The “Queynte” Punnings of Chaucer’s Critics

The "Queynte" Punnings of Chaucer's Critics Larry D. Benson Harvard University ''Chauceis favodtc pun," w,itcs an expert on Chaum's language, "is undoubtedly that on queynte."1 Certainly it is the favorite pun ofmany ofChaucer's critics. No use ofthat harmless past participle or adjective has escaped their ingenious lubricity, not even that in one ofthe most beautiful speeches in Chaucer's writings, Troilus's apostrophe to Criseyde's empty house (TC 5.540-46): Then seide he thus: "O paleys desolat, 0 hous of houses whilom best ihight, 0 paleys empty and disconsolat, 0 thaw lanterne of which queynt is the light, 0 paleys, whilom day, that now art nyght, Wel oughtestow to falle, and I to dye, Since she is went that wont was us to gye!"2 We owe to one of the most famous Chaucerians of our time the discovery that what once seemed the most beautiful example ofparaclausithyron in our literature contains an obscene pun on one ofthe most offensive words in our language in that line "'O thow lanterne of which queynt is the light.' "3 Such a reading raises difficulties-of physiology as well as syn­ tax-and it may seem to prove the justice of John Dennis's famous observation, "A man who would make so vile a pun would not scruple to 1 R. W. V. Elliott, Chaucer's English (London: Andre Deutsch, 1974), p. 221. 2 All quotations from Chaucer are from F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957); hereafter cited as Robinson, ed., Works. 3 D. W. Robertson, Jr., "Chaucerian Tragedy," ELH 19 (1952):34-35; reprinted in A Preface to Chaucer(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 499-500. On the passage as a paraclausithyron see Morton W. Bloomfield in Studies Presented to Tauno Mustanoja, NM 73, nos. 1-2 (1972):15-24. 23 RECONSTRUCTING CHAUCER pick a pocket." But I hasten to assure you that the discoverer ofthis pun is one of Chaucer's most moral critics. His pious 'intent was to prove that Chaucer's works are deeply and consistently religious, and, as you may have observed, to maintain this thesis it is frequently necessary to argue that poor Geoffrey was completely depraved.For this critic, it was almost an act ofcharity to demonstrate the presence ofthis disgusting pun. "Demonstrate" is perhaps too strong, for the idea that a vile pun is present in this line did not seem to require any supportingargument.Every Chaucerian knows, or thinks he knows, exactly what queyntmeans, and in the critical climate ofour time a vial ofpun is worth a bucket ofphilology. The Great Discovery was eagerly welcomed, so eagerly by one critic of Trozlus that he finds no less than four levels of meaning in the line, all reverberatingironically with the obscenity.4 Such is the power ofthe pun, especially the salacious pun, in Chaucerian criticism oftoday. It was not always thus. In the nineteenth century, when puns were still rightly considered the lowest form ofhumor, most critics were convinced that Chaucer rarely used them. Thomas R. Lounsbury, who thought Chaucer was "free from these verbal quibbles," found only two puns in the entire corpus.J. S. P. Tatlock found several more, but by 1933, when the first edition ofF. N. Robinson's Chaucerappeared, the number had risen to only nine, and Robinson assured his readers that "puns are unusual in Chaucer's verse."5 But then a new generation of critics appeared. Their literary taste had been shaped by Eliot and Joyce rather than Tennyson and Dickens, and they brought to their reading of Chaucer a new appreciation of verbal complexities. In 1954, Helge Kokeritz demonstrated that our author was, after all, fond of punning.6 Two years later Paull F. Baum published an 4 ). F. Adams, "Irony in Troilus' Apostrophe to the Vacant House of Criseyde," MLQ 24 (1963):61-65; a slightly more cautious treatment is offered by Ida L. Gordon, The Double Sorrow of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 133-38. John Fyler, of Tufts University, called my attention to a convincing refutation of these readings, mainly on syntactic grounds, by William...