Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester solus.
So the scene is set at the beginning of Richard III, the only of Shakespeare’s plays to open with a soliloquy by its central character. Here Richard is isolated both by this stage direction (indicating his physical solitude on stage) and by the themes and images of his first soliloquy, which emblematically set the stage for the solitary characteristics he will enact throughout the play. It is the form and recurrence of such asides, however, that are of particular interest, for they form a direct line between audience and character through which we receive a series of confessional narratives.
The self proclaimed villain of the play, Richard makes no illusions in the opening soliloquy about his character. He self consciously outlines the elements of willful solitude: ambition, egotism, ruthless disregard of other men, Machiavellian skill in dissembling, absolute determination to have his own will. Coupled with these traditional aspects of the villain, though, is the theme of involuntary separation from humanity: his physical deformity. The first person pronoun dominates the soliloquy with its implications of the voluntary isolation of egotism and self love, but each time it is emphasized it is also linked with the unwilling isolation of deformity and self pity:
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
. . . .
I am determined to prove a villain
and hate the idle pleasures of these days. (I.i.19,30 1)
It is a physical quality, setting him involuntarily apart from other men, which mirrors the inward solitude he cultivates voluntarily in keeping his thoughts to himself, refusing to acknowledge the social bonds which bind men to one another. In consciously constructing a division between his face and heart, deliberately keeping his inner self apart from the calculated public face he presents to the world, Richard remains necessarily enigmatic to those around him.
Of course, the audience is privy to his falsehood all along for we enjoy a completely confessional relationship with Richard. Ironically, this relationship also sets him structurally apart from the other characters in the play, rather as though he is standing outside the play, watching. This self conscious movement between play and audience is made explicit from the first lines. Soliloquies and asides become a characteristic mode of speech for him, enabling Richard to declare his techniques and wallow in the hollow pride he derives from his bitter deceptions. This element of Richard III emerges as a unique and strangely post modern twist on the play within a play motif that appears in several of Shakespeare’s other plays. He later acknowledges his archetypal literary ancestry in a way that sets him further beyond the fiction of the play: “Thus, like the formal vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word”(III. i. 82 3). Richard comes to wear his structural isolation also as a badge of his social and moral isolation. As he refuses to become fully committed to the artifice of the play, stepping outside of it as a mocking observer, so he refuses to commit himself to humanity and its governing tenets, posing himself in opposition to the framework of traditional values as a moral and social outlaw. That Richard stands so removed from the arena of human fellowship is evident, albeit obliquely, to those around him as well; even those that would become his dupes. Anne’s first speech on meeting Richard, before he has manipulated her responses, expresses her sense that Richard is somehow grotesquely outside of humanity, outside the natural order:
Dead Henry’s wounds
Open their congealed mouths and bleed afresh.
Blush, blush thou lump of foul deformity,
For ‘tis thy presence that exhales this blood
From cold and empty veins where no blood dwells; (I.ii.55 9)
In addition to the association between Richard’s physical deformity and his villainous soul that Anne suggests here, there also is a profound sense that Richard’s evil and iconoclasm can transgress even natural law; the newly gurgling corpse of her husband as evidence.
Richard’s fight to sever himself from all social laws and values, to become a self defining whole in himself, rather than simply a part in the social whole, parallels Richard’s struggle as a character to break out of the laws and framework of the play. He refuses to confine himself to the limits of the play by expressing himself in communion with the other characters, but instead insists on dissembling within the play and restricting communication of his true self to the soliloquies and asides through which he develops a special relationship with the audience. He insists on forming his own circles and laying down his own terms of accommodating himself to the wider circles of society, humanity, and the play itself. In these respects Richard elicits an awe akin to admiration and displays a defiance which is as heroic as it is villainous.
Sadly for Richard, contrary to his plans for cultivating and maintaining his autonomy and self sufficiency, our unlikely hero is ultimately trapped and destroyed by both the voluntary and involuntary aspects of his isolation. Shakespeare undercuts Richard’s heroic aspect by making his gestures finally futile, showing that his solitude cannot achieve for him the status he seeks, of pure self referentiality. Richard’s mutual rejection of and isolation from the circles of human discourse renders him impotent in his own machinations while making him a disruptive wrench in the works of the larger social paradigm he sought to escape.
Shakespeare thus offers us an essentially medieval perspective of history in which ostensibly natural forces prevent the deviant, the iconoclast, the aspiring solitary from creating his own laws. As Richard III moves toward its close, the focus widens, shifting from the solitary individual outward towards the re ordering society to which Richard finally succumbs. With the anarchic solitary dead, all believe the kingdom can look forward again to order and harmony. Richmond’s closing line ends the play with a sense that society may mend itself under the auspices of God himself in the wake of Richard’s chaotic passage through history:
Now civil wounds are stopp’d, peace lives again
That she may long live here, God say amen! (V.v.40 1)
Friday, June 08, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
The Miller's Tale (Essay 2)
In the fabliau world of Chaucer's Miller's Tale, private parts, furtive sexual encounters, and a so called "misdirected kiss" constitute the order of the day. It is easy to take for granted its elaborate concern for body parts and bodily activities, these being understood, if nothing else, as evidence of the tale's generic tethering. Equally striking, however, though rarely commented upon, is the way in which the Miller's Tale elides the specificity of those very bodies that it sets quite prominently on display. A good example of this can be seen in the tale's representation of the Miller himself.
The prologue to the Miller's Tale locates the Miller initially in terms of physical positioning, introducing him as someone who drunkenly cuts in front of the Monk, the figure whom Harry Bailly invites to tell the next tale (MilT. 12). Speaking, moreover, in the mode of declamation and oration, in "Pilates voys" (MilT. 16), the Miller assumes the identity of an actor, calling further attention to his physical, dramatic placement as a body on stage. The expression "Pilates voys" however, also points to the fact that voice, not body, ultimately constitutes the mainstay of the Miller's performance; indeed, much of what the prologue reveals is the way in which the Miller himself his bodily presence, that is finally drops out of the picture. "...[I]f that I myspeke or seye, / Wyte it the ale of Southwark, I yow preye" (MilT. 31-2). By shuffling the responsibility for his words onto the ale of Southwark, the Miller effectively locates his speech outside his own body. His theatrical delivery thereby turns into a situation of disembodied voice, a narrative instance that detracts from rather than calls attention to the Miller's own bodily location. Interestingly, this double act of self inscription and self erasure on the part of the Miller undergoes a repeat performance in the subsequent prologue representation of Chaucer the pilgrim. For just as the Miller pre empts the speech of the Monk, so Chaucer the pilgrim cuts in on the Miller Reeve exchange, thereby inserting himself into the narrative in a pre-emptory manner. His speech, moreover, like that of the Miller, provides the occasion for an act of self effacement: what the pilgrim himself says. The apologetic tone of his remarks ("Blameth nat me ..." (MilT. 73)), his self presentation as a mere repeater of someone else's words (MilT. 65-7), and his effort (however sincere or ironic) to direct readers' attention away from the tale he is about to tell (MilT. 69-70) all work together to absent the pilgrim-narrator's body in the very midst of its textual inscription.
Equally elusive in this respect is the representation of the body of Alisoun, the tale's central character. Of the three character portraits given in the tale, Nicholas's, Absolon's, and Alisoun's, hers is by far the longest and most artistically accomplished, giving the impression of a vividly delineated character. Much like "hende Nicholas," moreover, Alisoun herself also seems to be defined by basic and seemingly unequivocal bodily attributes. Early on in the narrative Nicholas, we are told, grabs her "by the queynt" (MilT. 173), a gesture which could not be more tellingly graphic or more bodily definitive. And yet, Alisoun is also the figure within the tale about whom much bodily information is noticeably withheld. In the space of her description, for example, elaborate emphasis is given to her clothes, but not at all the specific body underneath. Indeed, every time the specificity of Alisoun's body potentially comes into focus, the language of the description stops short of explicit reference and veers instead in the direction of metaphor: "She was ful moore blisful on to see / Than is the newe pere jonette tree" (MilT. 139-40); "She was a prymerole, a piggesnye ..." (MilT. 160); "Ful brighter was the shynyng of hir hewe / Than in the Tour the noble yforged newe" (MilT. 147-8). Alisoun's body, it seems, never escapes conventional or euphemistic terminology and this right up to the very end of the tale where we are reminded rather cryptically of the fact that Absolon has kissed her "nether ye" (MilT. 744). Even the expressions applied to Alisoun's body in the infamous misdirected kiss scene, "hir hole" (MilT. 624); "hir naked ers" (MilT. 626); "thyng al rough and long yherd" (MilT. 630), seem to defy literal reference. Despite the wealth of critical commentary that this scene has elicited, readers have found little common ground in their assessments of the specific bodily vision that Chaucer's language provides at this point.
