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University Microfilms Internationa) 300 N.Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 40106 8318350 Fashbaugh, Elmer Jack CHAUCER’S TROUBLED ENDINGS The Ohio Slate University Ph.D. 1983 University Microfilms International 300 N. Zecb Road. Ann Arbor, M l 48106 Copyright 1983 by Fashbaugh, Elmer Jack All Rights Reserved PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark V . 1. Glossy photographs or pages______ 2. Colored illustrations, paper or print_____ 3. Photographs with dark background______ 4. Illustrations are poor copy______ 5. Pages with black merits, not original copy_____ 6. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page______ 7. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages 8. Print exceeds margin requirements_____ 9. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine______ 10. Computer printout pages with indistinct print_____ 11. Page(s)____________lacking when material received, and not available from school or author. 12. Page(s)____________seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows. 13. Two pages numbered____________ . Text follows. 14. Curling and wrinkled pages______ 15. Other_____________________________________________________________________ University Microfilms international CHAUCER’S TROUBLED ENDINGS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By E. Jack Fashbaugh, B.S., H.A. • •It* The Ohio State University 1983 Reading Committees Approved By Alan K. Brown Lisa J. Kiser Christian K. Zacher Adviser Department of English To Helen Paul Fashbaugh for constant support i i VITA November 13, 19**6 .... Born - Bessemer, Michigan 1970. .......... B.S., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota 1970-1972 ........ Teaching Assistant, Department of English, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota 1972. ....■••••. M.A., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota 1977-1980 ••••••■• Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1980-1981.. ....... Administrative Assistant, The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1981-1983 ........ Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Medieval English Literature Studies in Middle English Literature. Professor Christian K. Zacher Studies in Old English Literature. Professor Alan K. Brown i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page VITA............................................... iii INTRODUCTION....................................... 1 Chapter I. THE TROILPS AND THE KNIGHT’S TALE I: CONSEQUENTIAL AND ANALYTICAL STRUCTURES ................... 6 II. THE TROILPS AND THE KNIGHT*3 TALE II: CONSTITUTIVE AND CONSTRUCTIVE STRUCTURES................. k? III. THE TROILPS AND THE KNIGHT’S TALE III: CLOSURAL TRANSFORMATION.............................. 69 IV. DREAM-VISIONS I: ON AVOIDING THE COLLAPSE OF ANALYTICAL CONSTITUTIVE STRUCTURES........... 87 V. DREAM-VISIONS II: ANTICIPATING THE CANTERBURY TALES ..................................... 117 VI. CANTERBURY TALES I: THE APPEARANCE OF THE CANON AND HIS YEOMAN.............................. 126 VII. CANTERBURY TALES II: PROPER TALES............. 139 VIII. CANTERBURY TALES III: PIOUS TALES AND DIRTY J O K E S ................................ 179 IX. CANTERBURY TALES IV: CONFESSIONS............. 199 LIST OF UORKS CONSULTED............................ 209 iv INTRODUCTION Key concepts upon which this dissertation is based were developed under the influence of critics writing with a general, historicist perspective, not (as might be suspected) under the influence of main-stream structuralism--though I have had to sample such criticism in the interest of refining my terminology. Of course, my interest in criticism which employs binary analysis may be seen as an anticipation of structuralist tendencies. An example of the sort of binary analysis which has prompted me to develop a theory of narrative along structuralist lines may be found in Pamela Qradon's Form and Style in Early English Literature. Though this work is admirable for the range of material it covers, the difficulty the author has in UBing her mythic/mimetic dichotomy to understand the dynamic of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in its passages of crisis illustrates, I think, general imprecision: Suppose . we take . the hunting and temptation scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, should we class them as mythic narrative or as mimetic narrative? I would suggest that they fall into the category of mimetic narrative, since, although their function may be partly as vectors of a theme, they also constitute a development of the description of the life at the Green Knight's castle.'* Gradon's question about the passages of Sir Gawain under her review *) Form and Style in Early English Literature (London: Methuen, 1971 )i P. 25T- 1 is somewhat difficult because it is framed by no recognition of the point that repetition, a salient feature of the narrative, is heightened through doubling, a stylistic feature which suggests that the writer wants to direct our attention to something unmimetic. A sense of mythic, not mimetic, import may seem to be implied, in fact. We need a model complex enough to account for the fact that in literature stylistic and organizational phenomena may or may not derive from the kinds of meaning we usually associate with them. James I. Wimsatt's allegory/mirror distinction, while it does not in the same way give us the difficulty of moving from method of signification to meaning that we find in using Gradon's division, does in fact give us the same basic problem: Allegories (in the restricted sense I am using) are plots which meaningfully analyze generalized experiences, and mirrors are ordered collections of descriptive materials, characters, or actions which present compre­ hensive images of experience or knowledge.2 A critic wonders about the relationship between plot and the generalization of experience, about the relationship between descriptions and the presentation of "comprehensive images." How do images become comprehensive? The idea of an analytical structure playing upon a consequen­ tial constitutive structure (Wimsatt's "allegory"?) and the idea of an opposite literary dynamic (Wimsatt's "mirror"?) occur to us. 2 Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature (New York: Pegasus, 1970), p. 31. And certain connections encourage the full emergence of a theory. Russell A. Peck's picture of personal language trying to "pierce the public myth" in Middle English literature^ connects with J. A. Burrow's observation that in Chaucer's age exemplum and it single episode replace allegory and rambling romance. In Chaucer's age, interest in representing causality, interest in consequential structures (as I want to call them), appears to be ascendant, while interest in representing given modules of mental or physical being, after centuries of dominance, appears to be in decline. Perhaps what is as interesting as any claim we might make about tendencies and the possibility of thematic implications is the observation that both of the structures I have suggested— consequential and analytical structures— will occur and "find" some sort of relationship in any given literary text. Concepts developed by two critics of general interest who have devoted considerable attention to endings— Barbara Herrnstein