Medieval Go-betweens and Chaucer's Pandarus: Love and Lust (New Middle Ages) Book

This book explores the rich, complex literary tradition of the medieval go-between. After two-and-a-half centuries of romances about lords and ladies perishing of idealized desire, and three centuries of misogynistic fabliaux, exempla, and comic Latin tales, this profoundly divided tradition yields Chaucer's Pandarus, who goes between in Troilus and Criseyde. When love is lust in this tradition, go-betweens are typically ancient crones who hobble about capturing women for men for a price. Their tales flourish from deep misogynistic roots, and woman-loathing energizes story after story. When love is idealized, on the other hand, go-betweens are typically as aristocratic as the couples they serve. They go between not to entrap one person for the other but because both man and woman are equally paralyzed by the enormity of their mutual love. Idealized going between usually leads to marriage, and it develops a new dimension of the much debated question of courtly love and woman's part in it. Chaucer's Pandarus's place in this go-between tradition is a tour de force. He is a literary double-exposure, as if two photographs appeared on a single frame of film. An idealized go-between in every outward respect, Pandarus nevertheless acts the part of a worldly go-between, capturing the woman for the man. Via Pandarus's double identification with the go-between tradition's contradictory meanings for desire, Chaucer suspends Troilus and Criseyde's story irreconcilably between lust and idealized passionate romantic love. Read More