Chaucers As and the Loose Fit of Meaning

Chaucer’s As and the Loose Fit of Meaning

Daniel M. Murtaugh

The Chaucer Review, Volume 44, Number 4, 2010, pp. 461-470 (Article)

Published by Penn State University PressDOI: 10.1353/cr.0.0045

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the chaucer review, vol. 44, no. 4, 2010.Copyright © 2010 Th e Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.

Chaucer’s As and the Loose Fit of Meaning

by daniel m. murtaugh

In an essay published in 1970, E. Talbot Donaldson describes how the narrator of Troilus and Criseyde defends his heroine in ways that call atten-tion to her need of defense, by means of what one might call a “short-circuited simile.” Donaldson’s fi rst of four examples is Criseyde’s reaction to the news that she will be sent over to the Greek encampment in exchange for Antenor. Afraid to face the possible truth of the report, she dares ask no one for clarifi cation,

As she that hadde hire herte and al hire mynde On Troilus iset so wonder faste Th at al this world ne myghte hire love unbynde, Ne Troilus out of hire herte caste.

(IV, 673–76)

Donaldson notes that the use of a simile to describe her feelings is disqui-eting because a simile “likens two things that are essentially dissimilar,” allowing the mind to take “note of the dissimilarity while registering the likeness.” 1 But here Criseyde seems compared to herself, which either dis-ables the simile or implies a diff erence or distance between Criseyde and the creditable representation of herself in the comparison, that is, between Criseyde outside the simile and Criseyde inside. Our knowledge from the start that this will be a story of how Criseyde “forsook [Troilus] ere she deyde” (I, 56) alerts us, despite the narrator’s solicitude for his heroine, to that second possibility.

1. E. Talbot Donaldson, Speaking of Chaucer (London, 1970), 71. All Chaucer citations are from Th e Riverside Chaucer , ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987).

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The Chaucer Review462

Th e simile in Chaucer is a more emphatic version of a simile in his source, Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato , where we are told that the news of the proposed exchange

forte le noiava come a colei ch’avea volto il disio a Troiolo il quale piú ch’altro amava.

(IV, 79) 2

was sharply painful to her as to one who has turned her desire to Troilus whom she loved more than any other.

Th ere is good reason to believe that Chaucer learned this fi gure from his Italian masters Boccaccio and Dante, because it does not appear in the poetry that precedes his “Italian period.” He uses it in a variety of contexts and with a varying degree of attention to that little wedge of diff erence that it introduces between what it says and what it might mean. In Italian, the simile custom-arily begins “come colui” or, as in the instance just cited, “come a colei” or other variants, depending on the relative pronoun. In Chaucer’s English this becomes “as he (or she) that.” Sometimes in Chaucer, but not in his Italian models, the simile is attenuated to its fi rst word, as , which drift s away from its syntactic mooring to function as a “grammatical particle” or “discourse parti-cle,” as it distances ever so slightly the utterance from its speaker (for it always occurs in this form in the speech of a character). So there are two structures, with the second being a tributary of the fi rst. A simile in a subordinate clause compares one sort of person to another, but is troublingly reduplicative of the subject of the comparison, so that to work as a simile it must cast doubt on the status of that subject. Th en the subordinate clause disappears, leaving only its introductory word, as , fl oating like the Cheshire Cat’s smile over the independent clause and casting a shadow of doubt on its status. As it does so, it bears a surprising resemblance to the multivalent like that seasons the more youthful dialects of Modern English. 3

2. Giovanni Boccaccio, Il Filostrato , ed. Luigi Surdich (Milan, 1990), 258. Th e Italian text can also be found in B. A. Windeatt, ed., Troilus and Criseyde: A New Edition of ‘Th e Book of Troilus’ (London, 1984), 388. 3. Searching out just these uses of as in Chaucer is greatly facilitated by use of the “eChaucer” Concordance at http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/concordance. J. S. P. Tatlock, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoff rey Chaucer and to the Romaunt of the Rose ( Washington, D. C., 1927; repr. 1963), gives only a small sampling of this and other “function” words. Larry D. Benson, A Glossarial Concordance to the Riverside Chaucer , 2 vols. (New York, 1993), gives


daniel m. murtaugh 463

I should deal at the outset with a diff erent reading of this and similar passages, which denies the very presence of the similes Donaldson found in them. Barry Windeatt’s Modern English translation provides such a reading of the passage with which we began:

