The Proverb as Embedded Microgenre in Chaucer and The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf

Abstract

Because current genre theory lays such heavy emphasis on fluid mixing among and within genres, this essay asks what might be learned by attending closely to a set of sharply delineated generic boundaries, those created when small but complete and recognizable genres (“microgenres”) are embedded within longer genres, a nearly universal and yet under-theorized practice in medieval literature. Focusing on the proverb and drawing upon Bakhtin’s spectacularly ambitious outline for a final major work, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” the article uses examples from The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the anonymous Middle English Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf to demonstrate that the proverb’s brevity and its clearly defined, yet voice-permeable, boundaries enable a variety of important effects. Embedded in longer works, medieval proverbs act as generative miniature theories that transform the situations to which they are applied. They indicate courses of action, encapsulate worldviews, console and reconcile their recipients to the ways of this world, and mediate for fictional characters and for readers the overwhelming variety of lived experience.

Keywords:

• genre theory
• proverb
• Bakhtin
• Chaucer
• Canterbury Tales
• Troilus and Criseyde
• Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf

Notes

1. Writing in 2000, David Duff offers a concise account of the extent to which the agenda outlined in “Speech Genres” has now been realized in the form of speech act theory and discourse analysis; as he notes, however, each of these theoretical developments “involves a shift of focus from the category of genre per se, and in this sense the central thrust of Bakhtin’s programme arguably still remains unfulfilled” (82–83).

2. I lay no claim to originality for so obvious a term; the only precursors that I have yet found, however, are a passing reference to “local or microgeneric effects” in Fowler 183; and Molino, where microgenres are distinguished from macrogenres on the basis of size, but without attention to embedding.

3. Two precedents for my interest in proverbs as microgenres are Jolles’s “simple forms” and Jauss’s “little literary genres of the exemplary” (“Alterity” 211). Jolles argues that his small forms (including the proverb) give rise to larger and more complex genres, but neither he nor Jauss gives sustained attention to generic embedding.

4. A Latin manuscript text of the Dialogue as originally edited by Walter Benary appears in a revised edition with substantial commentary by Ziolkowski; for a recent edition of the Middle English, see Bradbury and Bradbury. On Marcolf in Middle English, see Green.

5. All citations from Chaucer’s works are from Benson’s edition, using fragment and line number for The Canterbury Tales and book and line numbers for Troilus and Criseyde. For the two-word proverb in Troilus, see Whiting U5; for the longer expression, see Whiting N146, “He that undertakes nothing achieves nothing.”

6. As a rough indicator, the twelve non-Chaucerian expressions quoted by the MED to illustrate the meaning of proverbe range from three to fourteen words and average about eight. The eighteen expressions Chaucer explicitly calls proverbes range from five to twenty-five words (both extremes occur in The Parson’s Tale, X.155–56 and X.362) and average about twelve words.

7. See Bowden and Cannon on Melibee; B. Taylor on The Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf.

8. Honeck and Temple 86; Honeck 128. Bradbury, “Transforming Experience” relates their research to The Canterbury Tales.

9. See “Aphorism” in the appendix to Jauss, “Alterity” 228.

10. Whiting S395, citing Gower, Confessio Amantis, 2.1899–902.

11. Morson and Emerson give a brief overview of the place of “Speech Genres” in Bakhtin’s evolving thought on genre (290–94). For guidance in working through Bakhtin’s densely argued text, I am obligated to Morson and Emerson; to Michael Holquist’s introduction to Bakhtin, Speech Genres; and to Frow.

12. Jauss attributes this quotation to Jacob Grimm (“Alterity” 218); Jolles attributes it to Wilhelm Grimm (127).

13. Propertius, Elegies, 2.33c.43: “Semper in absentis felicior aestus amantes” (Passion is always more favorable toward absent lovers).

14. Cf. Cannon’s more recent comments on the “wholly self-contradictory” nature of proverb collections as an indication of the “fundamental uselessness” of proverbial wisdom; like Scholes, he cites an example that “can hardly recommend a course for action” (410; emphasis in original).

15. See Ferster for a concise and cogent overview of these larger generic issues in The Canterbury Tales.

16. See Niles 174, referring to storytellers who “stand out for their large repertory and authoritative style.”

17. See Wallace 167 and Butterfield, Familiar Enemy 217–18 on Flemings; Latré on this particular proverb; Lindahl 44–61 on proverbs and social mediation in The Canterbury Tales.

18. All citations of the Middle English Dialogue are by page number from Bradbury and Bradbury.