Criseyde's Descriptions and the Ethics of Feminine Experience

Abstract

Some of Chaucer’s portrayals of Criseyde appear contradictory. Two especially demand elucidation lest readers become confused. The first introduces Criseyde as “an hevenyssh perfit creature,/That down were sent in scornynge of nature” (I, 104–5);1 the second mars her perfection by endowing her with joined eyebrows (V, 813), a physical flaw that carried weight with medieval authors if not their ancient counterparts.2 To complicate matters further, Chaucer omits telling readers about Criseyde’s imperfection until Book V, although his source for joined eyebrows, Benoit’s Roman de Troie, mentions Briseida’s blemish from the beginning, whereas Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato, Chaucer’s main source, does not mar Criseida’s beauty in this way. What is one to make of such competing representations? SunHee Kim Gertz has argued that Chaucer “narrativizes the ordinarily static descriptio” of the beautiful romantic heroine (also known as beauty catalogue or, in the sixteenth century, blazon) to “rejuvenate the literary system” with new narratives derived from traditional material.3 While Gertz recognizes Chaucer’s manipulation of literary conventions as a source of “fresh