¹ Troilus and Criseyde (London 1984). We follow our sources in spelling either Clio or Cleo. Google Scholar

² Citations to the works of Chaucer are from The Riverside Chaucer (ed. Benson, L. D.; Boston 1987), and will be identified hereafter by abbreviated title and line number.Google Scholar

³ Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (trans. Fisk, W. R.; New York 1953) 228–46. See Plato's, Republic, 8 (548b), where the true Muse is companion of discussion and philosophy.Google Scholar

⁴ No one doubts Chaucer's acquaintance with the Metamorphoses. We suspect he uses a feature of this particular story in the Knight's Tale illustration found in the Temple of Mars where a woman suffering in delayed childbirth calls out to Lucina for help (CT 1.2083–2085). Ovid recounts the difficult labor of Euippe, who called to Lucina nine times in order to give birth to the nine Pierides (5, 303–304).Google Scholar

⁵ Text and translation follow the bilingual edition of Singleton, Charles S., The Divine Comedy (Bollingen Series 80; Princeton 1970–1975).Google Scholar

⁶ See Ziolkowski, J., ‘Classical Influences on Medieval Latin Views on Poetic Inspiration,’ Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition (Godman, P. and Murray, O., eds.; Oxford 1990) 15–38. Aldhelm refutes both Apollo and the Muses in the Prologue to his Aenigmata:Google Scholar

Ed. Stork N. P., Through a Glass Darkly: Aldhelm's Riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C XIII. (Toronto 1990).

⁷ Prudentius, , Hymnus III:Google Scholar

In Johannidos, Flavius says ‘musa est rustica namque mea’ (Praefatio 28).

⁸ For representative favorable views of the Muses, see Rabanus Maurus, ‘Ad Isambertum presbiterum,’ MGH, Poetae Aevi Karolii (PAK) (ed. Duemmler, E. L. et al.; Berlin 1883–1923) 2, 191; Nigellus, E., ‘In laudem Pippini regis’ and ‘ad eundum Pippinum,’ MGH PAK 2, 29 and 85; ‘Goteschalco monacho,’ MGH PAK 2, 362; Walafrid Strabo, Visio Wettini (ed. Traill, D. A.; Bern 1974) 104–106, 173–75, in addition to those examples cited by Curtius, European Literature (n. 3 above) 237.Google Scholar

⁹ The text is Ovide moralisé (ed. C. de Boer; Vaduz 1984). Associated with the Pierides are the ‘seraines fausses,’ the attracters to worldly delights. Unlike the Muses, they are virgins ‘por de que nul bon fruit ne font’ (2, 3500). The frequent alignment of the Muses with instruction, or Philosophy, is pertinent to Chaucer's close of his book, where he directs his poem to kiss the steps of Statius (5, 1792), and places it under the correction of ‘philosophical Strode’ (5, 1857).Google Scholar

¹⁰ 11,2, 113a–b (ed. Romano, V.; Bari 1951) 2, 539–42.Google Scholar

¹¹ The Pythagorean identification of the Muses with the music of the spheres is common in the late Middle Ages. John Scot Erigena, Annotationes in Marcianum 19.17–20.5 (ed. Lutz, C. E.; Cambridge, Mass. 1939) explains the nine Muses as cosmic music. Bernardus Silvestris, in his Commentum in Martianus 3.75, has Calliope as ‘armonia celestis’ (ed. Westra, H. J.; Toronto 1986). Remigius of Auxerre notes: ‘Totius mundi armoniam novem ptongis constare manifestum est …’ (Commentum in Martianum Capellam 19.11 [ed. Lutz, C. E.; Leiden 1962] 102–103). His Greek ptongis ‘notes’ (see Modern English diphthong) echoes John Scot's enneaptongon (Annotationes 19.17), which suggests clear enunciation of both voice and musical instrument. Robertson, D. W., Jr., A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton 1963) 117, says that ‘to achieve the wisdom to hear their [the Muses’] voices was to achieve immortality.’Google Scholar

¹² Boitani, P., Chaucer and the Imaginary World of Fame (Cambridge 1984) 15.Google Scholar

¹³ McCall, J. P., Chaucer Among the Gods (University Park, PA 1979) 38–41, notes that Clio is ‘the companion of the rhetorician’ who conveys a hopeful report. Fame, or one's good name, is always hopeful. Walafrid Strabo's ‘De imagine tetrici’ (MGH PAK 2, 370–78) identifies the Muses with Scintilla ‘Spark’ who is his own talent in general and his poetic line in particular. The image of the poetic enterprise as a boat at sea, with which Chaucer opens his Proem, is a common trope. Sidonius Appollinarus’ fifth-century ‘Panagyric to Avitius’ is the earliest example we can find of one who attaches it to the figure of the Muse:Google Scholar

(ed. Mohr P.; Leipzig 1895).

