The Use Of Love In Troilus And Criseyde

14 Pages 3564 Words

the Love of God because it is steadfast and true and will get them to heaven. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, there is no specific passage that explicitly says that Divine Love is better than earthly love; however, the message is implied throughout the entire three books of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. When Dante is with Virgil, his actions are centered on Virgil, a human being. And Virgil, seeing as he is only a human, can only lead Dante through Hell and Purgatory. It is Beatrice, a spiritual being, who guides Dante through Paradise. By turning his focus from the physical realm of Virgil to the spiritual realm of Beatrice, Dante is able to go through Paradise and ultimately see God.
We see the narrator of Troilus and Criseyde reflect the sentiments that loving God is best in the following lines:
And loveth hym, the which that right for love
Upon a crois, oure soules for to beye,
First starf, and roos, and sit in hevene above;
For he nyl falsen no wight, dar I seye,
That wol his herte al holly on hym leye. (V, 1842-6)
When liminally translated, this passage says to love him who, out of true love, died upon a cross and rose and sits in heaven; for he will not deceive any living creature who on him lays all his heart.
I’d like to take a moment to focus on the word “falsen.” According to the Middle English Dictionary, this word means “to deceive, deal treacherously with, or be unfaithful to
Page 3
(a person).” The word appears three times in Troilus and Criseyde, once in the above instance, and twice in Book III (Tatlock 294). In the above example, Jesus Christ will not “falsen” any living creature who trusts in him. The narrator is very emphatic on the point that Jesus won’t deceive, using both alliteration (For, falsen; nyl, no) and double negatives (nyl, no) to stress the importance of his assertion.
While the Love of Jesus Christ will never deceive, the same is not necessarily true of human love, as we ca...