But, in brief, she did not dare, out of fear, ask anyone about it, in case these stories were true. She had so wonderfully fi rmly set her heart and her whole mind on Troilus, that this whole world itself could not loosen the ties of her love, nor cast Troilus out of her heart. 4

Th e Middle English words that promise to introduce a simile— As she that —are not represented here, and so the words that are represented state an unqualifi ed fact, one that could be linked to Criseyde’s fear by since or because . Support for this comes from the analysis of some uses of As he that by Tauno F. Mustanoja, who argues that these are “calques on OF com cil qui ” which usu-ally have “a causal colour.” 5 Th e tentative quality of those last words, however, acknowledges a problem in an expression that presents itself as a simile rather than a causal clause. Similarly, the editors of Dante’s lyric poetry say that his equivalent, come quei , “could be replaced by . . . since ,” but hedge that advice by calling the fi gure a “pseudo-simile.” 6 Th e proposal of since for as . . . that (or for its Romance models) has the disappointing plausibility oft en achieved by translation that solves a problem in the original by repressing it. 7

Th e likelihood that Chaucer was imitating the Italian poets in this fi gure provides further grounds for insistence on its being read as a simile, because it occurs in Boccaccio and, before him, in Dante, in a context rich in genuine, non-problematic similes that begin in just the same way (“come colui,” “come

even less coverage, including as among “Words Represented by Specimens Only” (1:xiii, with the ten specimens displayed on 1:40). 4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde , trans. Barry Windeatt (Oxford, 1998), 102–3. 5. Tauno F. Mustanoja, Middle English Syntax, Part I: Parts of Speech (Helsinki, 1960), 199. 6. Kenhelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, eds., Dante’s Lyric Poetry , 2 vols. (Oxford, 1967), 2:12 (see also 2:154, 203). 7. Windeatt, trans., Troilus and Criseyde , 121, uses the same procedure in the second of the passages cited by Donaldson as a questionable simile ( Tr , V, 673–76). In the third and fourth instances, however, he retains the simile structure, with V, 176–79, including a clause beginning, “as someone who was so oppressed with sorrow” (124), and V, 953–55, beginning “like one who had her heart set so fi rmly” (137). One might note that Windeatt’s translation of as as a preposition (“as someone, like one”), while working well as idiomatic Modern English, skirts another diffi culty in the original. Th e use of the nominative she aft er as in every case under discussion indicates that as is a conjunction introducing a clause with she as subject. Th is, in turn, calls attention to the truncation of the clause in every case: it lacks a verb. Th e verb to be understood here, it seems to me, would have to be conditional: “as she would do who was so oppressed . . .” Once again, we are dealing with an assertion whose truth value is qualifi ed.



quei,” etc.) and engender in the reader an expectation of consistency in what will follow. Th e short-circuited simile is frequently encountered in Dante, and an examination of two examples can illustrate the kinds of meanings it conveys. 8 In the heaven of the moon, Dante, prompted by Beatrice, turns to one of the shimmering appearances gathered to address him “quasi com’ uom cui troppa voglia smaga” (rather like a man whom too much desire confuses [ Par , 3.36]). 9 Th e logical diffi culty—the short circuit of the simile—arises from the fact that Dante the Pilgrim is in fact one confused by too much desire. In the heaven of Mars, those gathered to instruct him appear as stars forming a cross and singing a crusading hymn in which the words come to Dante “come a colui che non intende e ode” (as to one who does not understand and does hear [ Par , 14.126]). Again, Dante compares himself to one who is indistin-guishable from himself, except for the possible distinction between himself as he was at that moment in heaven and one who actually hears, that is, one who uses a sense to which Dante’s experience is inaccessible.

Th ere is another way to read these fi gures, that is, as something that is not quite a simile based on likeness in a context of unlikeness, but rather as the assimilation of the one under discussion to a recognizable class of others similarly situated or similarly describable. So Dante in the heaven of the moon is like (“you know”) anyone you might have seen getting choked up by desire. Or, in the heaven of Mars, like anyone—like you or me—initially disoriented by the complexity of the choral rendition of words he knows well. Chaucer uses the short-circuited simile in this way when he describes that cad Diomedes, who, as he takes the reins of Criseyde’s horse, sizes up Troilus’s agitation “As he that koude more than the crede/In swich a craft ” (V, 89–90). “You know the type,” the narrator says through this fi gure, “I need say no more.” 10 Again, we watch Troilus, “withouten reed or loore,/As man that hath his joies ek forlore” (V, 22–23), as he attends Criseyde in her departure from Troy, and the clause introduced by as puts him into the class or—perhaps better—aligns him with an ideal instance of, one who has forsaken all his joys.

