Humour
of Chaucer and Pope
Every age have been blessed with table
turner people who earn name and fame through their expertise in their
respective fields. Geffrey Chaucer and alexander pope are the few great personalities
who change the lives of so many people through their work. Alexander pope and Geoffrey
Chaucer are considered to be the greatest critic. They criticise their
respective societies in a humorous manner. The main objective of their work was
both character building of their societies as well as offering amusement to the
people,but their way ofbeing humorous and critic was different from each other.
To understand completely that how the humour of Chaucer and pope is different
from each other, we should take a littleglimpse of their work one by one.
Humour is an essential element of
Chaucer's (1343-1400) poetry and the back-bone of “The Prologue and The
Canterbury Tales”. All the characters in The Prologue have been humorously defined.
A humourist is one who is quick to perceive the funny side of the things and
who has the capacity to laugh and makes other laugh at what is absurd or
ridiculous or incongruous.
Chaucer is called the first humourist of
English literature. No English literary work before him conceals humour in the
modern sense. Chaucer is considered to be a greater humourist than Boccaccio.
Chaucer’s humour is consistent all pervasive and intense as we find in
Shakespeare’s plays. He coats all the characters in “The Prologue” in a humorous
way. The Knight is as gentle as a maid; the Squire is too sentimental in his
love to sleep at night; the Friar has relations with the bar-maids instead of
the poor; the Parson is too innocent and Clerk is too serious. Chaucer even does
not spare himself and utters:
“My wit is short, ye may well understand”
His humour has sophisticated touches and
it does not affront anybody. For example, when he tells us that Prioress is so friendly
and pleasant in her manners that she takes paints to imitate the manners of the
court we cannot know whether he is admiring her or laughing at her affection.
But his humour is of the premium type.
It is enjoyable and sympathetic because he is a man of pleasant nature. He
knows that every human being has one type of weakness or others. He identifies
the defect in a light manner with a view to cure them, not for degrading the
victim. His attitude is positive. So, when he says that the Friar lisps a
little out of affection and when he plays on a harp, his eyes twinkles in his
head like sparkling stars on the frosty night, we do not hate him or his
affection, rather we just laugh at him at this weakness.
Chaucer’s humour is also tinged with
pity. It makes us thoughtful of the weakness of his victim and we start pitying
him. For example, when he tells us that the Monk is more interested in riding,
hunting and other worldly pursuits than in religious activities we pity him and
wish him better. It means that his humour carries a sound message.
Chaucer’s humour is, of course,
satirical but it is sugar coated. His purpose is to awake the people against
realities of life. His age is of romantic idealism and people are blind to the
realities of life. His satire is not harsh but gentle and mild. Secondly, he is
not aenthusiastic reformer. He satirizes only these characters that cannot be
reformed at any cost, e.g. the Summoner, and the Pardoner who are extremely
corrupt.
Chaucer’s humour is wide in range. It
covers all kinds of humour from downright jokes to good-natured strokes when he
paints the physical appearances of characters. For example, he defines Reeve:
“Fullonge were his legges and ful lene,
Y-lyk a staf, ther was no calf y-sene”
In the portrayal of the Shipman, he
creates humour by incongruity when he says that he is a good fellow because he
steals wine and has no prick of conscience.
We can say that critics may be divided
in opinion as to Chaucer’s right to be called the father of the English poetry,
but there can be no question that he is the first great English humourist.
On the other hand, if we talk about
pope, (1688-1744) we come to know that he was not good looking in appearances.
He faced hard time both socially and financially due to his attachment to the Catholics.
Humour plays a part in establishing three qualities of Alexander Pope’s poetry
in which contemporary poetry is sometimes considered deficient: clearness,
balance of viewpoint and universal appeal.
As an Augustan poet, Pope was also
influenced by the fact that humour involves a public attitude; humour is
urbane. But, far from being high-flown, it demands the humble and the concrete.
It counters the eccentric with the concentric; and it does this indirectly,
sometimes ambiguously.
Except for Eloisa to Abelard and the
Messiah, there is not one of Pope’s longer poems which do not rely considerably
upon humour of some kind. Many of his poems are conceived entirely within a
humorous context.
