Chaucerotics

Uncloaking the Language of Sex in The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde

Geoffrey W. Gust

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319897455
• eBook ISBN: 9783319897462
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Chaucerotics examines the erotic language in Chaucerian literature through a unique lens, utilizing the tools of "pornographic literary theory" to open up Chaucer's ribald poetry to fresh modes of analysis. By introducing and applying the notion of "Chaucerotics, " this study argues for a more historically-nuanced and theoretically-sophisticated understanding of the obscene content in Chaucer's fabliaux and Troilus and Criseyde. This book demonstrates that the sexually suggestive language of this magisterial Middle English poet could stimulate and titillate various literary audiences in late medieval England, and even goes so far as to suggest that Chaucer might well be understood as the "Father of English pornography" for playing a notable, liminal role in the development of porn as a literary genre. In making this case, Geoffrey W. Gust presents an insightful account of an important intellectual issue and opens up the subject of premodern pornography to consideration in a way that is new and highly provocative.

© The Author(s) 2018

Geoffrey W. GustChauceroticsThe New Middle Ageshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89746-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Chaucerotics and the Problem of Medieval Pornography

Geoffrey W. Gust¹

(1)

School of General Studies, Stockton University, Galloway, NJ, USA

End Abstract

Consider the following series of quotations: first, some two thousand years ago, a then-obscure prophet forcefully decreed that “whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, hath already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee… And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.”¹ Roughly four centuries later, the Bishop of Hippo was wrought with guilt because he was a “slave of lust” (libidinis servus) as a young man, since “my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity”; even after he changed his personal behavior tantalizing phrasing remained a staple of his theological writing, as in his prayer for God to “Circumcise the lips of my mind and my mouth… Let your Scriptures be my chaste delight.”² In 1402, the influential Bishop of Paris urged authorities to establish laws against the exhibition and sale of obscene pictures—decrying “the filthy corruption of boys and adolescents by shameful and nude pictures offered for sale”³—while a famous diarist admitted in 1668 to purchasing a “mighty lewd” and “roguish book” for truly private purposes, since he apparently burned it in shame after masturbating to it, an act which he obliquely explained by stating that “it did hazer my prick para stand all the while, and una vez to decharger.”⁴

During the so-called Industrial Revolution, the historian widely credited with popularizing the concept of the Renaissance viewed the burgeoning of erotic forms in the period as the inevitable conclusion of an awe-inspiring but problematic age, and described the “lusty” obscenities of the Ancients as a “misleading influence” that “undermined” morality and offered later viewers and artists no relief against the temptation to sin.⁵ Not long thereafter, one of the most controversial novelists of all time boldly proclaimed that “What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another,”⁶ and a noted contemporary similarly suggested that “pornography rather than brevity is the soul of wit.”⁷ More recently, scholars of medieval literature have stressed that “writing (and reading) … could not escape the flesh since it took place on the flesh” of parchment,⁸ while “Making love is, after all, a verbal performance—if the poet is a ‘maker’.”⁹

The names of the individuals who uttered these statements are found in my notes, but I have deliberately chosen to omit them above in order to emphasize that erotic desire and erotic depictions in art, particularly literature, have been consistent—and consistently contentious—topics of discussion since the classical age.¹⁰ And the selected quotations suggest that, contrary to popular scholarly opinion, what we now call “pornography” has not entered into public consciousness only recently. Amorous desire and its artistic manifestations have been subjects of controversy for thousands of years, and the fact that so many individuals have commented on recognizably pornographic forms—and from such various eras, fields, and perspectives—underlines the reality that pornography is and long has been far more socially central than many would (like to) assume. The historical evidence demonstrates that erotic discourses are crucial to the very fabric of medieval thought, and this fabric has done much to create the edifice of modern culture. Put another way, it is clear that there are significant strands of continuity between medieval discourses of and on desire and today’s related discussion. This is an important realization for scholars of the Middle Ages, especially in light of Michel Foucault’s powerful assertion that “the history of sexuality … must first be written from the viewpoint of a history of discourses”¹¹—in effect, the history of sexuality is a study of discourse.

