Calabrese, Michael A. Chaucer’s Ovidian Art of Love. Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 1994.
The book, Chaucer’s Ovidian Art of Love by Michael A. Calabrese, provides insight into how Chaucer uses Ovidian concepts in many of his works including the Troilus and Criseyde. Calabrese writes this book with the purpose of informing people interested in medieval literature of the great influence Ovid’s works had over Chaucer’s love poetry. This review will focus on the introduction and the second chapter titled, “Love, Change, and Ovidian ‘Game’ in the Troilus: Book I and II” to show how Calabrese connects Ovid’s writings and themes to the Troilus and Criseyde. Calabrese starts his book by immediately claiming that, “No other classical author exerts so great an influence on medieval literature” as Ovid (1). In Chaucer’s medieval understanding, Ovid provides “the copious glosses, categorizations, moralizations, and allegorizations that introduce or literally surround the words of any text by an auctor” (3). However, Chaucer does not just use the original texts of Ovid, but commentary on his works, such as those made by Boccaccio or Jean de Meun. By studying Ovid and his commentators, Calabrese asserts that Chaucer creates his own definition of the ‘art of love’. In the second chapter of this book, Calabrese attempts to show how Chaucer makes both Pandarus and Criseyde, “act with the ‘wisdom’ of an Ovidian perspective” (6). He argues that one must study Chaucer’s interpretation of the original source, Boccaccio’s Filostrato, to understand to what extent Chaucer uses Ovid’s ‘perspective’ in the Troilus and Criseyde. He states that Chaucer intensifies the Boccaccian work by bring in Ovidian rhetoric. By doing so, “Chaucer brings to the fore a conflict that in Boccaccio’s poem is only embryonic and not specifically Ovidian: the struggle between protean rhetorical strategy and the grievous world of flux and mutability, in Chaucer’s terms between ‘game’ and ‘ernst’” (35). Interestingly Calabrese points out that Troilus, unlike Criseyde and Pandarus, does not want to play the Ovidian game, and suffers for it. Troilus “pledges to maintain ‘trouthe’” which in itself goes against all of Ovid’s teaching. Thus, Calabrese explains that Pandarus must “adopt the voice of the Ovidian love counselor” (37). Pandarus in this role guides Troilus through the “game of love” by teaching him Ovidian lessons such as rhetoric, and manor. Calabrese suggests that by adding an Ovidian context Chaucer takes out all intellect, power, or control that Boccaccio originally gave his Troilo. Chaucer, according to Calabrese, describes Pandarus as having “vast Ovidian wisdom” and as “the author of the ‘game,’ and the drama of the poem hinges on his imagined vision of love and truth” (39). The fact that Pandarus from the beginning of the text sees the whole love affair as a game shows Chaucer’s Ovidian interjections into Boccaccio’s text, since Pandaro only functions as a “useful go-between” for the two lovers (40). Calabrese also connects Criseyde’s language with that of Ovid’s Helen. He suggests that Criseyde’s “echoes of Helen…portray her…as crafty and able to adjust to circumstances without ever losing verbal control or dropping her rhetorical guard” (48). In this way, Chaucer identifies Criseyde as an Ovidian character who has the ability to compromise and attack change, with more change. The tragedy only occurs, according to Calabrese, when the game is mistaken for truth. Hence, Troilus is the only character who feels betrayed and hurt at the end of the story. The heartbreak takes place when the lovers forget that “all things change and that a successful Ovidian lover has to change too” (49). Calabrese provides enough support and strong analysis to back his claim that Chaucer uses Ovidian ideas and themes in his Troilus and Criseyde. His argument provides insight into why the situations that occur do not affect Pandarus and Criseyde in the same way as they do Troilus. Since Troilus does not see his relationship with Criseyde as a game, he cannot move on once she abandons him. Calabrese reinforces his already strong argument, when he shows the difference between Chaucer’s version of the Troilus and Criseyde and the Filostrato by Boccaccio. The examples in which Chaucer blatantly changed Boccaccio’s original characterizations, shows the intentional insertion of Ovidian themes Michael Calabrese’s analysis sparks questions on not just how Chaucer puts Ovidian themes into the Troilus, but for what reason. Calabrese should have answered more fully, why Chaucer transformed Boccaccio’s text into one in which the characters play a “game” of love. Calabrese does say that Chaucer writes his own ideas about love in the text, but he never actually says what those ideas are, how Chaucer develops these ideas. He also does not tell the reader what he should take away from this understanding of Chaucer’s allusions to Ovid throughout his work, other than just accepting that they are there. Therefore, Calabrese provides a very well written and supported argument stating that Chaucer knows the texts of Ovid and uses them frequently in his works; however, he does not answer the question, why?
