8 - Beyond the Bounds of Good Behaviour: Imprudent Fidelity in the Legend of Good Women

Summary

In the last chapter we saw that Criseyde behaved for the most part with great propriety, her conduct remaining very close to that recommended by the advice literature. Nevertheless, she ultimately transgressed by betraying Troilus. In the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer's portrayal of Criseyde invokes the wrath of the God of Love, who demands of him:

Hast thow nat mad in Englysh ek the bok

How that Crisseyde Troylus forsok,

In shewynge how that wemen han don mis?

Why noldest thow as wel han seyd goodnesse

Of wemen, as thow hast seyd wikednesse?

(G 264-9)

For the God of Love, the episode of Criseyde's betrayal amounts to the entire subject matter of Chaucer's book. All that preceded it is dismissed without comment. And Chaucer's sympathetic, morally complex, five-book portrayal of how the betrayal came about is summarised as speaking ‘wikednesse’. What is more, in the God of Love's view, Chaucer has not spoken ill of Criseyde alone, but of ‘wemen’ in general. In order to correct Chaucer's transgression, Alceste commands him to write a poem in penance that will also, in a sense, reverse Criseyde's transgression:

a gloryous legende

Of goode wymmen, maydenes and wyves,

That were trewe in lovynge al here lyves;

And telle of false men that hem betrayen.

(G 473-6)

Where Criseyde's forsaking of Troilus was earlier termed ‘wikednesse’, goodness is now similarly implicitly equated to being ‘trewe in lovynge’.