They All Laughed When I Sat Down to Write: Chaucer, Jokes, and the Short Story

 

 

 

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They All Laughed When I Sat Down to Write: Chaucer, Jokes, and the Short Story

Barry Sanders

I

 

The great mother of invention gave birth to fraternal twins: storytelling and joking. The ambiguity that jokes and stories share allows both joker and storyteller to get away with murder. The joker pleads, "I'm only kidding. It was only a joke," while the storyteller wriggles off the hook by saying, "Come on; it's only fiction." In writing fiction, the author weaves an intricately beautiful lie--a metaphoric reality--so that the story will be taken seriously. The author plots in order to perpetrate a story on the audience, to hoodwink it into acceptng the fabrication as real. To be successful, the author must take storytelling seriously and, at the same time, take delight in playing a practical joke on the audience. This is as true for that trickster Mark Twain as it is for Geoffrey Chaucer, who instructs us in the Prologue to "The Miller's Tale" not to take his brilliant narratio seriously. After all, he announces, "I'm only playing a game." This is a tongue-in-cheek bit of instruction, surely, for Chaucer sets the stakes in some of his games fairly high.

 

Since both joker and author must enjoy being playful, it makes sense that Thoth, the god of writing in the ancient world, is also the inventor of play--the one who puts play into play. The Latin word for "story," geste, produces the modern English jest, a kinship that surfaced in English as early as the time of King Aelfric, who uses the word racu in some places to translate the Latin historia and in other places to translate commoedia. Thus, the word racu is defined in Anglo-Saxon glossaries both as "narration" and "laughter." AngloSaxons refer to their poets as "laughter-smiths" and "minstrels"--singers of stories--and most often as purveyors of laughter, gleemen. But a great distance separates funny stories, or even laughter-smiths and gleemen, from actual joking. And it is that elusive creature, the joke, I want to track. It is almost inevitable that the joke and the short story should emerge at the same moment. That

 

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II

 

Medieval England and France developed a rich tradition of jesting and narration, and, of course, laughter, reflected in an almost unbelievable range of traveling performers--an ordo vagorum of motley players. If historical record can be trusted, one could barely take a step across the English landscape without bumping into an acrobat or a magician. The medievals have as many names for their entertainers as the Eskimo do for snow. Mimi, scurrae, scenici, Goliards, poetae, parasites, tragoedi, comoedi, comici, joculares, jocistae, corauli, cantatores, joculatores, historiones, cytharistae, thymalici--all of these vagabonds played, juggled, and with great fanfare and elaboration recited bawdy iocare (jests) and facetiae (witty stories).

 

By the thirteenth century, these various entertainers, ultimately all derived from the mimi of ancient Greece, were being described by one French word: jongleur. The modern English juggler derived, in turn, from the same Latin root for joke, jocare. Traveling from place to place, these raconteur/jongleurs generated so much hearty laughter that contemporary historians dubbed England a terra ridentium--a land of laughter. It is clear from account books of colleges and monasteries, from councils, synods, and the capitularies of Charlemagne that bishops, abbots, and abbesses, forbidden to own hunting dogs, falcons, and hawks, were also denied the company of these bawdy joculatores. They were dangerous, tempting the religious to while away their precious time. Certain capitularies, in denouncing the stories being recited by these troops of itinerant players, make clear that their gesta are only thinly disguised jocistae (jokes). Besides, many are preserved under the name that Cicero gave them, facetiae--short, mostly funny, and bawdy vignettes. They resemble the joke in subject but not yet in form.

 

By the end of the thirteenth century, humanists began collecting and publishing these facetiae, putting an end to their circulation by word of mouth. Something more powerful began to take their place, a genre that remains to this day our most unpredictable and playful form of oral entertainment: the joke. Nearly everyone, even those who cannot tell stories, delights in recounting an occasional joke. We owe this extraordinary invention, at least in English, to Chaucer, who brings the history of jesting, narration, and laughter together in one grand literary move.

 

Chaucer noticed that the physicality of the practical joke could be converted into a verbal punch line, which turned the listener into a target, a butt, no longer subject to a physical blow, but instead made vulnerable, emotionally and psychically, to an image or a word. In "The Miller's Tale," Chaucer has drawn the curtain aside and offered his fourteenth-century audience a glimpse into the literate future: the practical joke domesticated. While the Miller tells a story

 

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that revolves around several practical jokes--a fake flood, a misdirected kiss, a perfectly aimed fart, a singed ass--his tale itself constitutes a colossal, nasty joke about gullibility and cuckoldry, fired at another pilgrim character, the Reeve.