In response to such thinking, this book will examine the poetic discourses of Geoffrey Chaucer, a writer whose striking and varied verse is often seen as providing a window into the lives of men and women living in late medieval Europe. For centuries, many readers have particularly remembered Chaucer’s poetry for its bawdy, humorous elements, though he is characteristically revered by trained scholars for his more lofty, magisterial verse, which displays such a mastery of estates satire, courtly romance, moral fable, and other high-brow generic forms that his oeuvre is commonly seen as establishing the English literary tradition. As I will demonstrate in this study, the so-called “Father of English poetry” also facilitated another important tradition in British letters, but one that is often shunned or marginalized in the academy. Though it is technically anachronistic, Chaucer may well deserve the additional title of the “Father of English pornography” for helping to jump-start the pornographic literary tradition in England.

As test cases for this argument, I will examine the sexually charged discourses of the fabliaux in The Canterbury Tales and the suggestive storyline seen in Troilus and Criseyde . These texts display key elements of the kaleidoscopic vision of medieval eroticism that is seen in Chaucer’s entire poetic corpus, and make it clear that “Father Chaucer’s” writing is full of pornographic suggestions in a number of pivotal moments. To examine and encapsulate such moments, I propose the concept of Chaucerotics . This is no mere play on words but is intended to be a fresh analytical term that helps to identify and define the unique erotic nature of Chaucer’s verse. In particular, Chaucerotics designates the sexually salacious passages that play a central role in the poet’s body of work and emphasizes the fact that these remarkable passages are, at the very least, erotic in their function. Thus, by analyzing the major examples of Chauceroticism throughout this book and considering the primary views of scholars on these passages, it is hoped that this study provides a nuanced, comprehensive, and indeed provocative picture of the poet’s alluring sexual representations.

As a theoretical construct, the notion of Chaucerotics urges readers to pay close attention to the sexualized content in the poet’s writing and signifies that the (erotic) meaning of a particular text is historically contingent and may shift and change in accordance with contextual surrounds. It also highlights that it is a work’s possible function rather than its scholarly definition that determines its ribald, erotic, and pornographic meaning(s).¹² Furthermore, when carefully applied to Chaucer’s verse, the concept of Chaucerotics underlines that erotic representation itself is never static due to the very fluidity of desire,¹³ and documents that a text and its pleasures need not be lewd but can also be ludic¹⁴—and within this play we may identify the provocative and the prurient, if not the pornographic.

What I am hoping to present in this study, then, is an original account of Chaucer’s poetics of obscenity, to borrow Peter Michelson’s appellation for the conspicuous representation of sexuality, the literary strategies of “speaking the unspeakable”: this is “the risky side of the story teller’s art” that offers a challenging “way of knowing” by stretching our frame of reference and making the “obscene function aesthetically.”¹⁵ Chaucer does just that in his fabliaux, where obscene content is pervasive yet these texts also show a master-craftsman at work, able to neatly place “risky”—or indeed risqué—material within a larger poetic project filled with mixed modes and aesthetically pleasing wonders. The same is true of Troilus and Criseyde , where the author takes great care in “speaking the unspeakable” and, in the end, is unwilling to subdue the enticing erotic energies of this passionate love story.

The obvious place to begin this discussion is to ask the all-important question of whether certain varieties of medieval obscenity, particularly literary bawdry, truly merit the label of pornography? The answer depends on one’s definition, as well as the socio-poetic context at hand. For the purposes of this discussion, three terms already used several times above are especially important: obscenity, erotica, and pornography. These concepts are intellectually and ideologically linked, but there are some key distinctions that can be drawn concerning them—distinctions that are crucial to my use and understanding of Chaucerotics as a theoretical construct. Hence, a brief preliminary note on usage is warranted here, with additional explanation to follow later in this Introduction.

Starting with the most general of the three terms, obscenity is a concept that designates the crass, the taboo, and the morally unacceptable. Like the other two term...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Chaucerotics and the Problem of Medieval Pornography
• 2. Chaucerotics and the Cloak of Language in the Fabliaux
• 3. “Ther was the revel and the melodye”: The Playful Cloak of Language in The Miller’s Tale
• 4. “On this goode wyf he leith on soore”: The Brutal Chauceroticism of The Reeve’s Tale
• 5. “And in he throng”: The Anti-Chivalric Chauceroticism of The Merchant’s Tale
• 6. “And of his owene thought he wax al reed”: Chaucerotics and the Poetics of Prostitution in The Shipman’s Tale
• 7. “Swych feste it joye was to sene”: On the Pornographic Possibilities of Troilus and Criseyde
• 8. Conclusion: Uncloaking the Language of Sex in The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde
• Back Matter