Chaucer's Humor

Critical Essays

Jean E. Jost

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000681314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1994. Chaucer is considered the first major humorist in English literature and is particularly interesting as he reflects the humor of predecessors and contemporaries as well as defines development for subsequent British humor. This collection presents essays that define the nature of Chaucerian humor, examine Chaucer's works from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and consider genres of humor within his writing. This is an excellent work of critical discourse that adds important understanding of Chaucer as well as the field of comedy in literature.

PART ONE

A Prolegomenon to Defining Chaucerian Humor

The Voice of the Past

Surveying the Reception of Chaucer’s Humor

Jean E. Jost

“And Chaucer for his merie tales, was well esteemed there.”

Richard Robinson, 1574

The Genre and Extent of Early Critical Interpretation

Critical casebooks of the sort this volume represents regularly offer a sampling of the best literary criticism contemporaneous to the author, and from each subsequent century, a running critical commentary of the attitudes and impressions of the topic, in this case, Chaucerian humor. The impossibility of this procedure here, however, is apparent, for extended literary commentary on humor, or in fact on any aspect of the Chaucerian corpus, quite simply does not exist. Literary criticism as a genre had not yet maturated in the early centuries following Chaucer’s masterpiece; comments on the topic are no more than brief references to humor, considering neither interpretation nor function of the comic mode within his opus. In lieu of the expected chronological survey of critical articles, then, this brief overview historically details significant comments and excerpts marking the critical reception of Chaucer as a humorist.

The Extent of Critical Analysis

The surprising neglect of Chaucer’s comic talent throughout the centuries following his death may be accounted for in part by the pejorative attitude toward humor itself shared by many. As Derek Brewer points out, “Humour is traditionally related to realism through satire, as in Chaucer’s poetry itself, but though it is clear enough that Lydgate, for example, greatly appreciated Chaucer’s humour, it is not much commented on in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries…. In the later seventeenth century and the eighteenth the Protestant interest in Chaucer lapsed, as he was seen primarily as a humorist” (Chaucer: The Critical Heritage). If humor is seen as a literary stepchild, no doubt Chaucer would be treated as an orphan.

Yet certainly remarks such as that by Thomas Wharton, that Chaucer “was the first who gave the English nation, in its own language, an idea of Humour” (“Of Spenser’s Imitations from Chaucer” in Observations on the Faerie Queen,” 1754) are a useful gauge of his largely unexamined, but also undisputed, reputation. Caroline Spurgeon rightly remarks that “It is not… until well on in the nineteenth century, not indeed until Leigh Hunt wrote on it in 1846, that Chaucer’s humour seems to have met with any adequate recognition” (Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion).¹

Larry D. Benson concurs, remarking that “criticism of Chaucer began in this century (‘appreciation’ rather than ‘criticism’ characterized earlier scholarship), and was dominated by American scholars such as Kittredge, Lowes, and Root until the late thirties or early forties” (Writers and Their Background: Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Derek Brewer. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1974, p. 340). Even the amount of that “appreciation,” such as Richard Robinson’s epigraph that heads this discussion and is usually limited to acknowledging but not interpreting humor, is minimal.

Critical analysis as we know it today was simply not done. Rather, early critics seem to be writing memorials or testaments to Chaucer’s historical position while providing no close readings, discussing no sources of comedy, and offering no analysis; in short, there is no equivalent criticism for Chaucer comparable to what we have for Shakespeare or later authors.

Further, few of Chaucer’s immediate successors revered him for his humor. Still, Spurgeon points to the value and scarcity of humor in Chaucer’s time, remarking “That the quality of humour existed in full measure in fourteenth-century England we know by reading Chaucer’s Prologue, but we are forced to ask whether it was less common than now, only to be found here and there among men of genius.” Presumably its value would increase in a time of paucity. In 1936 C. S. Lewis implies that Chaucer’s humor was valued because imitated, but within a narrow range of his composition:

Chaucer’s comic and realistic style is imitated by Lydgate in the Prologue to the Book of Thebes, and by an unknown poet in the Prologue to the Tale of Beryri’, but this is small harvest besides the innumerable imitations of his amatory and allegorical poetry…. When the men of the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries thought of Chaucer, they did not think first of the Canterbury Tales. Their Chaucer was the Chaucer of dream and allegory, of love-romance and erotic debate, of high style and profitable doctrine. (“Chaucer,” The Allegory of Love, pp. 204, 205)

