conventions of courtly love. Further to this point, Howard looks at Chaucer's life in terms of the imminent decline of feudalism and the myth of chivalry, and the beginnings of a large-scale transformation of medieval culture toward the high achievements of the Renaissance. He suggests that Chaucer's life and work, undergoing the personal transformations associated with the vicissitudes of courtly life under Richard II, was illustrative of a society and culture that was itself in transformation (Howard xv). According to Howard, for all practical purposes "by Chaucer's time scholasticism seemed formalistic and abstract, frigidly academic, and irrelevant to the realities of life" (Howard 31).
The realities of life for Richard II, of course, devolved into his abdication. Similarly, the realities of life for Criseyde as an individual and as a representative type of woman seem central to understanding her behavior and psychology in the unfolding narrative of Troilus and Criseyde. To see how this comes about, it is useful to review the shifting of Criseyde's position in the pattern of ideas contained in the poem. At the beginning of the poem, Criseyde is a Trojan widow in fairly comfortable circumstances. To be sure, Troy is at war with Greece, and her father Calkas, a high priest and prophet, has rather sneaked away from his fellow Trojans to offer his services to Troy. The beautiful young widow Criseyde puts herself at Hector's mercy as a survival strategy and has a modest, stable life until she is spotted by the warrior prince Troilus, who becomes a "slave to love," his "heart in thrall" to Criseyde's beauty (I.33-34).
Criseyde, for all her beauty, is very much acted upon, the object of men's whims, desires, and actions, starting with the unfit parent Calkas, and continuing with Hector, Troilus, Pandarus, and Diomedes. This is perfectly consistent with the real-world position of most women up to, including, and beyond Chaucer's day, ...