And this is where it gets complicated. Th at description of Criseyde with which we began, likening her to one whose love is exclusively fi xed on Troilus

8. Instances in Dante’s Par include 3.36, 9.24, 14.126, 17.103–5, 23.49–51, and 28.4–9. C. S. Lewis discusses a diff erent sort of Dantesque simile in which the subject and the comparison converge, because this is happening to Dante the Pilgrim’s inner state and outer situation as he nears the Empyrean (“Dante’s Similes,” in his Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature [Cambridge, U.K., 1966], 64–77, at 73–75). 9. I am following the text of the Società Dantesca Italiana: Dante Alighieri, La commedia sec-ondo l’antica volgata , ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, 4 vols. (Milan, 1966–67). 10. Boccaccio does not have recourse to a simile in the equivalent passage ( Il Filostrato , 5.13).



and can never be unbound, is structurally very close to that of Troilus as he parts from her and from all his joys. It too could be taken as an alignment of her with an ideal instance of one whose love will outlast her hope. If we have allowed ourselves to identify with the narrator’s infatuation with her, we will even hope—for the moment—that it does. Retrospectively, however, we will resign that hope, when faced with a passage like the following, describing her apparent non-response to Diomedes’ opening moves on her fi delity:

Criseyde unto that purpos lite answerde, As she that was with sorwe oppressed so Th at, in eff ect, she naught his tales herde But here and ther, now here a word or two.

(V, 176–79)

Th e word or two that work their way into her attention get an apparently ample response from her a few lines later, which Chaucer veils in indirect discourse (V, 183–89), and they open that gap of unlikeness that makes the as -clause function as a subversive simile rather than an alignment with an ideal type. Th e short-circuited similes always align Troilus with an ideal, but, once we begin to doubt them, we can never say with security that they do so with Criseyde. We learn the diff erence between fulfi lling a role and merely playing it.

So, in general, the use of the conjunction as in a short-circuited simile expresses a qualifi ed—we might even say a retractable—commitment to the truth-value of the comparison that follows it. To establish that truth-value, one must seek corroboration elsewhere. It suits the persona that Chaucer developed from his earliest writings, that of one always speaking “under cor-reccioun” of his betters, always reserving the right to revise his judgment. It also suggests that modern use of like as a subordinating conjunction or as something else that is harder to defi ne: a “discourse particle” that linguists say has “pragmatic” rather than “lexical” content. Take the simple modern English sentence: “John was like someone I could trust.” An oral rendition of that sentence, guided by its lack of internal punctuation, would convey a clear element of doubt as to whether my trust in John was well placed. It is hard to avoid the simile’s requirement of essential diff erence between what John was and what he was like. But if I read it responding to this punctua-tion, “John was, like, someone I could trust,” the commas enclosing “like” cause the doubt to evaporate. I am speaking here with the precision of a physicist or chemist: the doubt does not disappear but it hovers unlocalized,



like a gas. I may insist on the presence of doubt, but I cannot localize it in the issue of John’s integrity. It could, instead, indicate that there are other issues that make John’s integrity less relevant. Maybe the problem that John’s integrity was supposed to solve involves things that John could not know or control. Or maybe I am unsure what you, my interlocutor, make of my whole account. To deal with this situational aspect of my discourse, I put myself “under correccioun.” I ask you to “work with me” on this. Th is is what linguists mean by the “pragmatic” rather than “lexical” content of like , and it can be surprisingly precise.

