRoberts, ‘‘The Boethian God and the Audience of the Troilus,’’ JEGP 69 (1970): 425–36; Peter Christmas, ‘‘Troilus and Criseyde: The Problem of Love and Necessity,’’ Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 285–302; Laurence Eldredge, ‘‘Boethian Epistemology and Chaucer’s Troilus in the Light of Fourteenth-Century Thought,’’ Mediaevalia 2 (1976): 49–75; Frank Grady, ‘‘The Boethian Reader of Troilus and Criseyde,’’ Chaucer...