Geoffrey Chaucer's Humour in The Reeve’s Tale

One of the finest examples of medieval humor is deployed in “The Reeve’s Tale,” part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. “The Reeve’s Tale” excellently displays the bawdy sexual humor that was popular in medieval culture and featured in other works of the period, such as Boccacio’s The Decameron, which might’ve had an influence on Chaucer. Sexual humor is often discussed in “The Reeve’s Tale” and fairly obvious in the text through the use of puns, double entendres, symbolism and medieval sexual tropes. However, “The Reeve’s Tale” also introduces a new form of more complex humor, one that Chaucer arguably invented, the satirization of dialects. Chaucer broke new ground by writing in the vernacular English of the people, rather than French or Latin, the popular medieval intellectual and diplomatic languages, and in doing so Chaucer was able to more effectively characterize people from different regions in his tales. This imitation of accents enables Chaucer to make “The Reeve’s Tale” a social commentary on class. “The Reeve’s Tale” also demonstrates Chaucer’s role as a Cambridge writer, modeling one of the first mentions of Cambridge in English literature. “The Reeve’s Tale” deploys humor through the satirization of Northern dialects, and the class conflict between “town and gown.”

One of the most prominent uses of humor in “The Reeve’s Tale” is easily overlooked without some additional linguistic understanding. Chaucer uses a specific type of topical humour that satirizes the accents of the students in the way he writes a Northern dialect. This would’ve been understood by his audiences and made increasingly clear when he read his works aloud. Some literary historians would argue that this is the first use of dialect for comedy in English literature (Taylor 468). There are two dialects being imitated here, that of the students, John and Aleyn, and also of the Reeve narrator himself. The clerks come from the North, evidenced by lines 160-161. “Of o toun were they born, that highte Strother, / Fer in the north - I can nat telle where.” Though not specified, Strother may refer to Northumberland, further reinforced by the substitution of the long a for a normally long o, and the usage of the words “boes,” “lathe,” “fonne,” and “hethyng,” which contributes to the comedic northern dialect Chaucer is imitating. Chaucer did not choose this dialect at random. He worked in the court of Richard II during the Anglo-Scottish wars, when the North-South divide intensified and northerners were seen as wild and rebellious. While “The Reeve’s Tale” is a product of this period of turmoil, it is unclear whether Chaucer wants to destigmatize the enemy in search of national unity or if he seeks to enhance the northerners otherness in favor of the London dialect as a proper form. The Reeve comes from Norfolk and his North East Midland dialect is represented in the prologue through the usage of “ik,” “ilke,” and “so theek,” (Garbaty 5). The London audience would’ve known the Norfolk man as an immigrant and “foreigner” who posed competition in the job market. “‘That one of the nastiest people in The Canterbury Tales should come from Norfolk seems a gratuitous slur, and one suspects that Chaucer is playing on Londoners’ contempt for… immigrants’” (Taylor 473). In London, this dialectic humor to represent the “other” by ridiculing a foreign accent would’ve been easily understood. The mere mention of Norfolk or the north where the students hail from, would conjure a specific stereotypical image of these characters and illicit an immediate reaction from a metropolitan audience.

“The Reeve’s Tale” also enables Chaucer to make a humorous social comment about class. While the satirization of regional accents shows how Chaucer meant to juxtapose the audience from the characters, the issue of “town and gown” concerns juxtaposing the characters within the tale against each other. The tale takes place “At Trumpyngton, nat fer fro Cantebrigge”. This evokes Cambridge as a University, which becomes relevant when it is revealed that John and Aleyn are “yonge povre scolers two”. They dwell at “the Soler Halle, at Cantebregge” where Simkin, the miller, provides grain from his mill and also steals grain in the absence of his supervisor. There is tension in this relationship between the students and the outsider Simkin, who mocks the clerks for their “lerned art” and believes himself superior since he practices a trade. This leads to a humorous battle of wits where Simkin wins the first contest and succeeds in stealing the clerks’ grain. Before the heist, he comments “The gretteste clerkes been nought wysest,” exemplifying his belief in his own cleverness, despite his lack of formal education that John and Aleyn receive. After the successful trick, the miller takes his stolen goods and declares, “I trowe the clerkes were aferd, / Yet can a millere make a clerkes berd”. This phrase suggests Simkin’s pride at his ability to outwit the scholars but more literally, it demasculinizes the clerks. Beards are symbols of masculinity and by the miller stealing their grain, he has effectively taken their manhood. John and Aleyn will reclaim it in their sexual revenge on Simkin which also brutally demasculinizes him. His wife’s status, his daughter’s virginity and the prospect of her marriage are vehicles of social advancement for Simkin. The clerks take advantage of both his wife and daughter, making Simkin a cuckold and stealing his daughter’s virtue. This revenge has less to do with cleverness and more to do with a brutal defeat of Simkin, (a satisfying and humorous ending for those with contempt for Norfolk immigrants) with many more personal implications for his social status than the loss of grain.

Chaucer uses “The Reeve’s Tale” to invent a new form of dialectical humor, in which he utilizes the political situations and prejudices of the 1380s to appeal to his metropolitan audience. Chaucer also explores a new class conflict between “town and gown,” emerging in University towns like Cambridge.