Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
7 - The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Note on References
- Introduction: A Modern Medievalist's Career
- 1 Derek Brewer: Chaucerian Studies 1953–78
- 2 Brewer's Chaucer and the Knightly Virtues
- 3 Class Distinction and the French of England
- 4 Time in Troilus and Criseyde
- 5 Virtue, Intention and the Mind's Eye in Troilus and Criseyde
- 6 Falling in Love in the Middle Ages
- 7 The Idea of Feminine Beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, or Criseyde's Eyebrow
- 8 ‘Greater Love Hath No Man’: Friendship in Medieval English Romance
- 9 Gowerian Laughter
- 10 Derek Brewer's Romance
- 11 Malory and Late Medieval Arthurian Cycles
- 12 The Ends of Storytelling
- 13 Manuscripts, Facsimiles, Approaches to Editing
- 14 Words and Dictionaries: OED, MED and Chaucer
- 15 Afterlives: The Fabulous History of Venus
- Afterword: Derek Brewer: with ful deuout corage
- Bibliography
- Index
- Tabula in Memoriam
Summary
Like everyone else who knew Derek Brewer, I feel extremely lucky to have done so, and I treasure the memory of all our conversations. In particular, I remember one that prompted considerable amusement for both of us. It was a discussion of Criseyde's joined eyebrows: Derek arguing with both learned authority and great humour that such a feature was not regarded as unattractive in the classical sources. Since then, I have often reflected on Criseyde's appearance, and on the function of beauty in Troilus and Criseyde, and have returned to Derek's foundational article: ‘The Ideal of Feminine Beauty in Medieval Literature’ (1955a). This, then, is the argument I would have liked to have put forward to Derek that day in Emmanuel and a development, albeit in a retrograde fashion, from the ‘ideal’ he made so necessary a part of the text to an ‘idea’ of beauty in Troilus and Criseyde.
Towards the end of Troilus and Criseyde, around 7,000 lines after we first encounter her, the narrator gives us his most sustained account of Criseyde's appearance:
Criseyde mene was of hire stature,
Therto of shap, of face and ek of cheere,
Ther myghte ben no fairer creature;
And ofte tyme this was hire manere,
To gon y-tressed with hire heres clere
Doun by hire coler at hire bak byhynde,
Which with a thred of gold she wolde bynde.
And saue hire browes ioyneden y-feere,
Ther nas no lakke in aught I kan espien;
But forto speken of hire eyen cleere,
Lo, trewely, they written that hire syen,
That Paradis stood formed in hire eyen;
And with hire riche beaute euere more
Strof loue in hire ay which of hem was more.
(5. 806-19)- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English LiteratureThe Influence of Derek Brewer, pp. 111 - 127Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013