In the general prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, there is a preemptive warning given to the propriety and sensibility of all who should read the tales. Chaucer was well aware of the vulgarity of his tale’s and their propensity to offend, yet by simply keeping the vulgar language in the text, he warranted its use. But why would such a scholarly astute writer stoop to such means of comic relief? Perhaps Chaucer used it for the same reasons that it is widely used today. Grocery store checkout lines are strewn with gossip columns that seek to expose the seedy under bellies of movie stars, political institutions, and powerful deviants, all in an effort to dethrone the individual and entertain the audience.
It is likely that Chaucer understood the entertainment value of such slander and vulgarity in a broader context, but I believe his use of this satirical device extends to a deeper purpose within the work. Chaucer uses the comic interaction, and bawdy ridicules of the characters to progress the tales by means of “quyting” so as to work around a specific topic with the depth of multiple perspectives.
In the late medieval period, the rules of proper speech, which are commonly called the “father” tongue, forbade the outright naming of sexual parts or open discussion of lower bodily functions such as sexual intercourse or excretion (Kendrick 74). Courtly speech became the standard and was most commonly used by the powerful and wealthy to denote status and the ideals of the period. However, the greater the pressure to conform to proper speech in the situations of everyday life, the greater the pleasure was in the fictional subversion or flouting of the rules (Kendrick 77). This became the case with many French writers of fabliaux, but Chaucer does not seem to use obscenity to mock proper speech so much as to dethrone characters within the context of his tales.
In this sense, The Canterbury Tales seem to be as much about the storytellers as the tales themselves since the language of the tales are directly determined by whomever is telling the tale. Therefore, any completely accurate portrayal of the pilgrim’s tales would require an honest depiction of their language and humor. Each tale is so characteristically different from each storyteller to the next that the tales would loose much of their distinctiveness if the crude language of the commoner were not used to distinguish between class and character. We thus come to know the characters more fully through Chaucer’s candor in dealing with taboo subjects. Furthermore, the presentation of the humor reveals even more about the dynamics between characters, how they relate to each other, and as I examine here, how they progress the collective stories.
The comic vulgarity used by Chaucer can be characterized into two forms, those of a vulgar diction and those of vulgar action. These forms arise with some amount of predictability throughout the tales according to certain characters and reoccurring situations of disagreement. The Prologues contain the greatest amount of vulgar diction in which characters either take offense to another’s tale or seek to “quyte” the tale told by the previous storyteller. The differences between philosophical beliefs are usually the determining factors for such conflicts, and in some instances are heightened by a drunken candor. Thus the tales are commonly initiated through the dialogue of the prologue, which then continues into the personalized insults that are given implicitly through the characters of the tales.
The tales themselves with their vulgar action contain the greater amount of explicit obscenity, which arises in the form of the character’s actions. Sexual lewdness is particularly pervasive throughout the comic tales, and is commonly used for revenge or self-gratification. The second most common form of vulgarity is bodily excretion. Flatulence shows up in a number of instances, and is most often used to humiliate or offend.
I will first begin by examining those instances in which Chaucer uses vulgarity within the diction of the prologues to “quyte” one tale over another, and then will immediately proceed to look at how the same device of one-upping ridicule is used with the Pilgrims in the action of the tales. The Miller’s Tale, the first in the series of comic tales, immediately follows the Knight’s Tale, and contrasts its courtly ideals of love with the vulgar perversions of lust. The drunk miller begins his tale by announcing:
‘I kan a noble tale for the nones,
With which I wol now quite the Knyghtes tale.’
He then proceeds to unknowingly deflate all the values extolled in the Knight’s tale, by telling a tale that he deems more worthy than the knight’s. In doing this, he dramatically alters the course of the tales by shifting the platform to other storytellers with similarly vulgar tales and immoral character.
Chaucer is obviously aware of what the effect of the story will be, but presumes the innocence of a historian that is required to relate the facts as they happened. Just as the Miller blames the ale for his drunkenness, Chaucer Blames the Miller for The Miller’s Tale (Craik 2):
“And therfore, whoso list it nat yheere,
Turne over the leef, and chese another tale;”
“Blameth nat me if that ye chese amys.
The Millere is a cherl, ye knowe wel this;
So was the Reve, and othere manye mo,
And harlotrie they tolden bothe two.”
In this way, Chaucer makes use of the Miller for various reasons: to forestall any objection to lewd tales; to underline the contrast between a ‘noble storie’ and a ‘cherles tale’ which treats the rivalry of lovers in a spirit of farce; and to introduce one of the comic and dramatic dialogues between his pilgrims, dialogues which help to connect the tales with each other, as well as delightfully creating the personalities of their tellers (Craik 3).
