Oculos Habent, et Non Videbunt: Sight, Perception and Interpretation in the Narrative of Troilus and Criseyde
In his extended analysis of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Chauncey Wood notes that “Perhaps more than any other motif in the poem, the idea of blindness is the key to unlocking the tone of the work.” The poem continually foregrounds “eyen” as a malleable symbol that encompasses both physical and metaphorical sight and perception – and the absence of these faculties – in the narrator and the characters he portrays. Blindness in this poem is not simply the loss of physical sight, but the inability to intellectually perceive, interpret, and apply the lessons that the world of the text offers its characters, regarding ‘love’ and ‘fortune’ …show more content…
The narrator highlights inward blindness from the outset. In Book One, although Troilus seems to “wisely” see the blindness of the “verray fooles” who follow love, he is blinded by “foul presumpcion” from perceiving his own susceptibility to the blindness he mocks. This love-blindness is brought about in him when “His eye precede, and so depe it wente,/Til on Criseyde it smot, and there it stente.” Paradoxically, Troilus is inwardly blinded by love at the very moment he is transfixed by the physical sight of Criseyde. This seeming paradox highlights blindness as a deprivation of sight “when dazzled with a bright light,” and indeed, Criseyde is described as a “fir” which engulfs Troilus’ “herte, which that is his brestes yë.” Troilus’ inward inability to perceive his own weakness thus leads him to be dazzled by the physical sight of Criseyde; a blinding that further clouds his inward sight. No longer simply obscured by pride, his heart is now further blinded by a insatiable desire for an idealised image of Criseyde in the “mirour of his mynde.” The effect of vision on Troilus, described above, seems to follow an intellectualist account of the human psyche, where “choices of the will result from that which the intellect recognizes as good; the will itself is determined.” Troilus sees his will as compelled to love Criseyde, because his mind has conceived of her as a “Good goodly,” a summum bonum towards which his will is
In his extended analysis of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, Chauncey Wood notes that “Perhaps more than any other motif in the poem, the idea of blindness is the key to unlocking the tone of the work.” The poem continually foregrounds “eyen” as a malleable symbol that encompasses both physical and metaphorical sight and perception – and the absence of these faculties – in the narrator and the characters he portrays. Blindness in this poem is not simply the loss of physical sight, but the inability to intellectually perceive, interpret, and apply the lessons that the world of the text offers its characters, regarding ‘love’ and ‘fortune’ …show more content…
The narrator highlights inward blindness from the outset. In Book One, although Troilus seems to “wisely” see the blindness of the “verray fooles” who follow love, he is blinded by “foul presumpcion” from perceiving his own susceptibility to the blindness he mocks. This love-blindness is brought about in him when “His eye precede, and so depe it wente,/Til on Criseyde it smot, and there it stente.” Paradoxically, Troilus is inwardly blinded by love at the very moment he is transfixed by the physical sight of Criseyde. This seeming paradox highlights blindness as a deprivation of sight “when dazzled with a bright light,” and indeed, Criseyde is described as a “fir” which engulfs Troilus’ “herte, which that is his brestes yë.” Troilus’ inward inability to perceive his own weakness thus leads him to be dazzled by the physical sight of Criseyde; a blinding that further clouds his inward sight. No longer simply obscured by pride, his heart is now further blinded by a insatiable desire for an idealised image of Criseyde in the “mirour of his mynde.” The effect of vision on Troilus, described above, seems to follow an intellectualist account of the human psyche, where “choices of the will result from that which the intellect recognizes as good; the will itself is determined.” Troilus sees his will as compelled to love Criseyde, because his mind has conceived of her as a “Good goodly,” a summum bonum towards which his will is