 

Derisive joking in the Classical world was characterized as aculei, meaning "barbed" or "arrow-like"; the word butt quite appropriately translates as "target," as in archery. These key words reveal something crucial: the punch line cannot hit its mark unless the victims present themselves as fully rounded characters, their vulnerability made fleshly palpable. The Miller must be close enough to the Reeve to know, as we say, where he "lives." A joke misfires unless it finds a personality rife with consciousness and sensibility. Idiots, dolts-stupidus of all stripes--will simply miss the point; or the point will miss them--fly by without so much as a glancing blow; or pass over their heads. Corralling the joke into a literate context forced Chaucer into becoming a mature writer, into dropping traditional, flat stereotypes in favor of more rounded characters. At this early stage of storytelling, characters come to life, oddly enough, so they can be murdered, metaphorically speaking, by other characters. This paradox radically affects the storyteller as well, for in writing jokes Chaucer moved to another level of seriousness. In medieval terms, he became an author.

 

Chaucer understood that the tremendous power and sophistication of this oral form could be harnessed by literacy to realign social status and personal relationships--to produce, that is, the most profound social change. The ultimate effect of Chaucer's accomplishment is staggering. Because of him people still crack aggressive jokes, and for precisely the same reasons, for the history of joking records the outbreak of an uncivil war. Unsuspecting victims keel over, break up, fall apart, double up--all with laughter. They find themselves slayed, murdered, killed. Joking is violent, vicious, deadly stuff. If no one ever stumbled or fell, never slipped or got butted, we would, if jokes provide any evidence, still try to knock them over--either physically (with practical jokes) or verbally (with well-aimed "punch" lines).

III

 

Since the action of "The Miller's Tale" may not be fresh in mind, let me remind you of it here. By retracing this tale, I also hope to show how the form of the well-made old-fashioned short story follows the form of Chaucer's early joke. The action starts out fast. The Miller announces that he will tell a tale about cuckoldry. No sooner are the words out of his mouth than his pilgrim rival, the Reeve, protests: Tell something more wholesome, less offensive. The Reeve protests too much, of course, revealing himself to be a cuckold of the first order, while laying his insecurities wide open for everyone to examine. Every joker begins by asking the question, "Have you heard the one about the . . . ?" or, "Stop me if you've heard this one," for laughter thrives on surprise. True, the Reeve has not heard this one--and he does not want to--but he clearly

 

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knows what is coming, and that is his problem: He cannot stop the boorish Miller. Chaucer underscores this rivalry graphically. The Miller, bully that he is, outweighs the skinny, choleric Reeve by several hundred pounds. When he punches, it hurts. Miller and Reeve face off in the tradition of fat and lean comic pairs, like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, Mutt and Jeff, and Ralph Cramden and Ed Norton. As the Miller unfolds his story, it is clear that he intends to throw his weight around, and the Reeve will undoubtedly get hurt. The Miller goes right for the bull's-eye--the Reeve's jugular--with his opening shot: An old, wealthy man named John, who just happens to be a carpenter, like the Reeve, marries a young, beautiful girl, Alisoun, and because he feels deeply jealous, he keeps her confined. But unfortunately, he is also cheap. And so to make some extra money, the old carpenter rents a room in his attic to a young, handsome university student, Nicholas. And thus we have the "happy incident." The Reeve stomps his foot, but the Miller rolls on.

 

The young couple, Alisoun and Nicholas, immediately conspire, of course, to keep John at a safe distance so they can, as Chaucer puts it, "rage and pleye." Alisoun hatches a plan; Nicholas carries it out. In a tiny story within the story, Nicholas warns John about a fast-approaching flood so horrendous it will make Noah's flood seem like a summer shower. To escape certain death by drowning, Nicholas counsels, John must hammer together three little tubs and secure them to the roof, high above the waterline. John complies, and with the gullible old man safely tied to the roof and curled up fast asleep inside his tub, Alisoun and Nicholas descend to the ground floor to spend the evening in bed. At this point, the tale has developed an uneasy balance.

 

But not for long. Just as Alisoun and Nicholas have settled themselves into bed, Chaucer ruins their fun by throwing a new complication their way--an additional yarn he will use to knit up the climax of the story, and to add another flourish to the lovers' triangle. Absalom, a parish priest who earlier had his eye on Alisoun, comes to her bedroom window, in true courtly fashion, to serenade his paramour and charm a juicy kiss from her. After a few minutes of offkey singing, Absalom pops the question and asks for his kiss. Alisoun consents, but by now she is so enamored of practical jokes that she hatches yet one more. Pucker up, she coyly says, as she eases her naked behind out the window. Blinded by the excitement of getting his kiss at long last, Absalom unwittingly kisses her keester, as Chaucer describes, "ful savourly," producing in Alisoun one of the giddiest iambic lines in literature, as well as the first laugh recorded in English: "'Tehee!' quod she, and clapte the window to."