However, being precise about what part of speech we are dealing with here is a problem. In the second version of my statement about John, like could shift positions as a matter of rhetorical choice (though these options are not unlimited). In this, it resembles an adverb, which we conventionally think of as modifying a verb but which oft en modifi es the whole clause in which it occurs. But like lacks the adverb’s commitment to the lexical con-tent of that clause. It hovers over the speech act itself, as a social interac-tion. Jane E. Fox Tree would say that instead of “informing about the talk at hand (the propositional content to be conveyed), a content use ,” it informs “about how to process the talk (negotiating meaning between conversational participants), an interactional use.” 11

Th at interactional use can be attributed to Dante’s description of his emotional impasse in the heaven of the moon, and that is what I meant to convey by injecting the parenthetical “you know” into my paraphrase of it. It can also be attributed to Chaucer’s alignments—not always secure—of Troilus or Criseyde with ideal instances of their situations in his as -clauses. But what about the tendency of modern English like to fl oat free of clear grammatical categories, no longer a preposition or conjunction but a mov-able particle that qualifi es not the lexical meaning of an utterance but the speech act that conveys it? Lawrence C. Schourup, one of the fi rst to examine conversational like closely, called this free-fl oating manifestation of the word an “interjection,” a part of speech (perhaps only in an extended sense of that categorical term) with a semantic content that is “evincive” rather than lexical, indicating in this case “a possible loose fi t between

11. Jane E. Fox Tree, “Placing Like In Telling Stories,” Discourse Studies 8 (2006): 723–43, at 724. See also Alexandra D’Arcy, “Lexical Replacement and the Like(s),” American Speech 81 (2006): 339–57; Alexandra D’Arcy “ Like and Language Ideology: Disentangling Fact from Fiction,” American Speech , 82 (2007): 386–419; Muff y E. A. Siegel, “ Like : Th e Discourse Particle and Seman-tics,” Journal of Semantics 19 (2002): 35–71; and Lawrence C. Schourup, Common Discourse Particles (New York, 1985).



overt expression and intended meaning.” 12 Such discourse particles “have a specifi able use in conversation but do not lend themselves to static entries in dictionaries.” 13 Does Chaucer’s as sometimes have this elusive charac-ter, one that, in fact, was not captured in the MED ? I would argue that it does, and it does so exclusively in direct discourse, that is, in the speech of characters, not of Chaucer himself. Th ough I have traced a literary pedi-gree back to Italy, the particle as may also preserve for us a turn of Middle English speech not otherwise captured in writing and unexpectedly famil-iar to us today.

Chaucer’s as in the role of discourse particle does not have the versatility of modern like as to position in a sentence or as to the type of sentence it can inhabit. It always occurs as the fi rst word in the main clause, and it occurs almost exclusively in imperative sentences. Th e particle like , as we know, can occur in declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, and in elliptical forms of any of these. In its narrower range of application, however, Chaucer’s particle as works in the way we have described for its modern counterpart: it negotiates meaning between conversational participants. More specifi cally, it negotiates meaning with an interlocutor who presents a problem, who might be expected to fi nd the request in the speaker’s imperative unacceptable or unintelligible.

Consider the goddess Diana, invoked by Emelye, a virgin who wants to stay a virgin but who is trapped in the relentlessly evolving romantic plot of the Knight’s Tale that will award her to Palamon or to Arcite. In her sunrise prayer in Diana’s temple, she addresses a goddess whom she is sure has already made up her mind. Her fi rst request is “Don’t be angry”:

“Goddesse of maydens, that myn herte hast knowe Ful many a yeer, and woost what I desire, As keepe me fro thy vengeaunce and thyn ire, Th at Attheon aboughte cruelly.”

(I 2300–2303)

Th e particle “As” distances Emily every so slightly from her own request, making it something that both she and Diana can view from the outside and can approach cooperatively. Diana’s vengeance and ire, if they should come, will strike a request that is just a step away from the one who made it.

12. Schourup, Common Discourse Particles , 59. 13. Schourup, Common Discourse Particles , 60–61.



When she proceeds to the substance of what she desires, that Palamon and Arcite be reconciled and leave her alone, her request and her fall-back alternative are both given with the same protective gesture:

“As sende love and pees bitwixe hem two, And fro me turne awey hir hertes so Th at al hire hoote love and hir desir, And al hir bisy torment, and hir fi r Be queynt, or turned in another place. And if so be thou wolt nat do me grace, Or if my destynee be shapen so Th at I shal nedes have oon of hem two, As sende me hym that moost desireth me.”

(I 2317–2325)

Th e distancing gesture of “As” reinforces the manifest content of her request: it is nothing personal she asks, only “love and pees” between those two noble youths, and who could object to that? But, as her own description of their “hoote” and “bisy” passion makes its quenching seem more and more unlikely, she allows the personal to creep in: just aim it away from me, she asks. Finally, she settles for the best she can hope for in the last line, and the distancing eff ect of “As” not only placates the goddess but maintains her own reserve.