How, then, are we to understand the body of Alisoun, and what also are we to think about the bodies of the Miller and the Chaucerian pilgrim narrator? What sorts of bodies are these, and why should the Miller's Tale be so actively involved in producing them as absences? Why, moreover, should these three figures be allied by virtue of their common absence? What might they have in common? Or to turn this question in a slightly different direction, what collectively do they serve to hide? If the Miller's Tale is a narrative in which bodies do indeed matter (and so it certainly seems to be) why are these very important bodies precisely those that remain hidden, those that are produced as secrets or "pryvetee" of the narrative as a whole? This article investigates the parallel obfuscation of authorial and female bodies in the Miller's Tale, attempting thereby to shed new light on the political positioning of this narrative both within late medieval England and within modern critical reception.
As a way of addressing the question of bodies in this tale, let us begin by exploring more generally the tale's investment in particular notions and constructions of identity. Many readers of late have focused on the representation of gender categories in the Miller's Tale; their concern has been with questions having to do with "men" and "women" and with the various intrigues and animosities in the tale that pit the sexes both for and against each other. And yet, such preoccupations with matters of sexual difference, it seems to me, are at best, limited and at worst, simply inappropriate largely because no one in the Miller's Tale can be said to inhabit his/her gender identity in any sort of simple or straightforward way. John's putative status as a jealous husband who keeps his wife "narwe in cage" (MilT. 116, 186) simply is not borne out by the events of the narrative. Within the space of this tale Alisoun is never caged; on the contrary, she seems to have plenty of freedom of movement, enough, at least, so that she is able to join forces rather comfortably with Nicholas in orchestrating the Flood plot. Jealousy, moreover, does not appear to be John's dominant character trait. More often than not, the narrative depicts his relationship to Alisoun as one of loving not to say maternal concern. When Nicholas describes to John the events of the impending Flood, John thinks first of Alisoun's well being: "'Allas, my wyf! / And shal she drenche? Allas, myn Alisoun!'" (MilT. 414-15). Alisoun, for her part, cannot be regarded simply as a passive woman sex object, the pawn of male homosocial designs, as some readers have maintained, for when it comes to her relationship with Nicholas the tale presents her first and foremost as an equal and a partner. Alisoun, after all, agrees to be Nicholas's lover completely on her own terms, only "[w]han that she may hir leyser wel espie" (MilT. 185), and the tale emphasizes the fact that spending the night with Nicholas was "his desir and hire also" (MilT. 299). Moreover, unlike the Miller's Tale source narratives in which the buttocks, out the window joke is performed exclusively by men, Chaucer's tale not only makes this joke equally the province of male and female performance, but also makes Alisoun herself into the joke's author: she, not Nicholas, performs the joke first, vaunting her own trickster capacities to Nicholas along the way: "'Now hust, and thou shalt laughen al thy fille'" (MilT. 614). Alisoun's gender identity, thus, cannot be understood simply in terms of conventional (i.e., binary and hierarchical) gender attributes, and neither can the identities of Nicholas and Absolon. Ostensibly the tale pits Nicholas's aggressive masculinity in clear opposition to Absolon's passive effeminacy, and yet here once again the narrative as a whole does not uphold such rigid and binary categorization: Absolon is not so effeminate as to be unable to wield a phallic coulter as he does at the tale's end, and Nicholas is not so masculine as to refrain from perfuming his room "with herbes swoote" (MilT. 97), in the same manner as Absolon who perfumes himself by chewing cardamon and licorice (MilT. 582). Early on in the narrative Nicholas himself is compared to licorice (MilT. 99). Both he and Absolon, it appears, are equally sweet smelling.
Class categories set forth in the tale also do not seem to provide secure foundations of identity. Alisoun, one presumes, is a commoner, and yet she, like Absolon, is wearing fashionable clothes made of expensive fabric: "A ceynt she werede, barred al of silk" (MilT. 145); "... hir smok ... broyden al bifoore / And eek bihynde, on hir coler aboute, / Of col blak silk, withinne and eek withoute" (MilT. 130-2); "Hir filet brood of silk" (MilT. 134); "... a purs of lether, / Tasseled with silk . . ." (MilT. 142-3). Alisoun is also good enough, we are told, "for any lord to leggen in his bed," (MilT. 161) and one wonders if this is so because she herself is upper class, and not at all the country wench she first appears to be. Nicholas, we learn, is a "poure scoler" (MilT. 82), and yet he is able to afford a private room in town, something students in late fourteenth century England as a rule could not do. Nicholas's wealth, in fact, appears to be considerable, for not only does he possesses "bookes grete and smale" (MilT. 10) and a "gay sautrie" (MilT. 105) unlike the impoverished Clerk of the General Prologue who has to make a choice between buying books or buying musical instruments (GenProl. 295 98), but he also possesses for his very own high price, luxury items: a copy of Ptolemy's Almageste and an "astrolabie" (MilT. 100-2). John the carpenter, for his part, describes himself to Nicholas at one point as a card carrying member of the medieval proletariat: "... 'Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke" (MilT. 383). And yet not only do we never actually see John hard at work (all we know is that he is periodically away at Oseneye, which is also where Absolon goes "to disport and pleye," (MilT. 552)), we also recognize him more often than not as the boss of his two servants, Robyn and Gille, figures whom he routinely orders around (MilT. 323-6 and 523-4).
Indeed, contrary to what some readers have identified as "peasant consciousness" in the Miller's Tale, I read questions of class affiliation in this tale in much more complicated terms. To do so is also to reckon with the fact that the Miller narrator is not simply a drunken miller, any more than his tale is simply a piece of churlish "harlotrie." Not only were fabliau narratives products of aristocratic literary spheres, but the Miller's own narratorial performance is also clearly connected to other explicitly upper class acts. Nicholas's snobby, clerical admonition to the lewd John not to look into "Goddes pryvetee" (MilT. 450) echoes the Miller's own earlier condescending recommendation to the Reeve. Likewise, Nicholas's comments to John about supplying the kneading tubs with food for a day "fy on the remenant!" (MilT. 444) recall the Miller's own equally highhanded renunciation of remnants ("Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere," (MilT. 58). Moreover, the Chaucerian pilgrim narrator, whose performance, as we have already seen, resembles the Miller's own, also explicitly locates his own remarks in terms of an aristocratic vantage point: he addresses himself to "every gentil wight" (MilT. 63), apologizing condescendingly for the "cherles tale" (MilT. 61) he is about to tell.
Rather than casting identity, then, in terms of clearly delineated and fixed categories of gender and class, the Miller's Tale seems to locate questions of identity specifically in the mode of performance: people achieve recognition in this tale, establish their identities, that is, largely through their acting abilities, through their abilities, that is, to deliver convincing performances of conventional social roles. Such an understanding of identity indeed makes much sense in the context a narrative such as this in which characters spend most, if not all of their time engaging in theatrical activities dressing up, repeating scripted roles, getting up acts, keeping up appearances. Within this overall scenario of acting and theatricality, moreover, different characters in the tale deliver different kinds of performances. Alisoun and Nicholas, for example, both seem to be elaborately skilled and, more importantly, highly self conscious performers. So much is suggested by the scene of their amorous encounter at the very beginning of the tale. Nicholas here clearly plays the part of courtly lover, but he does so, it seems, in a comically exaggerated manner: the incongruous combination of his extremely direct body language ("... he caughte hire by the queynte," (MilT. 168); "... heeld hire harde by the haunchebones," (MilT. 171)) and his conventionally indirect, courtly mode of address ("'For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille'," (MilT. 170)) effectively turns courtly love into camp, highlighting at the same time the thoroughly stylized subject position that Nicholas occupies as male courtly lover. Alisoun herself delivers an equally stagy, camped up performance in her part as the female object of these courtly affections. Her refusal of Nicholas's handy sexual advances takes place not in the mode of spontaneity or immediacy, but rather in the mode of tongue in cheek theatrical awareness: "'Why lat be! ... Lat be, Nicholas, / Or I wol crie 'out, harrow,' and 'alas'" (MilT. 177-8). Instead of putting up resistance by simply crying out "out! harrow! alas!," Alisoun offers an awareness of the role she needs to play: she tells Nicholas what she will cry; she alludes to the lines of a script that she will pronounce next in playing the part of the recalcitrant female beloved. Alisoun and Nicholas's theatrical prowess, of course, does not stop here. For almost the entire rest of the narrative their time is sent in jointly producing, directing, and acting in the deceptive drama of the Flood, a theatrical project which, among other things, serves to highlight further similarities in their performance styles. Nicholas's dosing remark to John, "'Go, save oure lyf, and that I the biseche'" (MilT. 492) is repeated nearly verbatim only ten lines later when Alisoun tells John to do the same, "'Go, deere spouse, and help to save oure lyf'" (MilT. 502).
