Prudence and Artificial Memory in Chaucer's Troilus

Abstract

In Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer allows his audience both an internal' view of the thoughts and feelings of his characters and a definite external picture of the physical landscape, particularly the architectural settings, in which significant events occur. Indeed, after an initial acquaintance with the poem, it is difficult to recall Troilus and Criseyde's first sight of one another without also recollecting where this event occurred, the spacious temple in Troy housing the Palladium. Similarly, it is unlikely that one would divorce recollection of Troilus and Criseyde's first planned encounter from the suite of rooms in Deiphebus' palace where Pandarus cleverly manipulates its occurrence; that one would recall the central scene of the lovers' consummation minus its physical context of the complicated set of sleeping rooms, closets, passageways, and trapdoors which Pandarus' house so conveniently offers; or that one would remember Troilus and Criseyde's last view of one another without simultaneously remembering its occurrence on a hill at some point beyond the town gates. The attentive reader will no doubt associate even more actions with places-Pandarus' announcement of Troilus' love to Criseyde in a garden attached to her house, Criseyde's retirement to a small closet in her house to deliberate over her uncle's news, etc.-but I think the point sufficiently clear that from Troilus' first sight of Criseyde to his last, from the temple to beyond the town gates, the love affair is marked off in largely architectural milestones. This attention to place and setting has led H. M. Smyser, in his study of the architectural references in