Medieval Literature Of Conversion And Love.

The notion of sight having powerful and moving effects can be considered a common trope within Middle English literature. This is partially due to the ideas of sensory perception which were held and deemed medically valid in the Medieval period, but sensory perception has often been important in spiritual awakenings of desire or of faith. Sensory perception in the Middle Ages differs from how we view the senses today, and it is for this reason that the notions of love and faith often seem fanciful and elaborate to a modern reader. It is my proposal that just as religious conversion is a full body experience, so is the experience of the love at first sight, and these vastly different experiences have at their core a simple reliance on the concept of a full body sensory perception. In order to evaluate this thesis on the moving effects of sight within these texts, I shall be comparing the healing of Longinus’ blindness (Piers Plowman, Passus 18, l. 86-91)[1] to the sight of Troilus which Criseyde experiences from her closet (Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 645-686.)[2]

Sensory perception in the Middle Ages is a complex idea, and not one which is wholly agreed upon by scholars. However, there is general consensus that the senses did not operate individually. For example, when one saw something, the subject was also experienced through other senses such as touch and taste which gave further significance to the sensation. As Biernoff notes, “sight was an extension of the sensitive soul”[3] and intrinsically linked to the heart and mind. Therefore, sight became considered the most important of the senses and vital to the notion of love. It is for this idea that the image of Cupid’s arrow firing often is symbolised as hitting the eye and passing to the heart. Whilst this idea first appeared in the French poem Cliges, it soon became a common trope of medieval romance poetry and found on the illustrated manuscri pts of Troilus and Criseyde as well as Il Filostrato, Chaucer’s inspiration.[4] Whilst Cupid’s arrow does indeed fire at Troilus in Book 1 of Troilus and Criseyde (l. 274-400), Criseyde’s falling in love is a much more complex and rational experience.

During Book 2, Criseyde experiences manipulation by Pandarus and moves into her closet in order to have a private moment of thought without the influence of Pandarus. During this moment she sees Troilus riding past the garden and has a moment of love at sight which moves her character. This moment is particularly interesting as it does not involve metaphysical beings such as cupid, but simply occurs in a very real worldly way. Chaucer likens this moment to being drunk, Criseyde asks herself “Who yaf me drinke?”[5] It is in this moment that her intellect or mind is overpowered by the sight which her heart encounters. However, Chaucer’s narrator is quick to defend that through this fall, Criseyde has not forgotten or lost her intellect, unlike Troilus who experiences love like a moment of conversion. Criseyde’s falling is an altogether longer process which the sight of Troilus simply cements.[6]

Falling in love being akin to a moment of conversion is a particularly thought-provoking notion, and one which deserves consideration. To do so I shall next consider the conversion on Longinus in Piers Plowman, passus 18. In both Piers Plowman and Troilus and Criseyde there appears a cry for compassion upon another. In Trolius this cry is made by Troilus in Criseyde’s mind— she thinks “But I on him have mercy and pitee”[7] aloud when considering his state of irrational and unpreventable infatuation, just as in Piers Plowman Longinus asks for “mercy”[8] from Christ at the point of his conversion. It is interesting to note that a similar semantic field is used in both examples, considering that scholarship generally dictates that religious devotion and secular love remain apart.

Further to this point, it is interesting to consider that the males of these poems are the ones asking for mercy. Just as Longinus succeeds in harming Christ, his body fails him, and by healing Longinus is found to be wrong in his beliefs. This is also similar to how Troilus succeeds in bedding Criseyde only for his body to fail him on a sexual level. Whilst Troilus failure is distinctly male, Calabrese notes that the failure of the physical and mortal body provide a level of spiritual elevation for the reader.[9] Additionally as Longinus despite winning the joust (and harming Christ) his body too fails him in the healing. This is a complex point but one which can be considered. In healing of blindness Longinus is proven wrong of his Jewish beliefs. In the C Text of Piers Plowman the additional note of “wepene”[10] can be found when Longinus stabs Christ, according to Calabrese this in turn refers back to the erection which fails Will in Passus 9. So whilst Longinus succeeds in harming Christ his erection is misguided, in the same way that Criseyde’s affection towards Troilus is misguided by Pandarus’ words and later by Troilus’ sexual failure.