In fact, until the seventeenth century, the tragic Troilus and Criseyde was considered Chaucer’s most worthy, and most discussed work, the merits of the comic Canterbury Tales being recognized only subsequently, and marginally. The widening gulf between Middle English and early Modem English, and hence the difficulty in reading Chaucerian texts exacerbated the situation. Pointing out the dormant state of Chaucerian criticism in general, much less discussions on his humor, Benson acknowledges the value of critical commentary and the effect of its absence:

[W]ithout the help of scholarship—linguistic, textual, critical, and historical—Chaucer would remain, as he was for centuries, accessible only to a few devoted readers… By the end of the sixteenth century it was clear… that Chaucer required editing…. Thomas Speght’s edition of Chaucer (1598; rev. 1602; repr. 1667) was the last to appear until the eighteenth century, and… Chaucer remained until the later nineteenth century (in the words of an anonymous writer in the year 1819) “more neglected, less studied, and less known, though none are more talked of” than almost any major English writer. (321–22)

With such a paucity of early critical commentary on Chaucerian humor, only a judicious sampling of quotations by influential scholars and writers rather than complete reproduction of entire critical documents, of which there are none, is possible. Such a summary of comments and opinion follows.

Contemporaneous and Earliest Appreciation of Chaucerian Humor

J. A. Burrow concurs that few contemporaneous documents consider Chaucer’s comic strain at any length; in fact, he notes that “From [Chaucer’s] own life-time there survive just three compliments, a handful of imitations and borrowings, and no manuscripts of his poetry whatsoever.” (Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Anthology. Middlesex, Baltimore, and Victoria, Australia: Penguin, 1969, p. 19.) The three compliments, from Thomas Usk, John Gower, and Eustace Deschamps, praise his love poetry, philosophical poetry, and his easy style rather than his humor. Francis Beaumont is virtually alone in seeing the poet as “the verie life it selfe of all mirth and pleasant writing.” As Brewer recounts:

None of these early writers [Lydgate and Hoccleve] comments on Chaucer’s humour, and indeed the word itself, in the modern sense, did not exist. It is even doubtful whether the concept existed, though of course medieval writers recognised irony and satire. This does not mean that Chaucer’s humour was unrecognised. The lightness of tone of Lydgate’s Prologue to the Siege of Thebes and its self-depreciatory fun, like the references of both writers to the Wife of Bath, show that they responded to various kinds of Chaucer’s humour, at times with their own elephantine gaiety. (“Images of Chaucer 1386–1900” in Chaucer and Chaucerians, p. 247)

Brewer does point out, however, that “[i]ncreasingly throughout the century writers refer to his ‘merriness’ or ‘pleasantness/Spenser’s friend Gabriel Harvey seems to have taken particular pleasure in Chaucer and notes his comedy.” On the other hand, William Thynne’s edition of 1532 includes a dedication to Henry VIII in which the author, one Sir Brian Tuke, praises Chaucer’s “excellent learning in all kinds of doctrines and sciences,” an apparently influential and dominant opinion for two hundred years, but one which ignores or disdains his comedic spirit.

As Caroline Spurgeon points out, although Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Caxton, and Thynne appreciate Chaucer’s poetical strength, imagination, and power of expression, “he is looked upon for the most part as a comic poet chiefly remarkable for the scurrility of his verses. This is a view which… began to creep in at the end of the sixteenth century.” While some condemned him for his supposed coarseness, his lack of seriousness and dignity, others “merely laughed at his ‘merie tales.’… This attitude of tolerant amusement rapidly gained ground in the seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries…. Chaucer was a merry wit, but a rough one, for even his humour, the only quality granted him, was not recognized to be the most light and delicate… but rather quaint and coarse, fit only for a barbarous age.”

In 1595, Sir Philip Sidney noticeably ignores both the rough and comic strains, claiming: “Chaucer undoubtedly did excellently in his Troilus and Cresseid ; of whom, truly, I know not whether to marvel more either that he in that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age go so stumblingly after him” (The Defense of Poesie).

In 1675, Edward Phillips offhandedly comments in Theatrum Poetarum, or a compleat Collection of the Poets that Chaucer “still keeps a name, being by some few admir’d for his real worth, to others not unpleasing for his facetious ways, which joyn’d with his old English intertains them with a kind of Drollery.” While Chaucer’s true value does not inhere in his comic genius, many are nevertheless so entertained, according to Phillips.