¹⁴ The text is Papinii, P., Statii Opera (Studiis Societatis Bipontinae; Biponti 1785). Wetherbee, W., Chaucer and the Poets (Ithaca 1984) 149–51, makes a good case for Chaucer's direct use of Statius. Tydeus is the father of the Diomede who in Troilus wins Criseyde with his frank tongue.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Cornutus, , De natura deorum XIV (ed. J.-B. Caspar d'Ansse de Villoison and Osannus, F.; Göttingen 1844) 43–52.Google Scholar

¹⁶ European Literature, (n. 3 above) 309.Google Scholar

¹⁷ The edition is Ausonius, ‘Opuscula’ (ed. Peiper, R.; Leipzig 1886) 412. Ausonius’ list is repeated word for word in the ninth-century ‘Nomina Musarum’ in the Codex Valencenensis (Anthologica Latina, ed. Riese, A.; Leipzig 1869–70) 2, 120. The late eighth- or early ninth-century Codex Salmasiani ‘De Musis’ in the same collection has: ‘Clio saecla retro memorat sermone soluto’ and Calliope ‘doctis dat laurea serta poetis.’ John of Garland's thirteenth-century commentary on Ovid, Integumenta Ouidii (ed. Ghisalberti, F.; Milan 1933) 254, has historia for Clio and ‘cithara … vox’ for Calliope.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Opera, proem to the Liber Mitologiarum 1, 15 (ed. Helm, R. W. O.; Leipzig 1898) 25. The Second Vatican Mythographer—Scriptores rerum mythicarum (ed. G.-H. Bode; Celle, 1834)—follows Fulgentius: ‘Clio, quasi cogitatio prima discendi,’ and Calliope, ‘vel optimae vocis, vel optima tribuens’ (II, 24) before summing up in his Versus novem Musarum: ‘Clio gesta canens … Carmina Calliope libris heroica mandat,’ which clearly identifies Calliope with heroic poetry. The Third Vatican Mythographer has the same list and cites Fulgentius as his source (III, 8, 18), but the First Mythographer has: ‘Clio, id est cognitio quaerendae scientiae,’ and Calliope, ‘id est optimae vocis’ (I, 114). John Scot, in Annotationes 19.7, aligns the Muses with the planets and says of Calliope: ‘hoc autem dicitur quia Mercurius sermonum pulchritudinem ut poete fingunt efficit,’ and of Cleo: ‘interpretari vocans, quoniam luna menstruum revocat lumen.’ In his Commentum 19.11, Remigius has ‘His omnibus omnis humanae locutionis honestas gignitur quae Calliope’; and ‘inde Clio, hoc est bona fama, nascitur.’ Eberhard of Béthune, sometime in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, wrote a metrical De Nominibus Musarum et Gentilium—Graecismus (ed. Wrobel, I.; Wratislav 1987), 22–26—which identifies Calliope ‘quasi Callophone sic quarta uocatur,’ and Clio ‘tamquam meditatio rerum.’Google Scholar

¹⁹ Macrobius Opera (ed. Eyssenhardt, F.; Leipzig 1893). In Theogony 53–115 Hesiod explains that the Muses pour dew on the tongue and the lips, then produce gracious words (79). They mediate for Zeus in assembly, setting matters straight with words, and they are the memory of origins. In the ‘Contest between Homer and Hesiod’ (314–15), Hesiod is said to descend from Calliope. The oft-repeated notion that Hesiod gave values to each Muse seems groundless.Google Scholar

²⁰ Commentum super sex libros Eneidos Virgili (ed. W., J. and Jones, E. F.; Lincoln, NE 1972) 6, 11–14 (35). Alanus de Insulis in his Anticlaudianus, which Chaucer cites, identifies Clio as his Muse without associating a particular poetic power with her. See the translation of Sheridan, J. J. (Toronto 1973) 43.Google Scholar

²¹ We have taken this text from the Notes of Denton Fox, ed. The Poems of Robert Henryson (Oxford 1981) 385.Google Scholar

²² A nice piece of circumstantial evidence that Chaucer drew from De nuptiis for his Troilus is the name ‘Lollius’ whom Chaucer cites as his putative source (see Barney, S. A.'s introduction to Troilus in The Riverside Chaucer 1022). Martianus uses the name in an illustration of fragmented speech: ‘ “Quis est iste Lollius, qui sine ferro ne nunc quidem tecum est? Quis est iste Lollius, armiger Catilinae, stipator tui corporis conciliator tabernariorum, percussor, lapidator curiae?” ’ De nuptiis (ed. Dick, A.; Stuttgart 1978) V, 528.Google Scholar

