Courtney’s Blog

Calabrese, Michael A.  Chaucer’s Ovidian Arts of Love.  Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1994.

            Michael Calabrese’s Chaucer’s Ovidian Arts of Love explores the context in which Chaucer would have known Ovid and how Chaucer applied this knowledge to his works.  Consisting of five chapters and an introduction, Calabrese’s book divides the topic into two areas.  First Calabrese explores the medieval dialogue on Ovid’s life and works.  Then Calabrese examines how Chaucer used the information, with a special emphasis on Troilus and Criseyde.

            Calabrese’s first chapter examines the context in which Chaucer knew Ovid.  For the medieval scholar, according to Calabrese, Ovid’s life and his writings were a single meta narrative to be interpreted (13).  Medieval critics knew Ovid began as a love poet before switching to more serious subjects after he was exiled (Calabrese 15).  Calabrese says scholars discussed the correct context in which to read Ovid (23).  One version read Ovid as a moral voice, in which a work like Ars Amatoria III serves to teach women to be retained by men as is proper (Calabrese 26).  In contrast, another school of thought declared Ovid immoral, notably in an anonymous text entitled Antiovidianus (Calabrese 24).  Calabrese explains how this author argued that Ovid used attractive poetry to hide sinful advice (28).  It is from these understandings that Chaucer writes.

            Calabrese also examines Ovid and Troilus and Criseyde, in which he notes how both Ovid’s Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses come into play.  Calabrese says that Chaucer uses these sources in his examination of how rhetoric is used to control change, and ultimately fails (35).  According to Calabrese, Troilus becomes a battleground for the different Ovidian perspectives (36).  Calabrese says that Troilus is initially in a world of Ovidian rhetoric, dominated by Pandarus (36).  However, Troilus lacks the language skills so prized by Ovid and Pandarus, and is therefore controlled by those who do succeed in rhetoric (Calabrese 36).  However, Calabrese says that rhetoric skill does not continue to dominate.  It is when the characters must deal with changes that Chaucer moves in the world of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Calabrese 51).  Calabrese says that since Ovid’s remedies for love fail Troilus, Chaucer is exploring how a world based in words fail those seeking truths (72).  Troilus, the only character who desires love to reflect something meaningful, is the one who dies, while the others continue in the false world of rhetoric (Calabrese 72).  

            Michael Calabrese’s book examined how Chaucer was influenced by Ovid’s works with a special focus on the Ars Amatoria and the Metamorphoses.  Calabrese argues that towards the end of Troilus and Criseyde, the characters face changes, a theme from the Metamorphoses, and learn that the rhetorical arts praised earlier, drawn from the Ars Amatoria, nor longer suffice.  I found this an interesting interpretation, especially as Criseyde copes with being sent to the Greeks and Troilus deals with the separation and later her betrayal.  However, I found myself reconsidering Calabrese’s assertion that the earlier advice drawn from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, ceases to function.  By taking a new lover to replace the old, Criseyde adapts to her new circumstances and survives.  Also, her new lover Diomede is a better rhetorician than Troilus ever was.  The Ovidian arts of love may fail Troilus, but not Criseyde.  In considering this, I decided that Chaucer’s combination of the more lighthearted Ars Amatoria and the Metamorphoses is not entirely to reveal the flaws of rhetoric to control the world, as Calabrese argues.  The end of Troilus and Criseyde serves to show a dark side to the seemingly lighter arts of love.  Criseyde obeys the rules and exchanges one lover for another when the first becomes inconvenient, and this in turn reveals how Ovid’s guidebook on love can hurt people.  Love cannot have a guidebook because people are too real and emotional to have their lives reduced to some witty advice.  This ties in with Calabrese’s explanation that some saw Ovid’s works as immoral.  A world constructed by rhetoric is a world that is ultimately selfish, as one uses words to manipulate others.  Troilus is unable to obey the rules and dies.  However, Criseyde, who does obey the rules and betrays him for the more convenient Diomede, in turn harmed him. I agreed with Calabrese’s interest in how Ovid shaped Chaucer, but found a different interpretation supported by Chaucer’s use of the Ovidian influence in the text of Troilus and Criseyde.

             Calabrese’s book attempts the useful task of placing an important influence on Chaucer, Ovid, in context and also exploring how that influence is reflected in Chaucer’s writings.  I found some parts of Calabrese’s analysis of Chaucer, Ovid, and Troilus and Criseyde interesting, but disagreed with the direction he chose.  Calabrese’s arguments are not perfect, but the context he provides is helpful in drawing my own conclusions about Ovid’s appearances in Chaucer’s works.

Courtney Brown