In contrast to Alisoun and Nicholas, John and Absolon both seem to possess an utter lack of theatrical self consciousness. As players of various parts within the tale, John and Absolon take on their roles with a great deal of earnest and with no sense of irony or critical distance in relation to the situation itself of acting. Not surprising in this regard is the fact that Biblical rhetoric, the language, that is, of true belief, provides the script that guides both of their performances: Absolon plays the part of courtly lover by repeating the language of the Song of Songs (MilT. 590-99), and john best performs the business of carpentry only in the context of acting out the story of Noah's ark (MilT. 512-527). These similarities notwithstanding, John's and Absolon's performances are also finally quite different. John, it seems, plays several different roles: at any given point in the tale we can observe him acting as either a man who "swynkes," a boss to his servants, a husband who loves his wife, or a lewd man who knows only his "bileve." Absolon, in contrast, plays only one part throughout the entire narrative, that of the aristocratically fashionable courtly lover. He seems, in fact, to have no ability to play anything else: even in church in his role as parish clerk he is "[s]ensynge the wyves of the parisshe faste" and casting "many a lovely look on hem" (MilT. 233-4), engaging, in short, in the same sort of girl chasing activities that he accomplishes in the tavern or beneath the bedroom window of John and Alisoun. Absolon spends all his time, moreover, cultivating this one role, as opposed to cultivating the other parts that he apparently also plays: his role, that is, as a barber or as a drafter of deeds and quittances (MilT. 218-19). Thus we see him lying awake at night planning his next amorous move, and then rising early the next morning so as to dress himself meticulously for the occasion: "... hym arraieth gay, at poynt devys" (MilT. 581). And in this regard, it is also important to note that even when Absolon does explicitly take on another kind of theatrical project "He pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye" (MilT. 276) he does so only as a means of winning Alisoun's favor, only, in other words, as part of his overall performance as a courtly lover. Absolon, in short, does not deviate in the slightest from a single minded performance of one particular role. The act is the man, the man the act. Indeed, throughout the better part of the tale he appears to be nothing more than a kind of courtly lover wind up toy.
Recognizing the elaborate investment of the Miller's Tale in notions of theatricality and performance leads to further reflection on the ways in which the actual conditions of dramatic performance in late medieval England might have exerted a shaping influence on Chaucer's writing, in particular on the representation in this tale of the figure of Alisoun. For the late medieval English stage was indeed cross dressed: men routinely played female parts. Conceivably, then, Alisoun's situation as a character in Chaucer's tale her performance, that is, as the female object of male heterosexual attention might have nothing to do with the matter of anatomical sex and everything to do instead with an elaborate and thoroughly convincing situation of dramatic masquerade. Alisoun, in other words, might not be a woman at all, but rather a cross dressed theatrical performer or female impersonator: a man, that is, in woman's clothing. Improbable as this interpretation may at first appear, it certainly is not without other kinds of textual justification. Readers have often noted the ways in Chaucer's writing invites comparisons between Alisoun and Absolon, reminding us thereby of the ways in which the Miller's Tale both invokes and highlights conventional understandings of Absolon's femininity. But these same comparisons, I would argue, can also be said to operate in the reverse direction: they work to undo the specificity of Alisoun's female identity at the same time that they provide a basis for recognizing something of the tale's display of Alisoun's somatic masculinity.
Such display, it seems to me, lies at the heart of the misdirected kiss scene. Drawing attention simultaneously to masculine anatomical specificity "wel he wiste a womman hath no berd" (MilT. 629) and to anatomical ambiguity "thyng al rough and long yherd" (MilT. 630), Chaucer's writing about Alisoun's "naked ers" seems at once to reveal and re veil, both to Absolon and to readers of the tale, something of the masculine physical basis of this ostensibly female performance. The gesture of re veiling this recognition, however, does not last for long. Nicholas's punning response to Absolon's kiss, "`A berd! A berd!"' (MilT. 634) swiftly returns our attention to the question of masculine anatomical specificity. In this scene, in other words, not only does Absolon kiss what he does not expect to kiss, he also perceives something of the limitations of the courtly love performance he has earnestly espoused up until now: more precisely put, Absolon's experience of kissing Alisoun's "naked ers" leads to the fleeting recognition that Alisoun "herself" is a boy, not at all the "gay gerl" (MilT. 661) Absolon thought she was. It is this recognition, I would argue, which elicits from Absolon a reaction of disgust. For Absolon it is devastating to recognize that your girl is a boy. Indeed, this devastating recognition seems to be given yet another shape in Absolon's subsequent visit to the workshop of Gervais the smith. Commenting to Absolon that "[s]om gay gerl, God it woot, / Hath broght you thus upon the viritoot" (MilT. 661-2), Gervais engages in a bit of friendly and patently heterosexist ribbing, remarking on the fact that some woman must have left Absolon, here in the wee hours of the morning, reeling about like a top. Neither affirming nor denying Gervais's assessment of things, Absolon's silence in this instance also invites us to look further into what the smith says. For Gervais's words can also be said to detail something of the transition that Absolon has lately undergone: from his initial endeavor to woo Alisoun as a "gay gerl," Absolon has finally been brought into contact with a "vir(i) toot," with the "toute" or bum, that is, of a man, a vir.
This sort of reading of the misdirected kiss scene becomes all the more convincing, it seems to me, when measured against representations of sexuality that occur in the rest of the narrative, for surprisingly and despite appearances, the Miller's Tale seems neither to revel in heterosexual activity nor to feature it explicitly as the central concern of the story. Absolon, for example, seems for the most part much less interested in actually having sex with Alisoun than he is in preparing for and performing his role as a courtly lover. At any rate, Absolon does not appear to be serious in his pursuit of Alisoun's sexual favors. John and Alisoun, though shown together in bed, are never shown engaging in any kind of amorous physical activity. Even Alisoun and Nicholas, who ostensibly have sex and only sex on their minds, seem to be much more interested in (excited about?) elaborate theatrical posturing and game playing than in actually having sex. When indeed their sexual union does take place, Chaucer's writing places it notably within the background, according it only three short lines of metaphorical description (MilT. 544-6). Furthermore, Nicholas's playful recasting of the Biblical Flood story, a narrative which stands, after all, as the consummate exemplar of a theologically based normative heterosexuality, actually upsets the terms of such normativity by calling attention to situations of gender reversal. Consider in this regard Nicholas's description to John of the blissful aftermath of the Flood:
"Whan that the grete shour is goon away,
Thanne shaltou swymme as myrie, I undertake,
As dooth the white doke after hire drake."
(MilT. 466-68)
Johns' subject position, imaged here as that of a female white duck, is matched with that of Alisoun, who is herself figured as the female duck's male partner, "hire drake." Moreover, Nicholas's subsequent promise to John that "thanne shul we be lordes al oure lyf / Of al the world, as Noe and his wyf" (MilT. 473-4) not only locates the "we" John, himself, and Alisoun B as masculine world rulers ("lords"), but also casts both Noah and "his wyf" in that same masculine subject position. Heterosexuality, it seems, is a troubled category in the Miller's Tale. Expectations of heterosexual activity seem to loom larger than actual instances of it, leaving us to wonder about the precise erotic basis of this ostensibly heterosexual, theologically based narrative about a carpenter and his wife.
His attitude towards her throughout the tale is one of amorous idealization. Just as Absolon conceives of Alisoun as the ideal object of his courtly love performances, calling her at one point "hony comb" (MilT. 590), so John regards her in very much the same terms: for him Alisoun is "his hony deere" (MilT. 509), his "trewe, verray wedded wyf" (MilT. 501), this last designation in particular being the fiction that Alisoun herself perpetrates and that John is eminently willing to believe. And of course, in casting Alisoun as "wylde and yong" (MilT. 117) and sexy ("And sikerly she hadde a likerous ye," (MilT. 116), Chaucer's writing necessarily ups the ante for her status as a heterosexual male's dream come true, especially for a senex amans like John who has actively ignored the prevailing wisdom that "man sholde wedde his simylitude" (MilT. 120). Alisoun in Chaucer's narrative, I would suggest, could easily be said to be John's biggest fantasy. All John can think about in relation to the Flood is what will happen to Alisoun; she more than anything else is consistently at the forefront of his "ymaginacioun."
But what still are we to make of the physical aspects of John and Alisoun's relationship? Although it is certainly not inconceivable that John and Alisoun may have had a sexual relationship of some sort all the while that Alisoun's male identity continued to remain hidden from John, more likely is the situation that John and Alisoun do not have sex at all. Chaucer's narrative, in any event, certainly does not represent any sort of physical contact between them, and thereby leaves open the possibility that theirs may very well have been a chaste or spiritual marriage, a marriage, that is to say, in which both partners agree to abstain from having sexual relations with each other for reasons of piety. As a phenomenon that cut across social classes (though located mostly within bourgeois and aristocratic contexts), spiritual marriages occurred throughout late medieval Europe, apparently providing to the spouses in question both religious and nonreligious benefits: for women in particular, spiritual marriages may have afforded greater freedom from conventional gender roles as well as greater freedom from normative concepts like female submission. In this connection let us note the vested interests that both John and Alisoun may have had in maintaining their marriage spiritual or otherwise. John presumably would want marriage so that he might have for his very own the woman of his dreams. The tale does indeed make clear John's willingness to endure cuckoldry for the sake of remaining married to Alisoun (MilT. 123-24). Alisoun, for her part, could very well have desired the marriage with John largely as a means of achieving social legitimacy for the socially illegitimate same sex relationship she maintains with Nicholas and perhaps, has already maintained with other young scholars in the past who have lodged in John's house. In this connection, I note the fact that John's jealousy, to which the narrative occasionally alludes, may indeed derive largely from past experience, that is to say, from situations involving scholars whom Alisoun has known and loved in the past, and not at all from her present situation with Nicholas.
