Pronuntiatio and its Effect on Chaucer’s Audience

Prontmtiatio and its Effect on Chaucer's Audience Beryl Rowland York University, Toronto CHAUCER has fom audiencesc his comemponay fatenm; a hypothetical group addressed as 'ye' in the poems; fictive characters who were auditors within the poem itself; and lastly, all readers ofhis poetry either then or since. The audience with which I am concerned is the first, composed of those men and women living elegantly and precariously at the royal court in the last decades of the fourteenth century. I shall suggest that the reaction of this audience was unique and essentially different from our own because of the way Chaucer presented his poetry. The subject of oral delivery, which in the opinion of Bronson more than forty years ago required further exploration, is still being assayed. 1 The contention that the famous Troilus frontispiece is simply icono­ graphic, rep;-esenting "as a reality the myth of delivery that Chaucer cultivates so assiduously in the poem,"2 using the vocabulary of arr to reflect upon the poem itself, 3 may remind us of our ignorance of the nature and extent of poetic recitals, but no one denies that Chaucer once 1 B. H. Bronson, "Chaucer's Art in Relation to his Audience,"in Five Studies in Literature(Berkeley: U of California P, 1940), pp. 1-14. 2 Derek Pearsall, "The Troilus Frontispiece and Chaucer's Audience," YES, 7 (1977), 68-74; see also, D.S. Brewer," 'Troilus and Criseyde,' "in theSphereHistory of Literature in the English Language, ed. W. F. Bolton(London: Barrie &Jenkins, 1970), I, 196; James H. McGregor, "The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve's De Regimine Principum and in the Troi/us Frontispiece,"ChauR, 11(1977), 338-50. The traditional view is expressed, among others, by Nevill Coghill, "Chaucer's narrative art in The Canterbury Tales," inChaucer andChaucerians, ed. D.S. Brewer(London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 135-36. 3 M. B. Parkes and ElizabethSalter, introd., Troilus andCriseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1978), pp. xv-xvii. To ElizabethSalter the international cultural traditions reflected in the frontispiece preclude 33 PRONUNTIATIO facial expression he used, would have profoundly affected his listeners' understanding of the poem. Most of the writings on rhetoric in the Middle Ages, whether they are preaching manuals or handbooks on style, make some reference to oral delivery, and the practices which they cite, though modified and some­ times much abbreviated, reflect the advice given by the early rhetori­ cians. In particular they go back, as Geoffrey of Vinsauf did, to Ad Herennium or to Cicero's De Oratore. In Ad Herennium the speaker is told how to use voice, expression, and gesture in various situations. Dialogue is defined as consisting of assigning language to some person that conforms to his character, and it should be accompanied by tremendous flexibility in tone and manner ofdelivery. Emotions such as joy, sorrow, and anger are to be conveyed largely through facial expression, and bodily movements are to suit the tone of the address. While the writer advised a use of restraint and decorum, the gestures that a speaker might use to convey various emotions included facial expressions, walking up and down, stamping the right foot, slapping one's thigh, beating one's head, as well as using the hands.7 Cicero stressed the artistic and psychological importance: "Imitation of manners and behavior, either given in character or not, is a considerable ornament of style, and extremely effective in calming down an audience and often also in exciting it. "8 He advised free use of the voice and even uncontrolled vociferation to amplify the effects required, and emphasized that deliv­ ery was the dominant factor in oratory. Delivery was controlled by "bodily carriage, gesture, play of features and changing intonation of voice . . . to this there should be added a certain humor, flashes of wit, the culture befitting a gentleman, and readiness and terseness alike in repelling and in delivering attack, the whole being combined with a delicate charm and urbanity. "9 Although he was concerned with judicial 7 Ad C. Herennium, tr. Harry Caplan (1954; rpt. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1964), lll, x - IV, lvi. See especially III, xv, 27: "Sin...