Windeatt’s commentary on Troilus and Criseyde also considers the theory that religious conversion is comparable to the moment of falling in love. He also notes that the courtly relationship between a lover and lady is similar to the suppliant and the mercy giver, an equivalence which can be easily drawn between Christ and Longinus in Piers Plowman. It is also of note that the moment Troilus and Criseyde encounter one another are both at moments of religious activity, with Troilus seeing Criseyde whilst visiting a reliquary[11], and Criseyde viewing Troilus on a devotional triumph from her closet.[12] Windeatt also notes that Chaucer through the voice of Pandarus in his rhetoric compares visiting Criseyde to going to a place of worship.[13] The notion of these moments of sight occurring on religious grounds can also be comparable as Christ’s Crucifixion was thought in medieval religious theory to have been at the foot of Adam’s Grave, and therefore when Longinus kneels to Christ he is upon Adam in supplication also.

It is of importance to consider the sights that Longinus and Criseyde experience are both of chivalric knights. The ideas surrounding love in the Middle Ages were intrinsically linked to the code of chivalry which was practised during this period and particularly prominent in literature. Knights were thought to embody this code of chivalry, they were considered “the champions of chivalry.”[14] And the sight of a Knight was thought to reflect the inward qualities of their person such as their armour and other array. This is noted particularly in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, who is described as having expensive and rare clothing.[15] So by seeing Troilus in his Knight’s array and upon a steed she encounters him as a lover whilst he is in, someone who possesses chivalry and this makes the sight all the more moving. An interesting contrast could then be considered between Troilus and the Knight of Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale’ whose array certainly does not live up to the chivalric expectation, but this is an argument which cannot be considered in this essay. Equally, by Longinus seeing Christ in as a knight (although in the body of Piers) he is equally moved and experiences the ferocity and impact of the chivalric code in its religious context.

Finally I shall consider that these moving sights are in some way completed by force and coercion. Criseyde sees Troilus after a long discussion with Pandarus, and her being in her closet is due to this manipulation and desire to be alone with her thoughts. The presence of Pandarus and his manipulation complicates not only the plot itself but also the effect of the sight of Troilus upon Criseyde. The narrator notes that “And every word gan up and doun to winde, That he hadde seyd, as it com hir to minde”[16] The words used by the narrator can be analysed in order to further understand the effect Pandarus’ words have had on Criseyde. The descri ption that the words are being wound up and down gives the notion of contemplation and weaving, she is tied to these words and unable to withdraw from the scenario. Additionally the thoughts are clearly not her own, it is what “he hadde seyd”[17] that comes to her mind rather than her own thoughts. And these thoughts are still under her consideration when Troilus appears.

In a similar sense, the audience reading or hearing (as these poems were likely read aloud considering literacy levels) Piers Plowman would also be able to view a certain level of force in Longinus’ healing and conversion. Lines 80 to 84 of Passus 18 reveal a level of unwillingness of Longinus to act. Schmidt’s translation of Piers Plowman notes that Longinus was “standing there in the open… against his will.”[18] Whilst this line appears in the translation, it is harder to source in the original B Text. However this is not to say that the idea of force cannot be found in the B Text. Barney in his commentary on the B and C texts notes that his pleas of ignorance given in line 88 of the B version show an interesting note “Ayein my wille it was, Lord, to wownde yow so soore”[19] This plea seems to follow a later legend and as it only occurs after the healing of his blindness shows the moving nature of Christ’s death.