Th e Franklin’s Tale off ers a parallel instance of a request known to be unreasonable made to a deity. Aurelius, in despair over Dorigen’s demand that he make the rocks off Brittany disappear if he is to have her love, asks Phoebus to use his infl uence with Lucina, the goddess of the moon:

“Do this miracle, or do myn herte breste— Th at now next at this opposicion Which in the signe shal be of the Leon, As preieth hire so greet a fl ood to brynge Th at fyve fadme at the leeste it oversprynge Th e hyeste rokke in Armorik Briteyne.”

(V 1056–61)

Admittedly a crazy request, he can hardly believe he is making it. His sense of this and of the impression it must make on Phoebus causes him to wave it away from himself, render its existence as an utterance hypothetical, with that particle “As.”



In the domestic setting of the Shipman’s Tale, where a coolly reticent husband and wife talk around the issues that most concern their marriage, the discourse particle qualifi es a request on an issue that really bothers the husband. Preparing for his business trip to Flanders, he requests, somewhat gingerly, that his wife manage his household with discretion:

“I thee biseke, As be to every wight buxom and meke, And for to kepe oure good be curious, And honestly governe wel oure hous. Th ou hast ynough, in every maner wise, Th at to a thrift y houshold may suffi se.”

(VII 241–46)

In a merchant household the wife’s charm and largesse as a hostess are mani-festations of her husband’s wealth, and in an economic order leveraged by credit such manifestations can themselves be causes of wealth through the credit-worthiness that they display. A “thrift y,” that is, thriving, mercantile household bespeaks a business in the same condition. So the distribution of domestic power does not have the patrimonial clarity found in a noble household. It becomes a matter of negotiation and of numerical calculation, a point that Lee Patterson has made in commenting on this tale. 14 In such a setting, one does not wisely give direct orders to one’s wife, especially when one is asking her to achieve a balance between largesse and care—that ful-crum of “ynough”—that one must trust her to fi nd for herself. And so the merchant gives only something like an order, under the sign of “As,” and does not directly refer to the extravagance that he fears.

In the Miller’s Tale Absolon’s embarrassed rage at having kissed Alison’s posterior is compounded when he comes upon the means of his revenge. Gervaise the blacksmith, seemingly the only other person not in bed in this darkest of nights, is fi nishing a plow harness. Sullenly unresponsive to his teasing questions about what he is doing out at such an hour, Absolon makes an abrupt request:

“Freend so deere, Th at hoote kultour in the chymenee heere, As lene it me; I have therwith to doone, And I wol brynge it thee agayn ful soone.”

(I 3775–78)

14. Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, 1992), 322–66.



“Yes, I am the parish clerk,” the form of his request says, “and it is midnight, and I am asking you for a red hot plow blade. Let us, very quickly, contem-plate the absurdity of that situation, and then get on with it.” Like Aurelius, in a very diff erent situation, he cannot believe what he is asking and does not ask Gervaise to believe it either. Let it remain semi-hypothetical under the sign of “As,” as he wishes that misdirected kiss had been.

Th e fi nal example brings us back to Troilus and another request that is embarrassing in its absurdity, but touchingly so. One morning, as the prom-ised time of Criseyde’s return approaches, Troilus makes a request of his friend Pandarus:

“For love of God,” ful pitously he sayde, “As go we sen the palais of Criseyde; For syn we yet may have namore feste, So lat us sen hire paleys atte leeste.”

(V, 522–25)

If Pandarus had any hope left of Criseyde’s return, he might be constructively stern with Troilus here, telling him that his idea is absurd and unmanly. Pandarus, in fact, has no such hope and so is inclined to be indulgent, but Troilus anticipates the objection and fi nds it justifi ed. Let us imagine the interchange that Troilus anticipates before he speaks, translated into the speech of two modern young men in a similar situation:

“Let’s, like, go look at Criseyde’s house, at least.” “Th at’s crazy, and you know it.” “Yes. Right. Of course.”

Troilus provides an escape for himself, rhetorically. Like the other speakers we have heard negotiating meaning with their interlocutors, he posits him-self as not the one making such a request. He is only like one making such a request. Th e request comes from within an implicit simile, while he reserves his own place on the outside.

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Chaucers As and the Loose Fit of Meaning