“O swete harm so queynte”: Loving Pagan Antiquity in Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight's Tale

Abstract

In Troilus and Criseyde and the Knight's Tale, Chaucer re-evaluates certain ethical paradigms that the Middle Ages inherited from Augustine and Boethius, both of whom critique the impermanent pleasures offered by the pagan gods or by the Lady Fortune. In the Knight's Tale and the Troilus, Chaucer shows that not all men seek lasting felicity—some prefer the seduction of change and the excitations of unfulfillment. In these poems Chaucer therefore revises Augustinian and Boethian formulations of contemptus mundi, pointing out that any ethical system which seeks to address the topic of earthly desires must also address the human subject's endless appetite for desire as such. Informed by the courtly economy which shows risk as productive of desire, Chaucer's pagan poems further suggest that pagan antiquity, as a period, was fascinating and compelling to medieval scholars and poets in part because its study was a hazardous one.