Eighteenth-Century Critical Acclaim

No doubt the neoclassical concern with edification and decorum explains the restrained and reserved acceptance of the medieval master of the comic. The “undignified” combination of different tones, material, genres, and attitudes, the indecent and the devout, the comic and the tragic, would account for some resistance. Spurgeon’s survey of the changing definition and perception of Chaucerian humor is one of the most insightful; reservations about it might be explained by that neoclassical aesthetic of dignity:

In Chaucer we have a poet whose distinguishing quality of mind is a subtle, shifting, delicate and all-pervading humour, to which full justice has not perhaps even yet been done; yet through all these years of critical remark there is until the eighteenth century no reference to the quality as we know it… [only] a certain recognition among some earlier writers of his “pleasant vayne and wit,” and his “delightsome mirth”… by which is probably meant his relish of a good story, his sly sense of fun, and the general atmosphere of good-humor which pervades his work, but there is no hint of appreciation of the deeper and more delicate quality alone deserving the name of humor, which is insight, sympathy and tender seriousness, all brought into play upon the ever-present sense of the incongruous, and of the inconsistent in character and life, (cxxxviii, cxxxix)

Only does the concept of humour as dignified slowly emerge. The eighteenth-century definition of “humour” as buffoonery,” holding something up to ridicule, or “facetiousness,” connotes the quality of degradation maintained by that era. While acknowledging Chaucer’s “pleasing way of relating Comical Adventures,” in 1700 John Dryden only briefly mentions the game-playing of the tales:

Even the Ribaldry of the Low Characters is different: The Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook, are Several Men, and distinguish’d from each other, as much as the mincing Lady Prioress, and the broad-speaking gap-tooth’d Wife of Bathe. But enough of this: There is such a Variety of Game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my Choice, and know not which to follow. ‘Tis sufficient to say according to the Proverb, that here is God’s Plenty. (Preface to Fables Ancient and Modern, 1st ed., 1700. The Poems and Fables of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962)

Dryden’s discussion is limited to pointing out instances of humor within the tales with little attempt to consider their role or function. And, as Burrow points out, with the passage of time “the chorus of praise grows fainter as Chaucer’s language becomes more and more remote and rebarbative” (35). Joseph Addison appreciates his humor, but describes quite well the fate of Chaucer’s fame that Dryden notes:

Long had our dull Fore-Fathers slept Supine,

Nor felt the Raptures of the Tuneful Nine;

Till Chaucer first, a merry Bard, arose;

And many a Story told in Rhime and Prose.

But Age has Rusted what the Poet writ,

Worn out his Language, and obscur’d his Wit;

In vain he jests in his unpolish’d strain

And tries to make his Readers laugh in vain.

(An Account of the Greatest English Poets, 1694)

In 1700, Samuel Cobb agrees, calling Chaucer “A joking Bard, whose Antiquated Muse / In mouldy Words could solid Sense produce” (Poetae Britannici: A Poem). Twenty-one years later, Julia Madan found that “Here [in Britain] Chaucer first his comic Vein display’d, / And merry tales in homely Guise convey’d” (The Progress of Poetry). In 1740, The Gentleman’s Magazine published “In Praise of Chaucer, Father of English Poetry” by an anonymous author who asks “Does [Chaucer] to comic wit direct his aim? / His humour crowns th’ attempt with equal fame.”

According to Burrow, in the eighteenth century, “[t]he well-bred frankness of the Augustans… allowed many people, like the young Addison, to treat Chaucer as a merry and somewhat improper poet who nevertheless somehow failed to raise a laugh… this idea of Chaucer as a jovial, even a coarse poet, can be traced in the Elizabethan age” (37). Samuel Croxwell feels the compelling pull of Chaucer’s joyful nature, depicting him “With gleeful smile [while] his merry Lesson play’d” (The Vision: A Poem, 1715). The same year, John Hughes comments that Chaucer “first study’d Humour, was an excellent satirist, and a lively but rough Painter of the Manners of that rude Age in which he liv’d” (from an “Essay on Allegorical Poetry” in his edition of Spenser’s works). Although John Gay also points only to the jovial and not the coarse poet, claiming “Prior th’admiring Reader entertains, / With Chaucer’s Humor, and with Spenser’s Strains” (Verse addressed to Bernard Lintot in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by several Hands), Elizabeth Cooper notes the realistic side as well. In 1737, Cooper claimed that Chaucer “encountered the follies of mankind as well as their vices, and blended the acutest raillery with the most insinuating humour” (The Muses’ Library, I.xi). Moreover, Thomas Wharton claims to have “found what later and more refin’d ages could hardly equal in true humour, pathos, o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• General Editor’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Chronology of Major Events
• Introduction
• Part One: A Prolegomenon to Defining Chaucerian Humor
• Part Two: Critical Theories with the Comic Touch: Feminist, Freudian, Language, Social, and Bakhtinian Theories
• Part Three: “Generic” Humor Lyric, Poetic, Demonic, Religious, Scatological, and Tragic
• Select Bibliography
• Index