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Humour and Satire in the "Canterbury Tales"

Before William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer was the preeminent English poet, and still retains the position asthe most significant poet to write in Middle English. Chaucer was born in the early 1340s to a middle-class family. His father, John Chaucer, was a vintner and deputy to the king's butler. His family's financial success came from work in the wine and leather businesses. Little information exists about Chaucer's education, but his writings demonstrate a close familiarity with a number of important books of his contemporaries and of earlier times. Chaucer was likely fluent in several languages, including French, Italian and Latin. Chaucer's first published work was The Book of the Duchess, a poem of over 1,300 lines that is an elegy for the Duchess of Lancaster. For this first of his important poems, which was published in 1370, Chaucer used the dream-vision form, a genre made popular by the highly influential 13th-century French poem of courtly love, the Roman de la Rose, which Chaucer translated into English. Throughout the following decade, Chaucer continued with his diplomatic career, traveling to Italy for negotiations to open a Genoa port to Britain as well as military negotiations with Milan. During his missions to Italy, Chaucer encountered the work of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, which were later to have profound influence upon his own writing. In 1374 Chaucer was appointed comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wool, skins, and tanned hides for the Port of London, his first position away from the British court. Chaucer's only major work during this period was Hous of Fame, a poem of around 2,000 lines in dream-vision form, but this was not completed. Chaucer's next work was Troilus and Criseyde, which was influenced by The Consolation of Philosophy, written by the Roman philosopher Boethius in the early sixth century and translated into English by Chaucer. Chaucer took the plot of Troilus from Boccaccio's Filostrato. This eight thousand line poem recounts the love story of Troilus, son of the Trojan king Priam, and Criseyde, widowed daughter of the deserter priest Calkas, against the background of the Trojan War. The Canterbury Tales secured Chaucer's literary reputation. It is his great literary accomplishment, a compendium of stories by pilgrims traveling to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. Chaucer introduces each of these pilgrims in vivid brief sketches in the General Prologue and intersperses the twenty-four tales with short dramatic scenes with lively exchanges. Chaucer did not complete the full plan for the tales, and surviving manuscripts leave some doubt as to the exact order of the tales that remain. However, the work is sufficiently complete to be considered a unified book rather than a collection of unfinished fragments. The Canterbury Tales is a lively mix of a variety of genres told by travelers from all aspects of society. Among the genres included are courtly romance, fabliau, saint's biography, allegorical tale, beast fable and medieval sermon. The Canterbury Tales is one of the landmarks of English literature, perhaps the greatest work produced in Middle English and certainly among the most ambitious. It is one of the few works of the English Middle Ages that has had a continuous history of publication. It was the last of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, written after Troilus and Creseyde during the final years of Chaucer's life. Chaucer did not complete the entire Canterbury Tales as he designed it. He structured the tales so that each pilgrim would tell four tales, leading to a total of over one hundred tales. However, Chaucer only completed twenty-four tales, not even completing one tale for each pilgrim. The Canterbury Tales includes a number of tales that Chaucer had written before creating the grand work itself. The Second Nun's Tale and the Knight's Tale were included as part of Chaucer's biography in the prologue to The Legend of Good Women, a poem by Chaucer that predated The Canterbury Tales, but since those stories survive only as part of The Canterbury Tales and not as independent works, it is impossible to determine whether Chaucer transferred them entirely to The Canterbury Tales or adapted them from a previous form. The versions of The Canterbury Tales that remain in the present day come from two different Middle English manuscripts known as the Ellesmere and the Hengwrt manuscripts. The Ellesmere is the more famous of the two, containing miniature pictures of each of the pilgrims at the head of each of their respective tales, but compared to the Hengwrt manuscript the Ellesmere is heavily edited for grammatical content. The Hengwrt is thus valued as the best and most accurate manuscript of The Canterbury Tales. There are discrepancies between the two versions concerning the order and inclusion of the tales. The Hengwrt manuscript lacks the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and tale, part of the Parson's Tale, and several of the tales' prologues. The Canterbury Tales begins with the introduction of each of the pilgrims making their journey to Canterbury to the shrine of Thomas a Becket. These pilgrims include a Knight, his son the Squire, the Knight's Yeoman, a Prioress, a Second Nun, a Monk, a Friar, a Merchant, a Clerk, a Man of Law, a Franklin, a Weaver, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Tapestry-Maker, a Haberdasher, a Cook, a Shipman, a Physician, a Parson, a Miller, a Manciple, a Reeve, a Summoner, a Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. These travelers, who stop at the Tabard Inn, decide to tell stories to pass their time on the way to Canterbury. The Host of the Tabard Inn sets the rules for the tales. Each of the pilgrims will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two stories on the return trip. The Host will decide the best of the tales.