 

Practical jokes prompt immediate escalation, just as stories inspire competition. "Can you top this?" is implied in every joke and story. As Absalom slowly understands what he has done, he also resolves to get even, which means of course he must raise the ante. He returns to Alisoun's bedroom window and begs for another kiss, just as wonderful as the last, and Alisoun once more agrees. Nicholas now decides he wants to get his fair share; this parish fool should kiss his behind too. So Nicholas slides his naked arse out the window,

 

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"over the buttok, to the haunche-bon" and, because the night has fallen fast, Absalom asks his little turtle dove to let him know where she is: "Spek, swete bryd," he croons, "I noot not where thou art"--triggering a rhyme Chaucer simply cannot resist: "This Nicholas anon leet fle a fart." But Absalom stands ready this time. Taking careful aim, he brands Nicholas smack in the ass with a red-hot poker.

 

Nicholas has fired off no ordinary fart. No, Chaucer declares, it was "as greet as it had been a thonder-dent." The noise fills the night air. The tale lacks only one element to make it complete: rain. Without knowing it, Nicholas becomes the weather man. Writhing in pain, clutching his smoking behind, he manages a pathetic cry: "Help. Water. Water." That is all John needs to hear. In his dopey sleep, he concludes that Noah's flood has actually arrived and dutifully cuts the rope holding him fast. As Chaucer puts it: "Downe gooth alle." John falls three stories headlong into the street, bringing all the neighbors from their houses alarmed by the great commotion. Nicholas and Alisoun also dash outside, adding to the confusion. All three characters wind up on the street, leveled, finally, by the action of the story.

 

When the Miller finishes, the pilgrims all howl with laughter--all but the Reeve, who curses and swears at the Miller. He is angry, disgusted, and, what is worse, humiliated. Thanks to the Miller, thirty-three pilgrims now know the awful truth of his life and in embarrassingly graphic detail. The Miller has stepped outside the boundaries of fiction, violating the rules of storytelling by revealing secrets of the Reeve's personal life. He has backed the Reeve into one of society's most feared corners, forcing him to play the butt of a joke.

 

Ultimately, Chaucer has thrown every character out of his little house of fiction. Indeed, "The Miller's Tale" follows a carefully planned architectural scheme. In the beginning of the tale, the characters are separated by three stories--from attic to ground floor. As the action rises, all three characters climb outside the confines of the house and up to the roof. When the action begins to run down, so do the principal characters. Alisoun and Nicholas climb down from the roof of the house and reenter it at the first story, to the scene of the original sin, the bedroom. The punch line--the climax of the story--comes in the form of a single word, "water," that in good storytelling fashion secures the knot holding subplot to main plot, the inside of the house to the outside, and fiction to practical joke. The story's denouement is a literal untying of the narrative threads that hold all the elements of the story together, a cutting done by the carpenter himself as he comes to groggy consciousness. This architectural pattern prefigures that nineteenth-century template for the well-made short story, the Freytag Triangle. The story's conclusion leaves its readers with a question: Who will now occupy the house? Chaucer answers this question in the very next tale, for the Reeve, dying to retaliate, builds yet another house of intrigue and deception where a miller, his wife, young daughter, and son all reside.

 

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IV

 

While we play practical jokes for many reasons--to establish our power, to exercise control, or maybe just to engage in plain fun--we tell aggressive jokes at our neighbors' expense out of envy, a connection first pointed out in the earliest analysis of laughter in the West, in Plato Philebus. Usually, we envy that other person's higher social status or better situation. The Miller and the Reeve have been rivals for some time: One rides at the head of the pilgrimage, the other at the hind end. The Miller slowly reveals that he envies the circumstances of the Reeve's marriage--quite specifically, the Reeve's young and pretty wife. He can rectify this inequity in one of two ways: by raising himself or lowering the Reeve. Jokes accomplish both simultaneously. The joke teller elevates himself by displaying, to everyone's delight and amusement, a keen and clever wit, and lowers the other person by exposing him as a dunce before his peers. Try as he may, the jokee rarely ever second-guesses--and thus is unable to defuse--the punch line. Placing himself so diligently on guard, the jokee renders himself even more unstable and precarious, a wobbly target just begging to be knocked over.

 

Chaucer uses joking as a socially acceptable form of justice, a self-styled peoples' court. While differences in wealth and position can make people feel deeply envious, envious people hardly ever take matters into their own hands. Rather, they act much more indirectly and passively, praying for some catastrophe, some outside event, to come along and wipe out the rival. Jokes provide another way. The Miller can in an instant "get even" by humiliating the Reeve (literally turning him into earth, humus). While the joker necessarily satisfies his needs at the victim's expense, the victim too can retrieve at least some of his self-esteem, but only by pulling himself out of his humiliation. If he becomes angry or leaves in a rage, he lowers himself even farther--buries himself--by prompting the audience to laugh at him. How small, we say; he cannot even take a joke. The victim can retaliate by telling a joke back on his aggressor, but it had better be a clever one, more clever than the one the joker told, not like the Reeve's feeble escalation. Having gotten there first with a wisecrack, the joker always seizes the upper hand. It is damned near impossible to pay Don Rickles back. One can try, but the risk is great.

