Secularizing the Word: Conversion Models in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

Abstract

���� �� With an anvil-ding And with fire in him forge thy will Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring Through him, melt him but master him still: Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul, Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill, Make mercy in all of us, out of us all Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King. (Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”) Hopkins’s verse offers a suggestive introduction to this study of Chaucer’s appropriation of two contrasting models of individual conversion to Christianity, exemplified by the stories of Paul and Augustine, to explore the psychology of fin’ amor as a surrogate religion in the pre-Christian world of Troilus and Criseyde. 1 Literary models of religious conversion are particularly well suited for representing the experience of secular love. Like conversion, love necessitates a retrospective form of understanding, a narrative that recollects and interprets the decisive experiences that mark discovery and transformation. 2 In his recent guide to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Barry Windeatt summarizes a number of earlier studies that effectively liken Troilus’s experience to religious conversion and particularly to Saul’s sudden conversion to Christian faith on the road to Damascus: 3 How one begins, belongs, and proceeds in love is in Troilus presented very much in terms of religious models. The moment when Troilus falls in love—in a temple, during a religious ceremony— is likened to a religious conversion when it occurs (i. 308) and later, more artfully, by Pandarus as a conversion from heresy to right belief. 4