The Light Has Lifted: Trickster Pandare

Pandare’s role in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde has been one of much debate among Chaucerian scholars and critics: Is he friend or is he foe, and what is his purpose either way? He is at once friend, foe, and I would argue, the character with whom readers most identify. Readers of Troilus and Criseyde realize that they read to discover characters exactly like Pandare; characters whom he or she wishes they could be, and ones whose motives are sprinkled with hints of darkness and mischief. Pandare represents the private thoughts in our minds, the kind we know we cannot, and will not, act upon in the way Pandare has, but which we desire to pursue vicariously. Pandare is a charismatic trickster figure.The trickster figure is a mythical character found in almost every culture throughout history and is included by Carl Jung among his archetypes. The trickster and its tendencies exist in all of us; the degree to which they surface depends on the individual. Usually a male, tricksters can be identified by many common traits such as stubbornness, chicanery, duplicity, and the ability to evoke laughter. Classic trickster characters range from Prometheus, known as one of the first tricksters, to Uncle Remus’s Brer Rabbit. The trickster typically preys on weaker characters and remains confident until the end. The story surrounding the trickster and its result or lesson is often used to satirize the darkest conventions of the culture in which the story takes place. Their mischievous, self-serving actions can often have the trickster backtracking and succumbing to fate or fortune, and through their blunder knowledge can be gained.