To conclude, the effects of powerful and moving sights in Middle English Poetry such as Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2 and Piers Plowman, Passus 18 can be considered as follows. Firstly these sights are not to be considered as singular sensory experiences but have effects to which the whole body and soul must be considered. They can change the very status of a person from a warrior to lover, and from heretic to believer. They can also change the status of the world around the people, from one of success to of failure and change the position men and women have within the world.[20] Furthermore the nature of the sights matters, they are both of Knights which hold prominent appeal in Medieval theory of love and devotion, and it is due to this similarity in prominence that the sights in Piers Plowman and Troilus and Criseyde can be considered as comparable. Finally these sights are not working alone, the figures who experience them are often coerced or manipulated into their experience so just as sensory perception in the Middle Ages was not an individual sense, neither can these sights be considered as such.

Bibliography.

Barney, Stephen A., The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman: C Passus 20-22, B Passus 18-20 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 2006), v.5, 1㫫.

Benson, David C., Public Piers Plowman (USA, Penn State Press, 2010.)

Calabrese, Michael, ‘Being a Man in Piers Plowman and Troilus and Criseyde’, in Men and Masculinities in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (Chaucer Studies), ed. by Tison Pugh and Marcia Marzec (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2008)

Caviness, Madeline H, Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Socio Economy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.)

Chaucer, Geoffrey, Troilus and Criseyde, ed. by Barry Windeatt (London: Penguin Classics, 2003.)

De Loyer, P. A Treatise of Spectors or Straunge Sights, Visions and Apparitions Appearing Sensibly Unto Men. Edited by Zachary Jones. (London: Vals. for M Lownes, 1605.)

Dr, Suzannah Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (United States: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.)

Helgerson, Richard, ‘Tasso on Spenser: The Politics of Chivalric Romance’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 21 (1991), 153㫛.

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Langland, William, A V C Schmidt, Piers Plowman: A New Translation of the B-Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.)

Langland, W and Pearsall William, Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the c-Text, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2008).

Langland, William, and A V C Schmidt, Vision of Piers Plowman: ‘B’ Text, 2nd edn (London: Everyman, 1995.)

Leffert, Carleigh, The Chivalric Gawain (Florida: University of South Florida, 2015)

Mitchel, Jerome, and William Provost, eds., Chaucer, The Love Poet, 1st edn (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1973.)

Newhauser, Richard G, ed., A Cultural History of the Senses, 1st edn (London: Bloomsbury, 2014.)

Ralston, Michael Earl, ‘The Tradition of the Harrowing of Hell in Piers Plowman’, Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University, 1 (1976.)

Swami, Viren, Attraction Explained: The Science of How We Form Relationships (United Kingdom: Routledge, 2016.)

Tolkien, J. R. R. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: With Pearl and Sir Orfeo (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.)

Windeatt, B. A., Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.)

Young, Karl, ‘Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” as Romance’, PMLA, 53 (1938), 38.

[1] Langland and Schmidt, 1995. All further references to Piers Plowman within this essay are to this edition.

[2] Chaucer and Windeatt, 2002. All further references to Troilus and Criseyde within this essay are to this edition.

[3] Biernoff. 2002: 3.

[4] Swami, 2015: 5.

[5] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 651.

[6] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 675-680.

[7] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 655.

[8] Piers Plowman, passus 18, l. 87.

[9] Calabrese, 2008:163.

[10] Piers Plowman, C Text, passus 20, l. 101.

[11] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 1, l. 267.

[12] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 645.

[13] Windeatt, 1992: 233.

[14] M. H. Abrams, 2000: 95.

[15] Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l.571-600. “Turkestan silk…/… bedecked all with gold.”

[16] Troilus and Criseyde, Book 2, l. 601-602.

[17] Ibid.

[18] William Langland, A V C Schmidt, Piers Plowman, A New Translation of the B Text. 2009:212.

[19] Piers Plowman, passus 18, l. 88.

[20] Calabrese, 2008:163.