The Miller begins his tale by telling of a naïve carpenter, his young wife Alison, and a troublesome clerk named Nicholas that comes to lodge at the carpenter’s house. The clerk takes a liking to the carpenter’s wife Alison, and soon devises a plan so that they may sleep together. So after the carpenter had been sufficiently duped and humiliated, the two young lovers sneak away together. At this point in the story, some of the first obscene instances make their way into The Canterbury Tales. Absolon, Alison’s third admirer, comes to the window while she is in bed with Nicholas, and begs for a kiss. He is promised what he asks, and is told to close his eyes, not knowing the cruel trick that is in store for him:
“Derk was the nyght as pich, or as the cole,
And at the window out she putte hir hole,
And Absolon, hym fil no bet ne wers,
But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers
Ful savourly, er he were war of this.
Abak he stirte, and thoughte it was amys,
For wel he wiste a womman hath no berd.
He felte a thyng al rough and long yherd,
And seyde, ‘Fy! allas! what have I do?’
‘Tehee!’ quod she, and clapte the wyndow to,
And Absolon gooth forth a sory pas.
The obscenity of such detailed imagery is a great success with the crowd of pilgrims, and sets a new sub-standard for the tales that follow. The Reeve however is not amused, and the reader is cued in before hand to the fact that he is a carpenter himself. The doltish portrayal of the carpenter thus infuriates the Reeve who takes the tale as a personal and professional attack, and seeks revenge with a tale that he believes will “quyte” the Miller’s.
Chaucer, the reluctant historian, has earlier blamed the Miller for telling so gross a tale; the Reeve is now blaming the Miller for obliging him to tell another that is equally demeaning:
‘…I shal hym quite anoon;
Right in his cherles termes wol I speke.’
And so the obscene tale that was initiated by the Miller, is given warrant to be repeated again in The Reeve’s Tale. Chaucer as author of the tales most likely found the obscenity of the tales entertaining for their own sake, and knew that others would also, but he perhaps lacked a justifiable motive to include them so often throughout the tales. As a means around this, he pitted character against character to do his dirty work for him as agents of lewd humor. This however does far more than allow the repeated vulgarity, it progresses the stories in a way that is lively and full of the character’s personality.
The Reeve, in a vengeful tirade, recounts the story of the Miller Symken, his wife and daughter, and two clerks, John and Aleyn. He wastes no time in slandering the Miller as a thief and oppressive ogre, and tells of how he was tricked by the cunning students. After all had plenty to drink, the five sauntered off to bed where the dastardly deed is committed. Through trickery, John confuses the wife into crawling into his bed where he takes advantage of her:
“Withinne a while this John the clerk up leep,
And on this goode wyf he leith on soore.
So myrie a fit ne hadde she nat ful yore;
He priketh harde and depe as he were mad.”
The vivid depiction of this lustful act can easily be masked in the story as the vehement revenge of the Reeve who is seeking to poignantly dethrone the Miller with humiliation. In this way the raunchy episode is justified by the Reeve’s vindictive anger, and is disregarded in the reader’s mind as warranted revenge.
These two tales are clearly connected to each other by the their tone of “quyting” and the vulgarity of their humor. Together the stories are their own little section of the Canterbury Tales, and give the reader insight into the jocularity of the Miller, and the touchy temperament of the Reeve. It is also clear by these two stories that the act of “quyteing” is not embedded just in the telling of a better story, but in personalized insults that dethrone the storyteller and the stories themselves. If Chaucer were to try to accomplish this “quyteing” by actually having a better tale follow a poorer one, the contrast would remain vague in the reader’s mind, and would be largely determined by personal preference. To circumvent this, I believe Chaucer uses personal attacks, which inevitably are going to contain vulgarity, as a dramatic device that allows for the vulgarity and progresses the tales without monotony.
The second pair of comic tales I will look at are The Friar’s Tale, and The Summoner’s Tale, which are similarly connected by the teller’s satirical purposes. Once again Chaucer pits two characters against each other in a dual of wit, and leaves their interaction for the entertainment of his audience. In the Prologue to The Friar’s Tale, the friar states up front his motives for telling the tale and his dislike of the summoner, just as the Reeve did:
‘Pardee, ye may wel knowe by the name
That of a somonour may no good be sayd’ –
This begins what will become an ensuing battle between the two that plays out over the course of the two tales. The friar goes on in the Prologue to form a caricature of the sommoner, accusing him of thievery and sexual lasciviousness with prostitutes. This sets up the tale, and leaves the reader expecting to discover that all that the friar says is true.
