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Rhetorical Word-Play in Chaucer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
In the opinion of the late Thomas R. Lounsbury, Chaucer was virtually “free from these verbal quibbles which characterize to so marked a degree the language of the Elizabethan dramatists.” “The single instance,” he went on to say, “in which he furnishes any noticeable example of this sort is the play upon the word ‘style’ in the Squire's tale; though there is possibly one of the same character in a line in ‘Troilus and Cressida,‘ where it is said that
- ‘This Calkas knew by calkulynge,‘ i., 71
that Troy was to be taken. Still, from conceits of all kinds and of all grades Chaucer's language, at every period of his literary career, was in general wholly free.“
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Studies in Chaucer (New York, 1892), iii, 319.
2 Except for Naunin's summary account mentioned below, 2 or 3 short articles, and B. J. Harrison's unpublished Yale dissertation, “The Colors of Rhetoric in Chaucer” (1932), this important subject has not yet been adequately treated.
3 The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston, 1933), p. 760. Robinson's readings and abbreviations have been used in this article.
4 Robinson's statement that puns are unusual in Chaucer is echoed in Muriel Bowden's Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (New York, 1948), p. 161. And in 1894 W. W. Skeat, Complete Works of Chaucer, v, 374, said, apropos of the pun on stile SqT 105-106, that “such puns are not common in Chaucer.”
5 The same footnote cites 2 puns used by Deschamps as pointed out by his modern editor, M. Raynaud, and 3 other OF puns.
6 Though “pun” and “word-play” are often synonymous, I am using the latter term here as more inclusive, covering every kind of play on words from double-entendre to jingle.
7 K. S. Block, ed. Ludus Conventriae (London, 1922), p. 104. This word-play is common in Latin also, as in the second stanza of Ave Maris Stella (G. M. Dreves, ed. Analecta Hymnica Medii Ævi, ii, 39):
Sumens illud Ave
Gabrielis ore
Funda nos in pace
Mutans Evae nomen.
8 Robinson ed., pp. 248 (ll. 85-119) and 864.
9 J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism: The Medieval Phase (London, 1943), p. 47. See also R. Withington, “Paronomasia in John Heywood's Plays,” Smith Coll. Studies in Mod. Lang., xxi, 221 ff.
10 I have used the French edition with parallel translation: Henri Bornecque, ed. Rhétorique à Hérennius (Paris, 1932).
11 See Atkins, pp. 115 ff., and Edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1924), pp. 48 ff.
12 “Traductio est, quae facit uti, cum idem verbum crebrius ponatur, non modo non offendat animum, sed etiam concinniorem orationem reddat” (p. 186).
13 Cf. Atkins, p. 201.
14 “Ex eodem genere est exornationis, cum idem verbum ponitur modo in hac, modo in altera re” (p. 186).
15 Faral, p. 97.
16 “Adnominatio est, cum ad idem verbum et nomen acceditur commutatione vocum aut litterarum, ut ad res dissimiles similia verba accommodentur. Ea multis et variis rationibus conficitur. Attenuatione aut complexione ejusdem litterae sic … [p. 200]. Et ex contrario … . Productione ejusdem litterae hoc modo … . Brevitate ejusdem litterae … . Addendis litteris hoc pacto … . Demendis nunc litteris sic … . Transferendis litteris sic … . Commutandis hoc modo …” (p. 202).
17 “Tertium genus est, quod versatur in casum commutatione aut unius aut plurium nominum. Unius nominis hoc modo: ‘Alexander Macedo summo labore animum ad virtutem a pueritia confirmavit. Alexandri virtutes per orbem terrae cum laude et gloria vulgatae sunt. Alexandrum omnes maxime metuerant, idem plurimum dilexerunt. Alexandro si vita longior esset, trans Oceanum Macedonum transvolassent sarisae‘” (p. 202).
18 “Quare fides et gravitas et severitas oratoria minuitur hic exornationibus frequenter collocatis et non modo tollitur auctoritas dicendi, sed offenditur quoque in ejusmodi oratione, propterea quod est in his lepos et festivitas, non dignitas neque pulchritudo” (p. 204).
19 “Per ambiguum, cum verbum potest in duas pluresve sententias accipi, sed accipitur tamen in earn partem, quam vult is, qui dixit” (p. 268).
20 The Arte of English Poesie, Gladys Dodge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge, 1936), pp. 203 f., 198 f. Veré Rubel's application of Puttenham's rhetorical figures to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde in her Poetic Diction in the English Renaissance (New York, 1941) is not always exact, even allowing for the Tudor point of view. Thus she illustrates antistrophe (pp. 23 f.) by the “identical” rhymes withstonde: stonde and see: see; the former is a common variant of rime riche while the latter links, not see:see, but for to see:seyn to me:mo to see (see below). Knight and night were not homonyms in Chaucer's time though they had apparently coalesced in the colloquial language of the late 16th century; orthoepists, however, did not admit the non-pronunciation of k in kn until much later—see my Shakespeare's Pronunciation (New Haven, 1953), p. 305, and Language, xi (1945), 77 ff.
21 Puttenham, pp. 202 f., 207. Rubel, p. 27, classifies kynde—unkynde as a case of antanaclasis on the mistaken assumption that they are homonyms; since the two words are identical, this is probably another case of prosonomasia like leeve: byleve.
22 Puttenham, pp. 165 f. Another variant of this figure, which Rubel, p. 27, erroneously illustrates by out breste TC 4.237, consists in using the same word to supply several clauses. The word that supplies both clauses in Rubel's TC quotation is not, however, out breste, but bygan in 1. 236; out breste itself, echoing brest in 1. 236, is a clear case of adnominatio (see below) or, in Puttenham's terms, prosonomasia.
23 I using Skeat's text as printed in his Chaucer ed., i, 93 ff.
24 Ernest Hœpffner, Œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut (Paris, 1907), i, 64 f.
25 Le jugement dou roy de Navarre, ll. 875-876, 947-948, 949-950.
26 Richard Jordan—H. Ch. Matthes, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik, 2nd rev. ed. (Heidelberg, 1934), §195.
27 Ibid., §300.
28 Albert Schinz, “L'art dans les Contes Devots de Gautier de Coincy,” PMLA, xxii (1907), 514.
29 Ibid., p. 517; F. M. Warren, “Some Features of Style in Early French Narrative Poetry (1150-70),” MP, iii (1905-06), 517 f., quotes these examples of the same device:
Mult me desdaigne, en mervillant,
Et me mervel, en desdegnant,
Mult me desdaing, mult me mervel.
30 For similar examples of pronounced unstressed e in hiatus see my article “Chaucer's Rosemounde,” MLN, lxiii (1948), 317.
31 Cf. Shakespeare's use of the same word-play, Shakespeare's Pronunciation, p. 131.
32 See n. 21, above.
33 See Robinson, p. 922.
34 Chaucer (London, 1952), p. 85.
35 A suggestion by Preston, p. 86, n. 4.
36 This meaning is, moreover, supported by the OF text, as pointed out by Robinson, p. 765. I likewise agree with Robinson (p. 833) that it is unnecessary to assume a pun on doctour (St. Augustine and the Physician who tells the tale) in PhysT 117, a suggestion made by Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition (Copenhagen, 1925), p. 129, n. 3.