²³ Chaucer names Cirra in his invocation to the Muse Polymya in Anelida and Arcite 17. Remigius’ Commentum recalls Macrobius’ reading of her name, ‘Calliope id est pulchra vox’ (19.22), and later draws particular attention to her association with the instruments chelyn ‘harp,’ fides ‘lyre,’ and plectrum ‘lute’: ‘Laus Philologiae de peritia musicae. Calliope autem artificialis musicae est praesul’ (52.8). John Scot, Annotationes 19.17 associates all the Muses with enneaptongon chelin. Minnis, A. J., ‘“Glosynge is a Glorious Thing”: Chaucer at Work on the “Boece.”’ The Medieval Boethius, Studies in the Vernacular Translations of the Consolatione philosophiae (Cambridge 1987) 106–24, shows that Chaucer knew the works of Remigius, particularly the Commentary. John Scot Erigena, whose works Chaucer was likely to have known, repeats the etymological explanation in his Annotationes: ‘Calliope una musarum est et interpretatur bona vox vel pulchrifica vel formifica.’ In his Commentum, Bernardus Silvestris has Calliope allied with Mercury as ‘optima vox’ (3.75) and ‘facundia’ (10.294) and Clio is identified with the moon by the Greek etymology of her name, ‘gloria’ (10.296).Google Scholar

²⁴ McCall, J. P., Chaucer Among the Gods , 167–68, feels that ‘History’ is an appropriate characterization for Clio here because Chaucer is taking into account specifically the ‘meaning’ of history. Since Clio is associated with doctrine, she is invoked to translate a report. Boitani, 54, notes that the hoof of Pegasus, who is a figure of fame, makes the well of the Muses; so they are both inspiration (the well) and report (fame). Payne, R. O., The Key of Remembrance: A Study of Chaucerian Poetics (New Haven 1963) 77–78, says that the invocation to Clio ‘develops clearly the distinction between the primarily intellectual character of remembrance per se, and the emotional efficacy which style can restore to it in the recreated poem.’Google Scholar

²⁵ Latin horrida is a difficult term to transpose into English in this context. ‘Prickly, thorny’ reproduce its primary Latin sense, but it also means ‘neglected, savage,’ and ‘simple, rude,’ as well as ‘horrid.’ All these senses seem to lurk behind Clio's revelation and all are pertinent to the poet's task to master meaning with word.Google Scholar

²⁶ Martianus’ ‘aggerans’ is particularly pertinent here; for it signifies that which ‘fills a void.’ Chaucer's poetic ‘filling’ involves both the rhetorical structure of his story and the time gap between its fictive setting and its telling.Google Scholar

²⁷ Vance, E., ‘Mervelous Signals: Poetics, Sign, Theory, and Politics in Chaucer's Troilus,’ New Literary History 10 (1979) 303, points out the extent to which Chaucer's version of Troy is a locus for speech. He calculates that three-eighths of the text is narrative, and one-half direct discourse. The remaining eighth is authorial intervention. Speech undermines Troy, Vance argues, and Chaucer's fictive role as ‘rhetor’ contributes to the subversion of Trojan society. Bloch, H. H., Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago 1983) 131–41, explains that figurative language reflects the hidden nature of adultery, and plain style pertains to the open social values of marriage. Book II of Troilus portrays the hero and Criseyde exchanging letters replete with the rhetoric of concealment.Google Scholar

²⁸ Troilus II, 56. The third of May is the Feast of the Invention of the Cross, celebrating the discovery of the true cross by Helen, mother of Constantine. Thus, the day honors Christ's love as a redeeming of Venus’. But Pandarus is thinking more of eros than of caritas as he goes to seduce Criseyde for his friend.Google Scholar

²⁹ For both hidden and overt implications of Helen's title in Troilus, see Baswell, C. C. and Taylor, P. B., ‘The Faire Queene Eleyne in Chaucer's Troilus,’ Speculum 63 (1988) 306. The irony of queene is eloquent. Not only is the epithet homophonous with quene ‘whore,’ but Helen is queen of Sparta and not of Troy. Greek and Trojan, wife and adulteress, Helen is a figure of reconciled opposites.Google Scholar

³⁰ Coincidentally, in the Merchant's description of Januarie's nuptials (Merchant's Tale 1709–1817) Venus’ dart sparks desire in Damyan's heart for the bride, and Januarie, as Martianus’ Venus tries to do, hastens the festivities in order to enjoy the nuptial couch with his new bride.Google Scholar