To see how humour works for Pope and to
isolate some of its distinctive characteristics, the Essay on Criticism is
particularly well adapted for a beginning. In this poem the most important
single function of the humour is to sweeten the instruction. The quality of the
humour itself is rarely sweet, but it does make the precepts more palatable.
In the Rape of the Lock the prevailing
quality of the humour is very different. The poem condemns certain feminine
frailties, most of which are as diminutive in the scale of moral values as the
Sylphs and Gnomes who personify them. They are foibles, not crimes; and their
perpetrators are not grave critics but belles. The humour comes “through some
certain strainers well refined.” Satire is mixed with sympathy.
Aside from the element of beauty so
prominent in this poem, a further conditioning factor of the humour is the consciousness
that all this beauty is transient.
By means of a pun on “die” Pope makes a
humorous, down-to-earth sexual allusion in these lines; but it is softened by
the reference to Belinda’s mortality and the short date of all things sweet and
rare.
The most important conditioning factor
of the humour of the Rape of the Lock, however, is the ambivalence central to
the poem—the attempt at the same time.
To build up and tear down the importance
of the feminine concerns with which the poem deals. In such passages as the description
of Belinda’s toilet table in terms of an altar, the treatment of the game of
ombre as an epic combat, and the ultimate stultification of the lock, the prime
purpose is magnification. Yet all these passages are undercut by the mock-
heroic mode. Once Belinda is presented as a goddess, even in mock-heroic, humour
can be used to undermine her precarious divinity.
Though the prevailing tone of the humour
is playful, tolerant, and compassionate, there are exceptions. One of the most
notable is the description of the Cave of Spleen—the “hell” of the poem, where
“sinners” are punished. The humour here is not qualified by either beauty or
compassion. It is grotesque and coarse.
If we talk about the difference between
these two writers, we can say that their tune and characters are different from
each other. Chaucer’s characters are mostly taken from all the classes, While
Pope’s mostly characters are taken from the upper class as the characters of
“Rape of the Lock”. Chaucer makes fun of the both lower and upper classes, while
pope’s humour is limited to the upper class only.
It was said about Chaucer that his heart
was full of the milk of human kindness to write a satire and he sophisticatedly
use sarcasm about things and just move on as well as his irony is fused with
humour while pope is known for satire and even his humour is combined with
irony which is satiric.in his Dunciad which is vehement denunciation of his
critics and it was said that the bees took all the honey in his childhood and
left with sting in exchange. Difference lies in expression. Chaucer’s satire is
mild while pope’s satire is pungent. Bitter harsh and direct. Chaucer in true
sense isn't a moralist. For a moralist normally it’s obligatory to give a
direct moral lesson which he didn't do. He presented his ideas in suggestive
manner. Explicitly, he is neither condemning anyone nor appreciating. It is the
reader who infers what he wants to convey through comparisonbetween ideal and
real characters. On the other hand, pope uses a bit harsher and straightforward
language. Pope believed in didacticism. Which means art for teaching humanity, to
reform, to correct, to amend. So were all neo classicists. In “Rape of the
Lock”Clarrisa is mouthpiece of Pope and there is no second opinion about it.
Plus his own bitter unfortunate circumstancesand Bad health made him such harsh
critic of follies, foibles and frivolities of 18th century London’s city life.
Chaucer makes us laugh where pop make us to have a sigh on British society.
Now the question is that why Chaucer is
not a moralist critic as compare to the pope. It is true that one is extremely
hard in criticising his society and other is bit careful in making fun of their
classes. The reason behind this phenomenon is that Chaucer was from the upper
class and he was greatly closer to the king. To escape from the bad consequences,
he writes in an ambiguous and less critic manner. On the other hand, pope was
from the middle class and he was suffering from the bad circumstances as well.
He was religiously catholic, that is why, and he faced severe circumstances. He
was also not good looking. For his catharsis, he uses extremely hard language
in his poetry to make fun of the evil practises of his society.
In conclusion, we can say that Chaucer
and pope were two great writers of their respective ages. They highlighted the
issues of their time in a different manner but with the same intent.
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