ChaucerÊs The MillerÊs Tale and Postmodernism
Henry Page The postmodern movement, as described by Ian Gregson, is Âabout rejecting canons and subverting orthodoxies of all kindsÊ 1 – a conceptual impetus that has resulted in a body of literature symptomatic of the contemporary world: defined by a sense of intense self-awareness and an Âincredulity towards meta-narrativesÊ 2 . Whilst this contextual element is a defining characteristic of postmodern literature, thus excluding such ÂclassicalÊ authors as Chaucer and Shakespeare, by extracting a number of characteristically postmodern techniques and applying these to The MillerÊs Tale it is possible to measure the extent to which ChaucerÊs work predated the thematic and technical elements of postmodern literature. One of the most prevalent postmodern techniques is that of metafiction, where the constructed nature of the text is made apparent, often through direct communication with the reader or an admittance of the narratorÊs fallibility, and this occurs frequently throughout both The MillerÊs Tale and the wider Canterbury Tales. Often these two examples are combined through a narrative interjection that breaks the illusory nature of the text, such as the MillerÊs description:
shared between the postmodern movement and The MillerÊs Tale , the reasons for its employment are almost antithetical, with contemporary authors using metafiction in order to present Âhuman identity as essentially constructed like a fictionÊ and thus depicting characters Âas the creatures[s] of the person who is writing [them]Ê 3 , and Chaucer using it, as discussed above, to strengthen the veneer of reality and heighten the authenticity of the text. Calvino, for example, in his novel If On A WinterÊs Night A Traveler explores this concept of literary self-awareness as the focal point of the text, with the readerÊs reaction to and immersion in the narrative being commented on throughout, interspersed with a direct dialogue between the narrator and the reader. By starting with the statement ÂYou are about to begin reading Italo CalvinoÊs new novelÊ 4 , Calvino sets up an interesting, and decidedly postmodern, interaction between the fictional and the real, ensuring that throughout the novel the reader is aware of the artificial reality of the text, and in doing so gives the reader the contradictory position of Âa character in the story as well as the empirical reader.Ê 5 Canterbury Tales , with the central narrative being conveyed by a fictional ÂChaucerÊ who, in many ways, is the antithesis of his corporeal counterpart. Where Geoffrey Chaucer was Âa man of large experience and keen observationÊ 6 , his fictional character is cripplingly naïve – a trait made explicit in his prologue to The MillerÊs Tale where he states: 3 Butler, C. Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction 4 Calvino, I. If On A WinterÊs Night A Traveler 5 Lucente, G. L. & Calvino, I. An Interview with Italo Calvino 6 The Illustrated Magazine of Art, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1853), pp. 7-10 This self-consciousness extends beyond these metafictive moments in The
[⁄] for wery bisynesse, Fil on this carpenter right, as I gesse, Aboute corfew-time,
The phrase Âas I gesseÊ here serves to simultaneously shatter the constructed verisimilitude created so delicately throughout, and paradoxically to help the narrative voice transcend a simple recounting, and thus become more realistic owing to the lack of omniscience. It must be said, however, that whilst the technique is
1 Gregson, I. Postmodern Literature 2 Lyotard, J. F. The Postmodern Condition
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