But how are we to understand Nicholas's position in all this? Having engaged with Alisoun physically at the beginning of the tale, Nicholas presumably knows from the very start who exactly "she" is.
Let us remember in this regard that Richard II and Anne of Bohemia had a twelve year long, childless marriage, a fact which leads one to wonder whether theirs might not have been a sexless, spiritual marriage, actively designed as such in order to accommodate Richard's own sexual preference for men. Though such speculation may at first appear unfounded, records do in fact bear witness to Richard's very close relationships with other men, notably with his band of Cheshire archers. Evidence also exists of Richard's having commissioned a hagiography of his great grandfather Edward II, a figure whose same sex sexual interests were as well known in Richard's day as they are in our own. My aim in presenting this kind of interpretation of historical material is hardly to establish once and for all the fact of Richard II's sexual preference for men, but rather to suggest the plausibility, if not the likelihood of such sexual preference both for Richard himself as well as for other men in his court. Although it may be very difficult to make definitive claims about the forms and currencies of sexual desire within premodern contexts, it is nonetheless possible to imagine the co existence of same sex and heterosexual sexualities both within the English courtly community as a whole and potentially at least, within the practices of any individual member of that community. In any case, the historical scenario I construct here suggests a way of understanding Nicholas in the Miller's Tale as someone who may not have been exclusively or even predominantly interested in heterosexuality. Thus, Nicholas's promiscuous heterosexuality cannot be regarded as the unshakably secure foundation upon which the rest of the narrative builds. Indeed, what Nicholas desires from Alisoun could very well have been the same sex sexual relations which, according to my argument, he does in fact receive.
Recognizing, thus, the ways in which questions of same sex sexuality bear upon our understanding of characterization in the Miller's Tale points as well to new ways of interpreting the tale's concluding events. Typically readers have viewed the final portion of the tale in terms of a scenario of just desserts. The concern has been to understand how each of the characters in the tale does or does not, as the case may be, get what is coming to him/her, based on his/her behavior in the preceding moments of the narrative. In the aftermath of the misdirected kiss scene a number of structural confusions occur.
Boundaries of class heretofore maintained now get broken down, as hot coulters get beaten into knightly swords, and narrative worlds previously held separate now intersect swiftly one with the other: in the space of Nicholas's desperate cry for water, the story of Noah and the Flood blends seamlessly with Absolon's intrigue of courtly wooing. Through these kinds of confusions the narrative actively conflates playful, amorous activity Alisoun and Nicholas in the bedroom with seriously vengeful, violent activity Absolon's attack with the coulter and in so doing, eroticizes the violence of the coulter scene itself, a scene in which a phallic object graphically engages with a male character's "toute." In this way the Miller's Tale can also be said to extend indeed "quyte" B the logic of the Knight's Tale, a narrative that has already hinted at the conjoining of aristocratic heterosexuality and martial world of male homosociality. References in the Knight's Tale to the love related piercing of Palemon's and Arcite's hearts (KniT. 220; 255-6; 738: 694-5; 716-17) tend to cast their heterosexual courtly foreplay as just another version of their male homosocial knightly spearplay. The latter, conversely, is itself described as a kind of labor of love, an activity which elicits from the young knights friendly, brotherly affection (KniT. 794) as well as persistency: "they foynen ech at oother wonder longe" (KniT. 704). The manifestly heterosexual story line of the Knight's Tale, moreover, is interrupted routinely by events and concerns pertaining to male homosociality. Arcite's pursuit of Emilye, for example, is interrupted by the story of Perotheus and Theseus, a story of male friendship which is not only a love story in its own right (at KniT. 338-44 the Knight repeatedly mentions the love Perotheus and Theseus have for each other), but also a story with the power to distract the Knight from the narratorial matter at hand, namely, telling the story of Arcite's pursuit of Emilye (KniT. 341-3). Even the climactic marriage of Palemon and Emilye, the consummate moment of heterosexuality in the tale, is interrupted by one small, but very telling detail: Palemon arrives on the scene at this point dressed in mourning clothes (KniT. 2120). Apparently on this the occasion of his presumably much longed for marriage to Emilye, Palemon is still longing for his dear friend and cousin Arcite, and this after "certeyn yeres" (KniT. 2109) have gone by and "al stynted is the moornynge and the teres / Of Grekes, by oon general assent" (KniT. 2110-11). With its regular insistence, thus, on relations of male homosociality, the Knight's Tale actively troubles the explicitly heterosexual ideology of aristocratic courtly romance. And in this respect, it establishes a significant precedent of the narrative trajectory of the Miller's Tale. For as the structural confusions at the end of the tale suggest, the Miller's Tale functions explicitly as a sodometrical piece of writing, revealing what the Knight's Tale has kept in the closet, so to speak: the blatant existence of male homoeroticism within the world of heterosexual romance.
Questions of revelation are indeed very much to the point in the Miller's Tale. All throughout the tale, in fact, we are constantly being reminded that secrets will, in the end, be revealed. When Nicholas swears John to secrecy about the impending second Flood, John protests vehemently that he will tell no one, not "child ne wyf" (MilT. 404): "I am no labbe," he says, "ne, though I seye, I nam nat lief to gabbe" (MilT. 401-2). Upon taking leave of Nicholas, however, John goes straight to Alisoun and tells her "his pryvetee" (494). The Miller narrator tells the Reeve in the prologue not to look into "Goddes pryvetee" (MilT. 56) and then proceeds to tell a tale which turns on a situation of just that, of looking into "Goddes pryvetee" (in more ways than one, in fact). Secrets, it seems, cannot be kept in the Miller's Tale and that is what I would argue the last part of the narrative urges us to recognize once again. For Absolon now knows the secret of Alisoun's identity and he apparently has no qualms about telling it. So much is implied by Absolon's response to Gervais's inquiry as to what Absolon plans to do with the hot coulter: "`Thereof,' quod Absolon, `be as be may. / I shal wel telle it thee to morwe day" (MilT. 675-6). By the end of the tale, moreover, Absolon has become a very dangerous figure. He is mad, he is violent, and he can indeed do real harm to others, as the description of Nicholas's burned "toute" makes clear: "of gooth the skyn an hande brede aboute" (MilT. 703). But not only has Absolon become more vengeful, he also has become more strategically savvy. Whereas before he played the part of courtly lover with no sense of irony whatsoever, after the misdirected kiss he plays the same role with a masterful sense of performative self consciousness. His courtly professions of love now become nothing more than a part played with the intent to deceive:
"... God woot, my sweete leef,
I am thyn Absolon, my deerelyng.
Of gold," quod he, "I have thee broght a ryng.
My mooder yaf it me, so God me save;
Ful fyn it is, and therto wel ygrave.
This wol I yeve thee, if thou me kisse."
(MilT. 684-9)
Absolon, in short, has become a performer very much in the mode of Alisoun and Nicholas, and his performance at the very end of the tale suggests his ability not only to triumph deceptively over them, but also to use theatricality as a ploy, a strategy, just as they have already done. The last part of the narrative, in other words, shows Absolon fully capable of beating Alisoun and Nicholas at their own game, and also, presumably, of revealing to others just exactly what Alisoun and Nicholas's "game" really is.
And it is precisely for this reason, I would argue, that Absolon is also the figure in the tale who finally disappears. He, not Alisoun, is absent in the end noticeably so, in fact, in the closing scene involving all the clerks of the town, of which Absolon is indeed one. Contrary to what readers typically affirm, I find Alisoun to be quite clearly present at the end of the tale. In the aftermath of John's fall from the ceiling Alisoun takes her place beside Nicholas (MilT. 724), and the two are presumably both part of the clerical community that bands together and prevails over John in the end. It is in fact important, I would argue, to recognize the complicity of Alisoun and Nicholas in the end, for what they seem to be doing here is what they have already done before, namely, setting up an extravagant theatrical act. One can hardly help but read the final emphasis on John's craziness in any other way, for the force of this clerical put down seems excessive and the scene as a whole does not follow logically from the events that precede it. Why indeed is so much concerted clerical effort ("every clerk anonright heeld with oother" 738) expended on destroying the reputation of a single, lewd, town carpenter, one who has already been defeated, intellectually speaking, at the hands of a single clerk? Although this scene of character assassination seems to be little more than a gratuitous instance of overkill, it is also of a piece with the pervasive insistence in the Miller's Tale on strategic acts of theatricality, role playing, and performance. The point here seems to be to shift the narrative ground away from Absolon, and to that end Alisoun, Nicholas, and all the town clerks engage in one more gesture of theatricalized deception, reshaping the drama of the Flood into yet another fabliau play this time involving, as one might expect, the conventional performance of clerical intellectual superiority over lewd, lower class ignorance.