 

The victim can survive socially in one way only, by standing his ground and laughing the joke off, thus demonstrating that he knows how to play the game like a good sport--that he can, like a cat climbing out of its litter box, shake it off. The audience reinforces his magnanimity by laughing along with him, applauding his effort at being a "big" person. Through the power of literacy, jokes can rectify social inequities. However, that only describes half their power.

 

A collection of fifteenth-century sermons titled Jacob's Well explains that only mercy can rid our hearts of envy; the sermons direct good Christians to remove the "ooze of envy" from their souls. For a moment, by bringing the pans of justice into balance, the joker has rid himself of envy and thus has

 

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gained some satisfaction. And while it may not yet be heartfelt, both teller and victim must at least act as if they have dropped their grudges and inch their way toward forgiveness. They must at least play at being merciful. This spirit washes the audience clean, too. As Chaucer notes of the pilgrim audience after they hear the Miller jape (joke): "For the moore part they laughe and pleyde." Laughter promotes feelings of community. In this spirit of communitas, each person embraces the other as an equal. The temporary effect of joking, then, is to create a feeling that things are even-Stephen; or, to use the Clown phrase in Hamlet, all is "even-Cristen," a state in which everyone under God's gaze stands as an equal.

 

That same spirit, I think, characterizes a good deal of fiction. I do not mean that stories have to be moral, at least not in the sense John Gardner means, but in reading we come to accept, even to like, the strangest array of characters. We come to forgive them, many times, because we see in them pieces of ourselves.

V

 

Hermes, the patron trickster for the early Greeks, is superceded in the early Middle Ages by Merlin, the patron saint of letters. This shape-shifter leaves his epigrams on swords, boats, and tombstones, and sends his letters circulating between lovers and enemies, between Arthur and his barons. More than prolific, Merlin is capable of performing the wildest feats of magic, as well as seeing into the future. Legend knows him best of all as a trickster, a riddler-revealing the truth in apparent lies--and a profound practical joker. For Merlin, writing results above all else in laughing matter.

 

If Merlin serves as the patron saint of playful writing, Chaucer is its incarnation. He is attracted to joking, not because of his keen sense of humor, but because he is in the very marrow of his bones a writer. He delights in what Ezra Pound calls logopoeia, "the dance of the intellect among words." To acknowledge Chaucer's wedding of joking and storytelling is to recognize a most remarkable buried fact about the history of literature: Joking is first cousin to medieval narratio, fiction.

 

Play and language, jokes and literature--the connection may seem odd at first. However, play is so basic to animals--human and nonhuman alike--why shouldn't it inform the very foundations of communication itself? Anyone who writes for a time comes to know that truth. Sooner or later every writer naturally falls into punning and joking. Language begs for it. Even before Saussure and Wittgenstein, philosophers have exploited language's elusive nature. The so-called natural language philosophers have broken the implied connection between word and world. We can no longer claim that words hold any necessary or natural correspondence to objective reality; to use them as exact descriptions of reality is to make of language a lie. Every word, then, functions as a tiny joke--on the speaker, on the listener--a practical joke reality continually plays on the observer. Language can only coax and conjole and try to

 

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tease meaning out of events and objects. At the heart of language, playfulness finds a most happy home.

VI

 

I do not dare venture a definition of the short story; it is as impossible to capture as any other genre. It would have to be a definition broad enough to hold Poeand Chekhov, Hawthorneand Carver. I can only describe where I find Chaucer standing in the fourteenth century, and that is at the delta, on the high ground where the river of narration and joking roils and casts about before separating into two streams.

 

No one these days deals very much with plot and character, rising action and denouement. But in Chaucer's day these were fundamental, and he gave them architectural shape. He triangulated them. Even if we say nothing much happens in Chekhov's stories, that the reader moves flatly through their action, we still imply that they play off of, react to, a standard shape.

 

I am interested in rescuing the short story from the clutches of seriousness, and in reuniting it with its twin, the joke. The world laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round. That one was easy. But after Chaucer, we have to wonder continually: Who has the last laugh now?

 

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Book Title: The Tales We Tell: Perspectives on the Short Story. Contributors: Barbara Lounsberry - editor, Susan Lohafer - editor, Mary Rohrberger - editor, Stephen Pett - editor, R. C. Feddersen - editor. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1998.

 

 

 

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