Wilcockson, Colin. “The woodbind and the nightingale images in Troilus and Criseyde
Book II, lines 918 and book III, lines 1230-1239.” Notes and Queries 49(2002): 320-323.
Colin believes that Marie de France’s lais show great similarities to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. The lais of Marie de France were translated from Old French into English in the fourteenth century. They were very popular and easily available to a reader in Chaucer’s day. Two of Marie’s lais, Chievrefeuille and Laüstic are very likely referenced in Troilus and Criseyde.
Criseyde sees herself as an individual easily manipulated by romance, by some force she has no control over. She is therefore not responsible for her own actions. When she sees Troilus ride by on his horse, she cannot help falling in love. Wilcockson says, “She becomes a figure in romance, as she appears to align herself with Isolde whose passionate love for Tristan commenced when she unwittingly drank a love potion.” Criseyde exclaims, ‘Who yaf me drynke?’ She is assuming Isolde’s role of love due to outside forces.
There appear to be links between Marie de France’s story of Tristan and Isolde in the Lai du Chievrefeuille and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. “When Troilus and Criseyde consummate their love, Chaucer compares their entwined limbs with the entwining of woodbind (the alternative name for honeysuckle) with a tree.” There are a number of instances in literature where a vine attached to a tree describes an embrace of two lovers. There is only one instance of honeysuckle, instead of the normally referenced ivy. The Lai du Chievrefeuille literally means ‘The Story of the Honeysuckle.’
In Marie’s story, Tristan is banished from his land so he must leave his love, Isolde. Criseyde likewise must leave her love Troilus because she is banished from her homeland, in Chaucer’s tale. When Criseyde discovers that she must leave Troy, Chaucer uses the imagery of entwinement once again.
As she that hadde hire herte and al hire mynde
On Troilus iset so wonder faste
That al this world ne myghte hire love unbynde
(IV, 673-5)
Criseyde promises to return to Troilus, but quickly forgets him when she falls in love with Diomede. Marie’s Lai du Chievrefeuille “warned that should the honeysuckle be wrenched from the tree, both plants would wither:
But if anyone can wrench them apart
The hazel-tree will swiftly die
And the honeysuckle, too.
(Lai du Chievrefeuille, 74-6)
Chaucer follows the honeysuckle imagery with a stanza about the nightingale. Marie’s lais also moved from a story mentioning honeysuckle to a story about a nightingale. This seems highly coincidental. When Criseyde first hears from Antigone about the wonderful state of being in love, she lies in bed unable to sleep due to the song of the nightingale. Marie writes a similar passage when the lady in Laüstic tells her husband that she cannot sleep due to the nightingale’s song. She is in fact meeting her lover from afar, both looking at each other from their private balconies. She uses the nightingale as an excuse so her husband will hopefully not discover her secret love. Marie and the lady are both in the same state of having fallen in, tragically fated, love.
A nyghtyngale, upon a cedre grene,
Under the chamber wal there as she ley,
Ful loude song ayein the moone shene,
Peraunter in his briddes wise a lay
Ove love, that made hire herte fressh and gay
That herkned she so longe in good entente,
Til at the laste the dede slep hire hente.
(Troilus and Criseyde)
There is no greater joy in the world,
Than to hear the nightingale sing.
Because of that you see me here.
So sweetly is it heard at night
Which seems a great pleasure to me;
So much does it delight me and so much do I wake
That my eyes cannot sleep.
(Laüstic)
The lady in Laüstic does not mention love because that would only make her husband suspicious. Her husband still becomes suspicious, and decides to kill the nightingale. He murders the bird and shows the lady, to distress her. The lady and her lover never meet again, due to the possibility of the husband’s discovery. The lady’s lover carries the bird’s dead body around with him in constant remembrance of his lost love.
Both stories end tragically with the love being lost. I found it extremely intriguing that Chaucer would have read Marie de France and borrowed her imagery. The fact that Chaucer was inspired by Marie de France connects the literature that our class has read this semester. I knew that Chaucer was inspired by Boccaccio, and other Italian authors, but not French author, Marie de France.
Cassia Herndon 12/06