As the tale begins, the sommoner sets out about his scrupulous duties of collecting money from debtors, and skimming off the top a fair income for himself. Along his way, he meets a companion who introduces himself as being of a like occupation, but gives little other information except to insinuate that he is not of this world. The two travel together talking about their occupation until they come upon a house in the woods where the sommoner devises a scam to make a poor widow pay him a sum of money:
‘Yis’, quod this somonour, ‘pay anon, lat se,
Twelf pens to me, and I wol thee acquite.
I shal no profit han therby but lite.
My mister hath the profit, and nat I.
Come of, and lat me ryden hastily;
Yif me twelf pens, I may no lenger tarye.’
In this passage, all the sommoner’s chief vices pass before the reader in rapid review: his unpleasantly brisk business-like manner in agreeing to acquit the widow, his cunning in affecting to calculate a sum he has already decided upon, his fraudulence in pretending that the profit is not his own, and, above all, his greedy brutal haste (Craik 111). All of these elements combine to complete the friar’s image of the summoner.
With the friar’s tale finally at an end, the summoner anxiously begins his retort as he said he would in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue:
‘Nay’, quod the Somonour, ‘lat hym seye to me
What so hym list; whan it comth to my lot,
By God! I shal hym quiten every grot.’
He starts by telling of the vices consistent with a friar. He first seeks to expose the friar’s exploitation of his office as a member of the clergy. However, since the friar’s vices are of practiced oral rhetoric meant to deceive, rather than the outwardly scrupulous deeds of the summoner, the summoner takes considerable time to illustrate how the friar deludes his victims:
“Lordynges, ther is in Yorkshire, as I gesse,
A mersshy contree called Holdernesse,
In which ther wente a lymytour aboute,
The summoner thus equates preaching and begging as one in the same since preaching is the friar’s primary means of income, and even this he does not do adequately enough to sustain himself. In this affect, the summoner pays the friar back for his cruel comments regarding his own occupation. Added to this is the obscene insult in the Prologue when the summoner takes revenge on the friar by depicting friars as insects that reside in the filthy asshole of the devil, which is to them like the honeycomb to bees:
” ‘Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas!’ quod he;
‘Shewe forth thy ers, and lat the frere se
Where is the nest of freres in this place!’
And er that half a furlong wey of space,
Right so as bees out swarmen from an hyve,
Out of the develes ers ther gonne dryve
Twenety thousand freres on a route,
And thurghout helle swarmed al aboute,
And comen agayn as faste as they may gon,
And in his ers they crepten everychon.”
(1689 – 98)
The plot of the tale lacks much in the way of action, but is clearly being told as much to slander the friar as to provide any entertainment for the pilgrims. The friar goes aimlessly from house to house begging for money on the Church’s behalf, until he happens upon the house of an old acquaintance. Despite his friend’s illness, he continues with his business-like manner, pleading for Thomas to give him money so that he may offer up prayers for his renewed health. The friar’s incessant pleading only serves to annoy Thomas who has since caught on to his trickery and pretends to concede at the climax of the tale. He tells the friar to fetch a sum of money he has hidden under his buttocks, but when the eager friar reaches under him, he is instead given a fart:
“And whan this sike man felte this frere
Aboute his tuwel grope there and here,
Amydde his hand he leet the frere a fart.
Ther nys no capul, drawynge in a cart,
That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun.”
The humiliating trick sends the friar away in a fury, and provides the summoner with his revenge. Just as in the Miller’s tale and Reeve’s tale, the conflict and attempt to “quyte” the other’s tale ends in a vulgar display of vehemence. In this sense, the two pairs of tales are very much alike in their satirical purposes. Furthermore, Chaucer has once again shifted responsibility for the vulgar tales by focusing on the conflict and the vindictiveness of the storytellers. He is even sure in both tales to use the host as his culprit to draw out all the bawdy details and restore order when the friar blurts out:
‘Pees,’ quod oure Hoost, ‘for Cristes mooder deare!
Tel forth thy tale, and spare it nat at al.’
Chaucer’s use of his character’s conflicts and the act of “quyteing,” once again connects the tales and moves them along a line of progression that is entertaining for the reader, and developmental for the plot. After all, by what other means can revenge be sought, other than vulgar slander that dethrones the opponent? Chaucer knows that there is no other means as entertaining, and for this reason he cleverly uses his battling characters to bring about that end.