The Miller himself actively joins in this performance, restaging the entire tale at the end as a straightforward fabliau narrative, one in which the characters' fates are practically and summarily accounted for. So much is suggested by the Miller's catalogue conclusion:
Thus swyved was this carpenteris wyf,
For al kepyng and his jalousye,
And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye,
And Nicholas is scalded in the towte.
This tale is doon, and God save all the rowte!
(MilT. 742-6)
But the Miller's account here leaves out as much as it tells: it is too swift, too vague, and too generically restrictive to be believable. It tries to force the action back into the style and strictures of fabliau narration, a literary mold that the tale never fully inhabited in the first place. Interestingly, moreover, rather than fostering the disappearance of Absolon, the Miller's remarks actually return Absolon to center stage, highlighting in particular his problematic encounter with Alisoun's body: "And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye." The image of the "nether ye" presents us with one more instance of category confusion (upper blends with lower, the facial with the genital), and hence, with one more way of gauging the homoerotic climate of the tale as a whole. Ultimately, then, this literary performance on the part of the Miller, like all other acts of theatricality in the Miller's Tale, is one that we are encouraged finally to see through.
How, though, might we understand this double gesture at the end of the tale, both a return to Alisoun's body in the form of the "nether ye" and also an effort to leave this body (and its spokesman, Absolon) behind? The Miller's Tale constitutes the secret of male homoeroticism as an open secret, as one that "every gentil wight" in Chaucer's late medieval audience could potentially read. The political significance of such legibility, moreover, was no doubt neither single nor simple. On the one hand, the secret of Alisoun's body, and of her same sex relationships with both John and Nicholas may have reminded the late fourteenth century English court community of a situation that potentially threatened its own well being: homoeroticism as a mode of non reproductivity meant that the aristocracy could no longer simply reproduce itself. Aristocratic homosexual practices, thus, threatened the collapse of a power base from within. On the other hand, the various negotiations of identities and sexualities that the Miller's Tale engages, and above all, the importance the tale accords to situations of theatricality and performance as a powerful means of orchestrating such negotiations might be understood as alluding in positive terms to the fashionable and self fashioning modes of Richard II's court, a social milieu which placed a high premium not only on theatrical display, but also on the political importance of magnificence and personal pleasures. Chaucer's writing in the Miller's Tale could thus be seen as a eulogy of a particular political style, bearing witness at the same time to one way in which heterosexuality in late medieval England was subject to contestation. But no matter how we finally resolve the political valence of the Miller's Tale, our efforts to do so will be guided by the elusive bodies that the tale simultaneously hides and incites us to pursue, those of the Miller, Chaucer the pilgrim and Alisoun. Their bodies matter, the tale suggests, precisely because they are implicated within, rather than set above, the theatrical power plays and contingent identity configurations that the tale itself sets forth.
The prologue to the Miller's Tale locates the Miller initially in terms of physical positioning, introducing him as someone who drunkenly cuts in front of the Monk, the figure whom Harry Bailly invites to tell the next tale (MilT. 12). Speaking, moreover, in the mode of declamation and oration, in "Pilates voys" (MilT. 16), the Miller assumes the identity of an actor, calling further attention to his physical, dramatic placement as a body on stage. The expression "Pilates voys" however, also points to the fact that voice, not body, ultimately constitutes the mainstay of the Miller's performance; indeed, much of what the prologue reveals is the way in which the Miller himself his bodily presence, that is finally drops out of the picture. "...[I]f that I myspeke or seye, / Wyte it the ale of Southwark, I yow preye" (MilT. 31-2). By shuffling the responsibility for his words onto the ale of Southwark, the Miller effectively locates his speech outside his own body. His theatrical delivery thereby turns into a situation of disembodied voice, a narrative instance that detracts from rather than calls attention to the Miller's own bodily location. Interestingly, this double act of self inscription and self erasure on the part of the Miller undergoes a repeat performance in the subsequent prologue representation of Chaucer the pilgrim. For just as the Miller pre empts the speech of the Monk, so Chaucer the pilgrim cuts in on the Miller Reeve exchange, thereby inserting himself into the narrative in a pre-emptory manner. His speech, moreover, like that of the Miller, provides the occasion for an act of self effacement: what the pilgrim himself says. The apologetic tone of his remarks ("Blameth nat me ..." (MilT. 73)), his self presentation as a mere repeater of someone else's words (MilT. 65-7), and his effort (however sincere or ironic) to direct readers' attention away from the tale he is about to tell (MilT. 69-70) all work together to absent the pilgrim-narrator's body in the very midst of its textual inscription.
Equally elusive in this respect is the representation of the body of Alisoun, the tale's central character. Of the three character portraits given in the tale, Nicholas's, Absolon's, and Alisoun's, hers is by far the longest and most artistically accomplished, giving the impression of a vividly delineated character. Much like "hende Nicholas," moreover, Alisoun herself also seems to be defined by basic and seemingly unequivocal bodily attributes. Early on in the narrative Nicholas, we are told, grabs her "by the queynt" (MilT. 173), a gesture which could not be more tellingly graphic or more bodily definitive. And yet, Alisoun is also the figure within the tale about whom much bodily information is noticeably withheld. In the space of her description, for example, elaborate emphasis is given to her clothes, but not at all the specific body underneath. Indeed, every time the specificity of Alisoun's body potentially comes into focus, the language of the description stops short of explicit reference and veers instead in the direction of metaphor: "She was ful moore blisful on to see / Than is the newe pere jonette tree" (MilT. 139-40); "She was a prymerole, a piggesnye ..." (MilT. 160); "Ful brighter was the shynyng of hir hewe / Than in the Tour the noble yforged newe" (MilT. 147-8). Alisoun's body, it seems, never escapes conventional or euphemistic terminology and this right up to the very end of the tale where we are reminded rather cryptically of the fact that Absolon has kissed her "nether ye" (MilT. 744). Even the expressions applied to Alisoun's body in the infamous misdirected kiss scene, "hir hole" (MilT. 624); "hir naked ers" (MilT. 626); "thyng al rough and long yherd" (MilT. 630), seem to defy literal reference. Despite the wealth of critical commentary that this scene has elicited, readers have found little common ground in their assessments of the specific bodily vision that Chaucer's language provides at this point.
How, then, are we to understand the body of Alisoun, and what also are we to think about the bodies of the Miller and the Chaucerian pilgrim narrator? What sorts of bodies are these, and why should the Miller's Tale be so actively involved in producing them as absences? Why, moreover, should these three figures be allied by virtue of their common absence? What might they have in common? Or to turn this question in a slightly different direction, what collectively do they serve to hide? If the Miller's Tale is a narrative in which bodies do indeed matter (and so it certainly seems to be) why are these very important bodies precisely those that remain hidden, those that are produced as secrets or "pryvetee" of the narrative as a whole? This article investigates the parallel obfuscation of authorial and female bodies in the Miller's Tale, attempting thereby to shed new light on the political positioning of this narrative both within late medieval England and within modern critical reception.
As a way of addressing the question of bodies in this tale, let us begin by exploring more generally the tale's investment in particular notions and constructions of identity. Many readers of late have focused on the representation of gender categories in the Miller's Tale; their concern has been with questions having to do with "men" and "women" and with the various intrigues and animosities in the tale that pit the sexes both for and against each other. And yet, such preoccupations with matters of sexual difference, it seems to me, are at best, limited and at worst, simply inappropriate largely because no one in the Miller's Tale can be said to inhabit his/her gender identity in any sort of simple or straightforward way. John's putative status as a jealous husband who keeps his wife "narwe in cage" (MilT. 116, 186) simply is not borne out by the events of the narrative. Within the space of this tale Alisoun is never caged; on the contrary, she seems to have plenty of freedom of movement, enough, at least, so that she is able to join forces rather comfortably with Nicholas in orchestrating the Flood plot. Jealousy, moreover, does not appear to be John's dominant character trait. More often than not, the narrative depicts his relationship to Alisoun as one of loving not to say maternal concern. When Nicholas describes to John the events of the impending Flood, John thinks first of Alisoun's well being: "'Allas, my wyf! / And shal she drenche? Allas, myn Alisoun!'" (MilT. 414-15). Alisoun, for her part, cannot be regarded simply as a passive woman sex object, the pawn of male homosocial designs, as some readers have maintained, for when it comes to her relationship with Nicholas the tale presents her first and foremost as an equal and a partner. Alisoun, after all, agrees to be Nicholas's lover completely on her own terms, only "[w]han that she may hir leyser wel espie" (MilT. 185), and the tale emphasizes the fact that spending the night with Nicholas was "his desir and hire also" (MilT. 299). Moreover, unlike the Miller's Tale source narratives in which the buttocks, out the window joke is performed exclusively by men, Chaucer's tale not only makes this joke equally the province of male and female performance, but also makes Alisoun herself into the joke's author: she, not Nicholas, performs the joke first, vaunting her own trickster capacities to Nicholas along the way: "'Now hust, and thou shalt laughen al thy fille'" (MilT. 614). Alisoun's gender identity, thus, cannot be understood simply in terms of conventional (i.e., binary and hierarchical) gender attributes, and neither can the identities of Nicholas and Absolon. Ostensibly the tale pits Nicholas's aggressive masculinity in clear opposition to Absolon's passive effeminacy, and yet here once again the narrative as a whole does not uphold such rigid and binary categorization: Absolon is not so effeminate as to be unable to wield a phallic coulter as he does at the tale's end, and Nicholas is not so masculine as to refrain from perfuming his room "with herbes swoote" (MilT. 97), in the same manner as Absolon who perfumes himself by chewing cardamon and licorice (MilT. 582). Early on in the narrative Nicholas himself is compared to licorice (MilT. 99). Both he and Absolon, it appears, are equally sweet smelling.
