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Chaucer's Puns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Paull F. Baum
Paull F. Baum*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, N. C.
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Extract

Forty years ago Tatlock published a short paper on “Puns in Chaucer,” but since then very little has been said on the subject, until just recently appeared Helge Kokeritz' article on “Rhetorical Word Play in Chaucer.” Tatlock pointed out a dozen puns, together with a few “coarse” ones not directly specified. In 1892 Lounsbury had said that Chaucer was “free from these verbal quibbles”; he saw only one, Calkas-calculynge. Before Tatlock, also, Skeat had noted a few, and apropos of style (F 105 f.) commented: “such puns are not common in Chaucer.” Similarly Robinson, apropos of philosophre (A 297) said: “Puns are unusual in Chaucer and it is not always easy to determine whether they are intentional”; but he added as “more or less clear” six of Tatlock's and one of his own, the Latin play on eructavit (D 1934). Preston mentioned six or seven in passing (Chaucer, 1952). Kokeritz conceded that real “double entendres” (significatio, or pun in the modern sense) appear in Chaucer, “though not very often.” He instanced a baker's dozen, along with a few more already noted by others, which he found unacceptable.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 1956 , pp. 225 - 246
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956

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References

1 Flilgel Memorial Volume (Stanford Univ., 1916), pp. 228–232.

2 PMLA, lxix (1954), 937–952. A draft of the present study was first submitted before Kökeritz' article appeared.

3 Edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siécle (Paris, 1924), pp. 93 ff.

4 See E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York, 1953). Curtius counted some 200 examples of annominatio in the Divine Comedy, beginning with selva selvaggia (pp. 279 f.).

5 Skeat found a dozen puns in Piers Plowman (ed. 1886, ii, 482); Bernard F. Huppé, “Petrus, id est Christus: Word Play in Piers Plowman, the B-Text,” ELB, xvii (1950), 163–190, found hundreds of examples.

6 Cf. ed. Cope and Sandys, iii, 132 ff. The Bohn translation has “Puns” as a marginal gloss.

7 See Sister Miriam Joseph, Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language (New York, 1947), pp. 164 ff., 339 ff., for the Renaissance terms and distinctions.

8 To the examples of acoustic effects recorded by Kökeritz may be added these: square as any sparre (A 1076), irons Cirus (D 2079), patience … passing (E 1224 f.), shilde that it sholde (E 1232), song rong (E 1966), rody … redy (F 385, 387), com Hom (BD 78 f.), knyght fyght (PF 103), knight highte (A 1013), lissen … lesse … listen (Troilus 1.702 ff.) shyneth sheene (Troilus iv. 1239), beenfieen (Troilus iv.1356); and He took his boost, and hoom he rood anon (A 1026; so El and 4 others, and Skeat, Globe, Koch; Manly ryt, Robinson rit), the o's in A 2725; and finally, in 5 lines, A 3982 ff., hooly 5 times, blood 4 times, and good and moot 1 each.

9 There may be marginal uncertainties, as in some conceits or in bold or mixed metaphors, on the boundary line between poetry and wit. When in the Anglo-Saxon Genesis B Satan in hell says: “Then comes at dawn a wind from the east, frost fearfully cold, like fire or a spear,” we may recall that frost and fire are etymologically related (Lat. pruina ‘hoar-frost,’ and pruna ‘live coal'; with the same root as A-S freosan). The same juxtaposition occurs in Milton's “The parching air Bums frore,” also in an infernal context. These may be bold metaphor (simile) or there may be almost no fusion: frost is painful, and so is fire, or a spear.

10 The dictionaries are unsatisfactory. NED says: “so as to produce a humorous effect.” The Century says: “Even when taken into sober discourse, the pun has an effect at least of oddity”—as in “Suffolk—suffocate” (Henry vi i.i.124). “Hence modern taste excludes puns from serious writing and speaking.” Wyld's Universal has: “a play upon words, a humorous use of words.” Webster's International is the most emphatic: “always for the sake of ludicrous effect.” But they are all misleading, because it can be shown that many puns are humorous neither in intention nor in effect.

11 R. P. Blackmuir, Language as Gesture (New York, 1952), p. 23.

12 See Curtius, Excursus iv, pp. 417–435.

13 Poetria Nona, ll. 367 ff.; Faral, p. 208.