I have now shown how the act of “quyting” progresses the comic tales, but an analysis of Chaucer’s use of the device would be incomplete without also including how the device is used in the other tales. As to the other tales, I will specifically refer to the marriage tales, which also use the device in an argumentative fashion. However, the fundamental difference between the comic tales and the marriage tales use of “quyting” is the focus of the arguments. As where the comic tales carry a personal agenda of slander and revenge, the marriage tales are centered on the issue of mastery in marriage, which lies outside the realm of personal invasion.
The Wife of Bath is the first to bring up the controversial topic of mastery in marriage. She openly and forcefully asserts that women, not men, should have dominance in marriage, and tells mockingly of her own pursuits in the matter. She then continues with a tale that recounts her beliefs. She chooses for her heroine an old hag that is paired with a knight of great wealth; yet even with such extreme differences of station, it’s the poor hag that tricks the knight into marriage and later into giving her dominance. This alone asserts the power of the woman in the tale. At nearly every point in the story, the knight is at the mercy of the woman. By the end of the story the Knight recognizes the wisdom of the hag, and willingly submits authority. However, even still, it is the benevolence of the woman that is remembered and emphasized, not the Knight’s change of heart.
In response to the Wife’s tirade, the Clerk tells a tale that he hopes will both implicitly and explicitly expose the heresy of the Wife’s tale. His story is thus told in direct opposition, to show his displeasure of the Wife’s tale. Just as in the comic tales there are the opposing forces of two opinions that cannot be reconciled. However, the learned clerk, rather than resort to vulgar ridicule, lets his tale prove his point.
The clerk tells of a woman named Griselda, who suffers under the cruelty of her husband Walter, yet rather than assert control over the situation the woman patiently endures. The whole of the tale suggests that her patience is produced by strength of character rather than mere submissiveness. The cruelty done to Griselda is as extreme as the trickery and dominance of the Wife of Bath and her tale, yet it is obvious that one tale has been told in response to the other. The progression of the tales has been indelibly altered by the opinion of the first, the response of the second, and the next two tales that follow.
The Merchant is called on next to tell a story, and reluctantly continues with the theme of marriage. He tells of a lecherous old husband that is duped by his young wife. The tale seems to digress a bit, and rather than answering the question of what makes a marriage happy, he implies that marriage is all together a sham with no real fidelity or constancy. He illustrates this in his tale by telling of old January and his young, unfaithful wife May. The story is unique in that it has elements of both the marriage tales and the comic tales. The vulgar account of Damyan and May’s relations in the pear tree is very reminiscent of the Miller’s tale in the way that the two young lovers trick the older husband so that they can be together. However, the issue at the heart of the tale addresses the topic of mastery, which is central to the marriage tales.
By telling such a tale the Merchant is challenging both the Wife’s tale and the Clerk’s tale, and the very institution of marriage. He has “quyted” both tales by doing what the others have done. He has asserted his opinions over those of the other two, and has provided yet another perspective on marriage while progressing the general topic of marriage. Rather than trying to show many perspectives in one story, Chaucer has chosen to use the storytellers for the task of providing a dynamic look at the topic.
The marriage tales are more or less ended with the Franklin’s tale, that challenges the notions of all those before him. He tells of a wife and her husband and their love of equality in which neither sought mastery over the other. It is the honor of their love that so impresses all who see it, that the couple is saved from deception, humiliation, and broken promises. Thus the Franklin implies that mutual love and respect is the way of true “gentilesse.” The discussion is ended with the Franklin’s tale, and everyone present seems to concur (most likely even Chaucer himself).
Through four degrees of separation, and four reactions of human emotion, Chaucer provides a complete picture of the joys and pitfalls of marriage. By relating the stories to real people in actual reaction to each other, Chaucer is able to progress the tales while exploring in depth a topic of great importance. Though the comic tales are not focused on a central topic such as marriage, they also are given an added dimension through Chaucer’s use of “quyting”. In both the comic tales and the marriage tales the storytellers are forced into interaction by the nature of their opinions of each other and philosophical dilemmas such as mastery in marriage. Without this human element of the storyteller’s interaction, the progression of stories would seem flaccid and monotonous. Just as Chaucer’s device of “quyting” brings about the vulgarity of the comic tales, it also brings about the progression of a main topic as in the marriage tales. In both instances The Canterbury Tales are enhanced, and the reader is treated to a unique display of human emotion and the tales that ensue.