Class categories set forth in the tale also do not seem to provide secure foundations of identity. Alisoun, one presumes, is a commoner, and yet she, like Absolon, is wearing fashionable clothes made of expensive fabric: "A ceynt she werede, barred al of silk" (MilT. 145); "... hir smok ... broyden al bifoore / And eek bihynde, on hir coler aboute, / Of col blak silk, withinne and eek withoute" (MilT. 130-2); "Hir filet brood of silk" (MilT. 134); "... a purs of lether, / Tasseled with silk . . ." (MilT. 142-3). Alisoun is also good enough, we are told, "for any lord to leggen in his bed," (MilT. 161) and one wonders if this is so because she herself is upper class, and not at all the country wench she first appears to be. Nicholas, we learn, is a "poure scoler" (MilT. 82), and yet he is able to afford a private room in town, something students in late fourteenth century England as a rule could not do. Nicholas's wealth, in fact, appears to be considerable, for not only does he possesses "bookes grete and smale" (MilT. 10) and a "gay sautrie" (MilT. 105) unlike the impoverished Clerk of the General Prologue who has to make a choice between buying books or buying musical instruments (GenProl. 295 98), but he also possesses for his very own high price, luxury items: a copy of Ptolemy's Almageste and an "astrolabie" (MilT. 100-2). John the carpenter, for his part, describes himself to Nicholas at one point as a card carrying member of the medieval proletariat: "... 'Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke" (MilT. 383). And yet not only do we never actually see John hard at work (all we know is that he is periodically away at Oseneye, which is also where Absolon goes "to disport and pleye," (MilT. 552)), we also recognize him more often than not as the boss of his two servants, Robyn and Gille, figures whom he routinely orders around (MilT. 323-6 and 523-4).
Indeed, contrary to what some readers have identified as "peasant consciousness" in the Miller's Tale, I read questions of class affiliation in this tale in much more complicated terms. To do so is also to reckon with the fact that the Miller narrator is not simply a drunken miller, any more than his tale is simply a piece of churlish "harlotrie." Not only were fabliau narratives products of aristocratic literary spheres, but the Miller's own narratorial performance is also clearly connected to other explicitly upper class acts. Nicholas's snobby, clerical admonition to the lewd John not to look into "Goddes pryvetee" (MilT. 450) echoes the Miller's own earlier condescending recommendation to the Reeve. Likewise, Nicholas's comments to John about supplying the kneading tubs with food for a day "fy on the remenant!" (MilT. 444) recall the Miller's own equally highhanded renunciation of remnants ("Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere," (MilT. 58). Moreover, the Chaucerian pilgrim narrator, whose performance, as we have already seen, resembles the Miller's own, also explicitly locates his own remarks in terms of an aristocratic vantage point: he addresses himself to "every gentil wight" (MilT. 63), apologizing condescendingly for the "cherles tale" (MilT. 61) he is about to tell.
Rather than casting identity, then, in terms of clearly delineated and fixed categories of gender and class, the Miller's Tale seems to locate questions of identity specifically in the mode of performance: people achieve recognition in this tale, establish their identities, that is, largely through their acting abilities, through their abilities, that is, to deliver convincing performances of conventional social roles. Such an understanding of identity indeed makes much sense in the context a narrative such as this in which characters spend most, if not all of their time engaging in theatrical activities dressing up, repeating scripted roles, getting up acts, keeping up appearances. Within this overall scenario of acting and theatricality, moreover, different characters in the tale deliver different kinds of performances. Alisoun and Nicholas, for example, both seem to be elaborately skilled and, more importantly, highly self conscious performers. So much is suggested by the scene of their amorous encounter at the very beginning of the tale. Nicholas here clearly plays the part of courtly lover, but he does so, it seems, in a comically exaggerated manner: the incongruous combination of his extremely direct body language ("... he caughte hire by the queynte," (MilT. 168); "... heeld hire harde by the haunchebones," (MilT. 171)) and his conventionally indirect, courtly mode of address ("'For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille'," (MilT. 170)) effectively turns courtly love into camp, highlighting at the same time the thoroughly stylized subject position that Nicholas occupies as male courtly lover. Alisoun herself delivers an equally stagy, camped up performance in her part as the female object of these courtly affections. Her refusal of Nicholas's handy sexual advances takes place not in the mode of spontaneity or immediacy, but rather in the mode of tongue in cheek theatrical awareness: "'Why lat be! ... Lat be, Nicholas, / Or I wol crie 'out, harrow,' and 'alas'" (MilT. 177-8). Instead of putting up resistance by simply crying out "out! harrow! alas!," Alisoun offers an awareness of the role she needs to play: she tells Nicholas what she will cry; she alludes to the lines of a script that she will pronounce next in playing the part of the recalcitrant female beloved. Alisoun and Nicholas's theatrical prowess, of course, does not stop here. For almost the entire rest of the narrative their time is sent in jointly producing, directing, and acting in the deceptive drama of the Flood, a theatrical project which, among other things, serves to highlight further similarities in their performance styles. Nicholas's dosing remark to John, "'Go, save oure lyf, and that I the biseche'" (MilT. 492) is repeated nearly verbatim only ten lines later when Alisoun tells John to do the same, "'Go, deere spouse, and help to save oure lyf'" (MilT. 502).
In contrast to Alisoun and Nicholas, John and Absolon both seem to possess an utter lack of theatrical self consciousness. As players of various parts within the tale, John and Absolon take on their roles with a great deal of earnest and with no sense of irony or critical distance in relation to the situation itself of acting. Not surprising in this regard is the fact that Biblical rhetoric, the language, that is, of true belief, provides the script that guides both of their performances: Absolon plays the part of courtly lover by repeating the language of the Song of Songs (MilT. 590-99), and john best performs the business of carpentry only in the context of acting out the story of Noah's ark (MilT. 512-527). These similarities notwithstanding, John's and Absolon's performances are also finally quite different. John, it seems, plays several different roles: at any given point in the tale we can observe him acting as either a man who "swynkes," a boss to his servants, a husband who loves his wife, or a lewd man who knows only his "bileve." Absolon, in contrast, plays only one part throughout the entire narrative, that of the aristocratically fashionable courtly lover. He seems, in fact, to have no ability to play anything else: even in church in his role as parish clerk he is "[s]ensynge the wyves of the parisshe faste" and casting "many a lovely look on hem" (MilT. 233-4), engaging, in short, in the same sort of girl chasing activities that he accomplishes in the tavern or beneath the bedroom window of John and Alisoun. Absolon spends all his time, moreover, cultivating this one role, as opposed to cultivating the other parts that he apparently also plays: his role, that is, as a barber or as a drafter of deeds and quittances (MilT. 218-19). Thus we see him lying awake at night planning his next amorous move, and then rising early the next morning so as to dress himself meticulously for the occasion: "... hym arraieth gay, at poynt devys" (MilT. 581). And in this regard, it is also important to note that even when Absolon does explicitly take on another kind of theatrical project "He pleyeth Herodes upon a scaffold hye" (MilT. 276) he does so only as a means of winning Alisoun's favor, only, in other words, as part of his overall performance as a courtly lover. Absolon, in short, does not deviate in the slightest from a single minded performance of one particular role. The act is the man, the man the act. Indeed, throughout the better part of the tale he appears to be nothing more than a kind of courtly lover wind up toy.
Recognizing the elaborate investment of the Miller's Tale in notions of theatricality and performance leads to further reflection on the ways in which the actual conditions of dramatic performance in late medieval England might have exerted a shaping influence on Chaucer's writing, in particular on the representation in this tale of the figure of Alisoun. For the late medieval English stage was indeed cross dressed: men routinely played female parts. Conceivably, then, Alisoun's situation as a character in Chaucer's tale her performance, that is, as the female object of male heterosexual attention might have nothing to do with the matter of anatomical sex and everything to do instead with an elaborate and thoroughly convincing situation of dramatic masquerade. Alisoun, in other words, might not be a woman at all, but rather a cross dressed theatrical performer or female impersonator: a man, that is, in woman's clothing. Improbable as this interpretation may at first appear, it certainly is not without other kinds of textual justification. Readers have often noted the ways in Chaucer's writing invites comparisons between Alisoun and Absolon, reminding us thereby of the ways in which the Miller's Tale both invokes and highlights conventional understandings of Absolon's femininity. But these same comparisons, I would argue, can also be said to operate in the reverse direction: they work to undo the specificity of Alisoun's female identity at the same time that they provide a basis for recognizing something of the tale's display of Alisoun's somatic masculinity.