Parody and Satire in The Miller's and Merchant's Tale

Alison in the Miller's Tale and May of the Merchant's Tale are similar in several ways. Both are young women who have married men much older than themselves. They both become involved with young, manipulative men. They also conspire to and do cuckold their husbands. This is not what marriage is about and it is demonstrated in both tales. What makes the Miller's Tale bawdy comedy and the Merchant's tale bitter satire is in the characterization. In the Miller's tale we are giving stereotyped characters. The principals are cardboard cut-outs sent into farcical motion. The Merchant's Tale gives us much more background and detail of the character's lives. The reader is more involved and can feel their situations. Here we will focus on the two women of each tale and how they demonstrate this difference. Alison is described as young and wild. She is like an animal: " Thereto she koude skippe and make game/ As any kyde or calf folwynge his dame". We know that she would be willing to go along with any idea as long as it is "fun". We can see her childish immaturity in the scenes where she lets Absalom "kiss" her. We do not learn the details of her marriage such as her feeling toward John, her husband. We simply know that it is a mis-matched marriage with a large age gap between them. May is not described in much detail compared to Alison. She is simply young, meek and beautiful. The disgusting details of her marriage though are clearly shown. January makes speeches about his desire to consummate his marriage and loathingly promises to take his time. We are with May when the real horror she feels at having to sleep with January is described: "But God woot what that May thoughte in hir herte/ Whan she hym saugh up sittynge in his sherte/ In his nyght-cappe, and with his nekke lene". This quote follows distasteful descriptions of January who eagerly awaits May in bed. The reader is privy to none of this with Alison. It does not take much persuasion on Nicholas' part to talk Alison into having an affair with her. The idea of tricking her husband is a game for her. With impish delight she conspires with Nicholas the outlandish plot of convincing her husband that a great flood is coming. With her husband safety ensconced in a bathtub hanging from the roof, Alison plays with Nicholas. And it is play for then we have the "kissing" scene with Absalom. Alison is having fun with the whole situation, it is just a great time for her. May does not love Damien any more than she loves January. He is just a better, convenient alternative. We know she cares not for Damien as when she receives a love-letter from him she easily disposes it in the privy. It is easy to see that her motivation for adultery is really one of revenge and not out of affection for Damien. January assaulted her by the mere fact of marrying her. This is satire on the whole theme of courtly love. This feeling of revenge on her part is further demonstrated in the cuckold scene. May deceives January quite wickedly in the garden. Yet for the reader we can not fault her for it. January has that garden for the purpose of licentious behavior. It is there so he can have May sexually in the way he wants her. She feigns pregnancy and then steps onto January's back to have sex with Damien in the tree. She has been "stepped on" by January and now she gets to do the same to him. When January's sight is restored by the Gods, he rightfully accuses her of adultery. In response she acts impertinent and insulted: "'This thank have I for I have maad yow see/ Allas,' quod she, 'that evere I was so kinde!'". How ridiculous and awful that January believes her explanation. Therefore we can see while both stories have similar elements, the Miller's Tale is straight comedy. The reader is not shown the emotions of the characters. Alison is not a fully developed character. She is and stays what she was described as in the beginning of the tale: an eighteen year old wild girl. The tale is more a parody on courtly love. In contrast, in the Merchant's Tale the reader is shown the disgusting details of January's motives and subsequent marriage.

Laughing at the Carpenter

The tragic and the comic are not polar opposites, or mutually exclusive, but subtly and sometimes almost paradoxically inter-linked modes of experience.It is common when considering The Canterbury Tales to discuss how some tales seem designed to emphasise the themes of others. Two such tales are the Miller's Tale-2 and the Knight's Tale-3. At first glance these two tales seem an incongruous pairing. The Knight's Tale is told by an eminent person, is an historical romance which barely escapes a tragic ending, and its themes are universal: the relationship of individuals to providence, fortune and free will. The Miller's Tale is told by a drunken "cherl", is a farcical fabliau, and has "a plot, not themes". And yet, in my opinion, there is much to be gained by reading the Miller's Tale with the themes and characters of the Knight's Tale firmly in mind. The juxtaposition of the Miller's Tale to "the Knight's Tale makes its very lack of significance significant". These two tales have seemingly opposite doctrines, and yet, it seems to me, both have the same object: to encourage us to survive the misfortunes and uncertainties of life as best we can. The Knight's Tale tells us to "maken vertu of necessitee", while the Miller's Tale expects "every wight" to "laughen at this stryf". The Miller's Tale is designed to "quite" the Knight's Tale. It certainly matches it in quality of composition, but 'repays' the other tale mainly through its use of comedy. Humour throws new light on the characters and actions of the preceeding tale. The folly of the carpenter in the Miller's Tale is by no means the only comic device used by Chaucer to create humour, but it is central in many ways. The excerpt from lines 3601-3642 displays some of the ways that Chaucer uses the figure of the carpenter to generate humour. In this section the carpenter is: ironically fooled by his wife; used as a comparison in order to cast ridicule on Arcite's and Palamon's fervent love of Emelye; an example of the folly of age, rather than the wisdom that was developed in Theseus; and, of course, set up as the climax's 'fall guy'. Farce is the most obvious form of humour in the Miller's Tale, but I think irony is the most important. Chaucer plays off text against text to great ironic effect, both inter and extra-textually. In fact, the carpenter is a perfect ironic antidote to the Miller's advice of the Prologue. The contrast of the extremes of wisdom and folly, idealism and amorality, romance and fabliau, suggests that a middle ground exists between these tales; perhaps even that it is 'reality' which lies somewhere between the two. I believe that a quest for a human reality may be the common theme that ties the Knight's and the Miller's, and perhaps all the Canterbury tales and prologues, together. Chaucer's use of the romance and fabliau genres, may seem worlds apart in style, content and themes, but when added together they become a richer tapestry which hints at the complexities and paradoxes of being alive and human. Romance asserts the possibility that men may behave in a noble and self-transcending manner; fabliau declares the certainty that they will always behave like animals ... Neither is 'true' or realistic, though we might say that our understanding of what is true gains depth from having different slanting lights thrown upon reality. Through laughing at the carpenter, feeling pity for Arcite, enjoying Nicholas' cunning, and admiring Theseus' wisdom, we gain a richer understanding of ourselves.