The Daisy (Symbol)
In the prologue, the daisy symbolizes romantic love. The flower’s beauty lures Chaucer away from his books and out into the real world. However, when he gets close to it, he finds himself frustrated by the impossibility of finding anything new to say about it. This difficulty provides one justification for Chaucer’s reluctance to write romantic poetry—he feels the genre is overdone.
Cupid and Alceste (Allegory)
Medieval dream vision poems were often allegorical, featuring characters who embodied abstract concepts like truth, thought, or love. Although Cupid and Alceste are technically individual characters, they lack a sense of interiority. Instead, their purpose in the narrative is to embody the concept of love. Cupid speaks on behalf of love’s aggressive dimensions, while Alceste advocates for love more gently.
Symbol: Fire
Fire appears throughout the legend as both a physical reality and a figure of speech. Dido kills herself by plunging into a fire, rendering her death a form of sacrifice. Her death by fire also embodies love’s capacity to completely consume someone, just as fire consumes burning wood. In the Legend of Lucrece, Chaucer describes Tarquin’s desire as a fire burning in his heart—like Dido’s fire, this fire proves destructive.
Abandonment (Motif)
Many of the women in the Legend are physically abandoned by their lovers, as when Jason leaves behind both Hipsipsyle and Medea, or when Theseus deserts Ariadne on the island. These desertions enable the men to leave behind their lovers without ever having a conversation. They also make the abandonment feel truly permanent, as the women do not even know where their beloveds have gone, let alone how to get them back.
Betrayal (Motif)
The most obvious betrayals in the Legend are of women by their male lovers. Men like Theseus, Jason, and Aeneas promise faithfulness but end up going back on their word and leaving the women they love alone. However, women also repeatedly betray their fathers. For example, Ariadne goes against Minos’s wishes to spare Theseus from the labyrinth, and Hypermnestra betrays Egeus by failing to kill Lyno after she has promised to do so. Together, all these betrayals suggest that people’s word doesn’t count for much, and that even honorable people often have to choose between multiple obligations, thus ending up betraying someone.