Such display, it seems to me, lies at the heart of the misdirected kiss scene. Drawing attention simultaneously to masculine anatomical specificity "wel he wiste a womman hath no berd" (MilT. 629) and to anatomical ambiguity "thyng al rough and long yherd" (MilT. 630), Chaucer's writing about Alisoun's "naked ers" seems at once to reveal and re veil, both to Absolon and to readers of the tale, something of the masculine physical basis of this ostensibly female performance. The gesture of re veiling this recognition, however, does not last for long. Nicholas's punning response to Absolon's kiss, "`A berd! A berd!"' (MilT. 634) swiftly returns our attention to the question of masculine anatomical specificity. In this scene, in other words, not only does Absolon kiss what he does not expect to kiss, he also perceives something of the limitations of the courtly love performance he has earnestly espoused up until now: more precisely put, Absolon's experience of kissing Alisoun's "naked ers" leads to the fleeting recognition that Alisoun "herself" is a boy, not at all the "gay gerl" (MilT. 661) Absolon thought she was. It is this recognition, I would argue, which elicits from Absolon a reaction of disgust. For Absolon it is devastating to recognize that your girl is a boy. Indeed, this devastating recognition seems to be given yet another shape in Absolon's subsequent visit to the workshop of Gervais the smith. Commenting to Absolon that "[s]om gay gerl, God it woot, / Hath broght you thus upon the viritoot" (MilT. 661-2), Gervais engages in a bit of friendly and patently heterosexist ribbing, remarking on the fact that some woman must have left Absolon, here in the wee hours of the morning, reeling about like a top. Neither affirming nor denying Gervais's assessment of things, Absolon's silence in this instance also invites us to look further into what the smith says. For Gervais's words can also be said to detail something of the transition that Absolon has lately undergone: from his initial endeavor to woo Alisoun as a "gay gerl," Absolon has finally been brought into contact with a "vir(i) toot," with the "toute" or bum, that is, of a man, a vir.
This sort of reading of the misdirected kiss scene becomes all the more convincing, it seems to me, when measured against representations of sexuality that occur in the rest of the narrative, for surprisingly and despite appearances, the Miller's Tale seems neither to revel in heterosexual activity nor to feature it explicitly as the central concern of the story. Absolon, for example, seems for the most part much less interested in actually having sex with Alisoun than he is in preparing for and performing his role as a courtly lover. At any rate, Absolon does not appear to be serious in his pursuit of Alisoun's sexual favors. John and Alisoun, though shown together in bed, are never shown engaging in any kind of amorous physical activity. Even Alisoun and Nicholas, who ostensibly have sex and only sex on their minds, seem to be much more interested in (excited about?) elaborate theatrical posturing and game playing than in actually having sex. When indeed their sexual union does take place, Chaucer's writing places it notably within the background, according it only three short lines of metaphorical description (MilT. 544-6). Furthermore, Nicholas's playful recasting of the Biblical Flood story, a narrative which stands, after all, as the consummate exemplar of a theologically based normative heterosexuality, actually upsets the terms of such normativity by calling attention to situations of gender reversal. Consider in this regard Nicholas's description to John of the blissful aftermath of the Flood:
"Whan that the grete shour is goon away,
Thanne shaltou swymme as myrie, I undertake,
As dooth the white doke after hire drake."
(MilT. 466-68)
Johns' subject position, imaged here as that of a female white duck, is matched with that of Alisoun, who is herself figured as the female duck's male partner, "hire drake." Moreover, Nicholas's subsequent promise to John that "thanne shul we be lordes al oure lyf / Of al the world, as Noe and his wyf" (MilT. 473-4) not only locates the "we" John, himself, and Alisoun B as masculine world rulers ("lords"), but also casts both Noah and "his wyf" in that same masculine subject position. Heterosexuality, it seems, is a troubled category in the Miller's Tale. Expectations of heterosexual activity seem to loom larger than actual instances of it, leaving us to wonder about the precise erotic basis of this ostensibly heterosexual, theologically based narrative about a carpenter and his wife.
His attitude towards her throughout the tale is one of amorous idealization. Just as Absolon conceives of Alisoun as the ideal object of his courtly love performances, calling her at one point "hony comb" (MilT. 590), so John regards her in very much the same terms: for him Alisoun is "his hony deere" (MilT. 509), his "trewe, verray wedded wyf" (MilT. 501), this last designation in particular being the fiction that Alisoun herself perpetrates and that John is eminently willing to believe. And of course, in casting Alisoun as "wylde and yong" (MilT. 117) and sexy ("And sikerly she hadde a likerous ye," (MilT. 116), Chaucer's writing necessarily ups the ante for her status as a heterosexual male's dream come true, especially for a senex amans like John who has actively ignored the prevailing wisdom that "man sholde wedde his simylitude" (MilT. 120). Alisoun in Chaucer's narrative, I would suggest, could easily be said to be John's biggest fantasy. All John can think about in relation to the Flood is what will happen to Alisoun; she more than anything else is consistently at the forefront of his "ymaginacioun."
But what still are we to make of the physical aspects of John and Alisoun's relationship? Although it is certainly not inconceivable that John and Alisoun may have had a sexual relationship of some sort all the while that Alisoun's male identity continued to remain hidden from John, more likely is the situation that John and Alisoun do not have sex at all. Chaucer's narrative, in any event, certainly does not represent any sort of physical contact between them, and thereby leaves open the possibility that theirs may very well have been a chaste or spiritual marriage, a marriage, that is to say, in which both partners agree to abstain from having sexual relations with each other for reasons of piety. As a phenomenon that cut across social classes (though located mostly within bourgeois and aristocratic contexts), spiritual marriages occurred throughout late medieval Europe, apparently providing to the spouses in question both religious and nonreligious benefits: for women in particular, spiritual marriages may have afforded greater freedom from conventional gender roles as well as greater freedom from normative concepts like female submission. In this connection let us note the vested interests that both John and Alisoun may have had in maintaining their marriage spiritual or otherwise. John presumably would want marriage so that he might have for his very own the woman of his dreams. The tale does indeed make clear John's willingness to endure cuckoldry for the sake of remaining married to Alisoun (MilT. 123-24). Alisoun, for her part, could very well have desired the marriage with John largely as a means of achieving social legitimacy for the socially illegitimate same sex relationship she maintains with Nicholas and perhaps, has already maintained with other young scholars in the past who have lodged in John's house. In this connection, I note the fact that John's jealousy, to which the narrative occasionally alludes, may indeed derive largely from past experience, that is to say, from situations involving scholars whom Alisoun has known and loved in the past, and not at all from her present situation with Nicholas.
But how are we to understand Nicholas's position in all this? Having engaged with Alisoun physically at the beginning of the tale, Nicholas presumably knows from the very start who exactly "she" is.
Let us remember in this regard that Richard II and Anne of Bohemia had a twelve year long, childless marriage, a fact which leads one to wonder whether theirs might not have been a sexless, spiritual marriage, actively designed as such in order to accommodate Richard's own sexual preference for men. Though such speculation may at first appear unfounded, records do in fact bear witness to Richard's very close relationships with other men, notably with his band of Cheshire archers. Evidence also exists of Richard's having commissioned a hagiography of his great grandfather Edward II, a figure whose same sex sexual interests were as well known in Richard's day as they are in our own. My aim in presenting this kind of interpretation of historical material is hardly to establish once and for all the fact of Richard II's sexual preference for men, but rather to suggest the plausibility, if not the likelihood of such sexual preference both for Richard himself as well as for other men in his court. Although it may be very difficult to make definitive claims about the forms and currencies of sexual desire within premodern contexts, it is nonetheless possible to imagine the co existence of same sex and heterosexual sexualities both within the English courtly community as a whole and potentially at least, within the practices of any individual member of that community. In any case, the historical scenario I construct here suggests a way of understanding Nicholas in the Miller's Tale as someone who may not have been exclusively or even predominantly interested in heterosexuality. Thus, Nicholas's promiscuous heterosexuality cannot be regarded as the unshakably secure foundation upon which the rest of the narrative builds. Indeed, what Nicholas desires from Alisoun could very well have been the same sex sexual relations which, according to my argument, he does in fact receive.
Recognizing, thus, the ways in which questions of same sex sexuality bear upon our understanding of characterization in the Miller's Tale points as well to new ways of interpreting the tale's concluding events. Typically readers have viewed the final portion of the tale in terms of a scenario of just desserts. The concern has been to understand how each of the characters in the tale does or does not, as the case may be, get what is coming to him/her, based on his/her behavior in the preceding moments of the narrative. In the aftermath of the misdirected kiss scene a number of structural confusions occur.
