Polyphony in The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer, Debate, and Polemic

Abstract

There is a long tradition of formal debate in medieval literature, as I'm certain you all know, and Chaucer's own writings perfectly align themselves with this particular tradition since it often provokes the confrontation of different worlds, each defined by its own logical structures. The notion of debate is thus, in my opinion, fundamentally dialogical in Chaucer's work, for the poet illustrates oppositional structures by a remarkable use of polyphony.

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Polyphony in The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer, debate, and polemic
Dr. Jonathan Fruoco
There is a long tradition of formal debate in medieval literature, as I’m certain you all
know, and Chaucer’s own writings perfectly align themselves with this particular tradition
since it often provokes the confrontation of different worlds, each defined by its own logical
structures. The notion of debate is thus, in my opinion, fundamentally dialogical in Chaucer’s
work, for the poet illustrates oppositional structures by a remarkable use of polyphony: his
narrator (often his narrative persona) engages in dialogue with the characters he encounters
and manages to expose different voices, each one representing a particular perspective (on
literature, spirituality...) without submitting them to the monological will of the poet.
It’s noteworthy that Chaucer decides to set his Canterbury Tales during a pilgrimage that is
to say on the road. The chronotope of the road is indeed perfect for Chaucer since it not only
gives his poem a great stability but also reinforces his use of polyphony. For it is on the road,
at the exact same space and time junction, that people from different classes, situations,
religions, genders, and ages come across. It is one of the only places where these people, who
would normally be separated by social hierarchies or distances, meet. Chaucer uses this
chronotope in The Canterbury Tales to justify the presence of all these different people at the
same place. But the pilgrims themselves are not dramatic characters. Each is a model of
efficiency in his/her particular trade and possesses most of its vices or virtues – something
inspired by medieval estates satire. The Knight is, for example, an almost idealized
representation of his order: he is described as an admirable, noble and courtly man, defending
the values of chivalry, but his military curriculum is a tad too impressive to be believable. He
is supposed to have fought in Latvia, Russia, in Granada, in Turkey... And the same is true for
the Friar, who becomes the symbol of corruption and hypocrisy within the church. Chaucer
thus portrays several generic characters (although some do seem bigger than life) to which he
attributes tales. But he actually composes a poem whose narrative structure transcends the
great literary movements of the time. If we go back to a Bakhtinian reading of the Tales, we
realize that Chaucer’s existence within the diegesis reduces the force of the author’s voice: he
becomes one of the characters, and his voice is no more important than the one of his fellow
pilgrims: he cannot even finish his first tale. Chaucer’s frequent deployment of the ‘modesty
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topos’ is often associated with a form of grotesque realism1 whose purpose is to diminish the
strength of his poetic persona. In The House of Fame, for instance, Geffrey barely interacts
with the world he is visiting and his own physical description as a rather ‘paunchy’ fellow,
who knows very little about love and who does not seem to be interested in sudden spiritual
elevation, gets him further and further away from Dante in The Divine Comedy. And it is
particularly interesting to note that Chaucer’s persona is no longer in contact with the values
of courtly love in The Canterbury Tales. The various portraits of the pilgrims are accordingly
held together by a nonspecific narrator, capable of adopting and responding to various
perspectives; and this narrator shows a surprising interest in villains, thieves, and rogues.
Such characters are barely present in Chaucer’s writings before the Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales, but we suddenly find ourselves with four in a bunch, which marks as Nevill
Coghill remarked ‘a sudden crescendo of crooks’ (Chaucer, Coghill & Tolkien, 1958/1965,
14). The narrator seems fascinated by the sins and crimes of his fellow travelers and even
describes the Pardoner as ‘a noble ecclesiaste’ (GP, l. 708), which is rather surprising.
Chaucer thus transforms his narrator into a character embodying the traditional
characteristics of the ‘fool’ figure, namely a polemical lack of understanding of the
conventional nature of the world. Indeed, Mikhail Bakhtin tells us that the ‘fool’ is a major
‘vector of incomprehension’ that exemplifies linguistic variety in a work of fiction. Polemic,
or willing incomprehension, could thus be considered as one of the best ways to stimulate
polyphony since it gives the author the chance to represent the world with the words of
someone who does not understand its conventional nature, or refuses to understand it. Since
Chaucer is free from the conventions of courtly poetry in the Tales, he positions his narrative
persona in such a way as to allow him to be confronted with different literary genres, different
social classes, and professions, and thus with hypocrisy, lies and other similar forms of
language. The ‘fool’ is accordingly always in a dialogical opposition to a religious, political or
poetical discourse whose nuances he does not entirely understand. Chaucer uses this persona
to provoke an extradiegetic dialogue between different literary genres, each one associated
with a pilgrim/tale and with a complete aesthetic of its own. He gives free reins to a
cacophonous literary diversity exemplified by a remarkable plurivocality and polyphony. We
jump from the Merchant’s Tale’s rhetoric to the elegant simplicity of the Clerk’s Tale; from
the grace and spirituality of hagiography to the obscenity of the fabliau. What Chaucer does
here is actually creating a unique poetic for each tale.
1 The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, the lowering of all that is abstract, spiritual, noble,
and ideal to the material level.
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The central position of the ‘Chaucer pilgrim’ allows the poet to represent different
perspectives through the eyes of this character and because he does not comprehend what is
obvious to everyone else, it gives the author the chance to externalize and to put those
different social languages and their structural logic into perspective. Chaucer turns The
Canterbury Tales into an integral and multiform reflection of his time. Now, can this linguistic
microcosm be considered as prefiguring one of the principal constituents of the novel as a
genre? I like to think so, but I’m very interested to hear what my esteemed colleagues here
might say on the subject.
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