Boundaries of class heretofore maintained now get broken down, as hot coulters get beaten into knightly swords, and narrative worlds previously held separate now intersect swiftly one with the other: in the space of Nicholas's desperate cry for water, the story of Noah and the Flood blends seamlessly with Absolon's intrigue of courtly wooing. Through these kinds of confusions the narrative actively conflates playful, amorous activity Alisoun and Nicholas in the bedroom with seriously vengeful, violent activity Absolon's attack with the coulter and in so doing, eroticizes the violence of the coulter scene itself, a scene in which a phallic object graphically engages with a male character's "toute." In this way the Miller's Tale can also be said to extend indeed "quyte" B the logic of the Knight's Tale, a narrative that has already hinted at the conjoining of aristocratic heterosexuality and martial world of male homosociality. References in the Knight's Tale to the love related piercing of Palemon's and Arcite's hearts (KniT. 220; 255-6; 738: 694-5; 716-17) tend to cast their heterosexual courtly foreplay as just another version of their male homosocial knightly spearplay. The latter, conversely, is itself described as a kind of labor of love, an activity which elicits from the young knights friendly, brotherly affection (KniT. 794) as well as persistency: "they foynen ech at oother wonder longe" (KniT. 704). The manifestly heterosexual story line of the Knight's Tale, moreover, is interrupted routinely by events and concerns pertaining to male homosociality. Arcite's pursuit of Emilye, for example, is interrupted by the story of Perotheus and Theseus, a story of male friendship which is not only a love story in its own right (at KniT. 338-44 the Knight repeatedly mentions the love Perotheus and Theseus have for each other), but also a story with the power to distract the Knight from the narratorial matter at hand, namely, telling the story of Arcite's pursuit of Emilye (KniT. 341-3). Even the climactic marriage of Palemon and Emilye, the consummate moment of heterosexuality in the tale, is interrupted by one small, but very telling detail: Palemon arrives on the scene at this point dressed in mourning clothes (KniT. 2120). Apparently on this the occasion of his presumably much longed for marriage to Emilye, Palemon is still longing for his dear friend and cousin Arcite, and this after "certeyn yeres" (KniT. 2109) have gone by and "al stynted is the moornynge and the teres / Of Grekes, by oon general assent" (KniT. 2110-11). With its regular insistence, thus, on relations of male homosociality, the Knight's Tale actively troubles the explicitly heterosexual ideology of aristocratic courtly romance. And in this respect, it establishes a significant precedent of the narrative trajectory of the Miller's Tale. For as the structural confusions at the end of the tale suggest, the Miller's Tale functions explicitly as a sodometrical piece of writing, revealing what the Knight's Tale has kept in the closet, so to speak: the blatant existence of male homoeroticism within the world of heterosexual romance.
Questions of revelation are indeed very much to the point in the Miller's Tale. All throughout the tale, in fact, we are constantly being reminded that secrets will, in the end, be revealed. When Nicholas swears John to secrecy about the impending second Flood, John protests vehemently that he will tell no one, not "child ne wyf" (MilT. 404): "I am no labbe," he says, "ne, though I seye, I nam nat lief to gabbe" (MilT. 401-2). Upon taking leave of Nicholas, however, John goes straight to Alisoun and tells her "his pryvetee" (494). The Miller narrator tells the Reeve in the prologue not to look into "Goddes pryvetee" (MilT. 56) and then proceeds to tell a tale which turns on a situation of just that, of looking into "Goddes pryvetee" (in more ways than one, in fact). Secrets, it seems, cannot be kept in the Miller's Tale and that is what I would argue the last part of the narrative urges us to recognize once again. For Absolon now knows the secret of Alisoun's identity and he apparently has no qualms about telling it. So much is implied by Absolon's response to Gervais's inquiry as to what Absolon plans to do with the hot coulter: "`Thereof,' quod Absolon, `be as be may. / I shal wel telle it thee to morwe day" (MilT. 675-6). By the end of the tale, moreover, Absolon has become a very dangerous figure. He is mad, he is violent, and he can indeed do real harm to others, as the description of Nicholas's burned "toute" makes clear: "of gooth the skyn an hande brede aboute" (MilT. 703). But not only has Absolon become more vengeful, he also has become more strategically savvy. Whereas before he played the part of courtly lover with no sense of irony whatsoever, after the misdirected kiss he plays the same role with a masterful sense of performative self consciousness. His courtly professions of love now become nothing more than a part played with the intent to deceive:
"... God woot, my sweete leef,
I am thyn Absolon, my deerelyng.
Of gold," quod he, "I have thee broght a ryng.
My mooder yaf it me, so God me save;
Ful fyn it is, and therto wel ygrave.
This wol I yeve thee, if thou me kisse."
(MilT. 684-9)
Absolon, in short, has become a performer very much in the mode of Alisoun and Nicholas, and his performance at the very end of the tale suggests his ability not only to triumph deceptively over them, but also to use theatricality as a ploy, a strategy, just as they have already done. The last part of the narrative, in other words, shows Absolon fully capable of beating Alisoun and Nicholas at their own game, and also, presumably, of revealing to others just exactly what Alisoun and Nicholas's "game" really is.
And it is precisely for this reason, I would argue, that Absolon is also the figure in the tale who finally disappears. He, not Alisoun, is absent in the end noticeably so, in fact, in the closing scene involving all the clerks of the town, of which Absolon is indeed one. Contrary to what readers typically affirm, I find Alisoun to be quite clearly present at the end of the tale. In the aftermath of John's fall from the ceiling Alisoun takes her place beside Nicholas (MilT. 724), and the two are presumably both part of the clerical community that bands together and prevails over John in the end. It is in fact important, I would argue, to recognize the complicity of Alisoun and Nicholas in the end, for what they seem to be doing here is what they have already done before, namely, setting up an extravagant theatrical act. One can hardly help but read the final emphasis on John's craziness in any other way, for the force of this clerical put down seems excessive and the scene as a whole does not follow logically from the events that precede it. Why indeed is so much concerted clerical effort ("every clerk anonright heeld with oother" 738) expended on destroying the reputation of a single, lewd, town carpenter, one who has already been defeated, intellectually speaking, at the hands of a single clerk? Although this scene of character assassination seems to be little more than a gratuitous instance of overkill, it is also of a piece with the pervasive insistence in the Miller's Tale on strategic acts of theatricality, role playing, and performance. The point here seems to be to shift the narrative ground away from Absolon, and to that end Alisoun, Nicholas, and all the town clerks engage in one more gesture of theatricalized deception, reshaping the drama of the Flood into yet another fabliau play this time involving, as one might expect, the conventional performance of clerical intellectual superiority over lewd, lower class ignorance.
The Miller himself actively joins in this performance, restaging the entire tale at the end as a straightforward fabliau narrative, one in which the characters' fates are practically and summarily accounted for. So much is suggested by the Miller's catalogue conclusion:
Thus swyved was this carpenteris wyf,
For al kepyng and his jalousye,
And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye,
And Nicholas is scalded in the towte.
This tale is doon, and God save all the rowte!
(MilT. 742-6)
But the Miller's account here leaves out as much as it tells: it is too swift, too vague, and too generically restrictive to be believable. It tries to force the action back into the style and strictures of fabliau narration, a literary mold that the tale never fully inhabited in the first place. Interestingly, moreover, rather than fostering the disappearance of Absolon, the Miller's remarks actually return Absolon to center stage, highlighting in particular his problematic encounter with Alisoun's body: "And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye." The image of the "nether ye" presents us with one more instance of category confusion (upper blends with lower, the facial with the genital), and hence, with one more way of gauging the homoerotic climate of the tale as a whole. Ultimately, then, this literary performance on the part of the Miller, like all other acts of theatricality in the Miller's Tale, is one that we are encouraged finally to see through.
How, though, might we understand this double gesture at the end of the tale, both a return to Alisoun's body in the form of the "nether ye" and also an effort to leave this body (and its spokesman, Absolon) behind? The Miller's Tale constitutes the secret of male homoeroticism as an open secret, as one that "every gentil wight" in Chaucer's late medieval audience could potentially read. The political significance of such legibility, moreover, was no doubt neither single nor simple. On the one hand, the secret of Alisoun's body, and of her same sex relationships with both John and Nicholas may have reminded the late fourteenth century English court community of a situation that potentially threatened its own well being: homoeroticism as a mode of non reproductivity meant that the aristocracy could no longer simply reproduce itself. Aristocratic homosexual practices, thus, threatened the collapse of a power base from within. On the other hand, the various negotiations of identities and sexualities that the Miller's Tale engages, and above all, the importance the tale accords to situations of theatricality and performance as a powerful means of orchestrating such negotiations might be understood as alluding in positive terms to the fashionable and self fashioning modes of Richard II's court, a social milieu which placed a high premium not only on theatrical display, but also on the political importance of magnificence and personal pleasures. Chaucer's writing in the Miller's Tale could thus be seen as a eulogy of a particular political style, bearing witness at the same time to one way in which heterosexuality in late medieval England was subject to contestation. But no matter how we finally resolve the political valence of the Miller's Tale, our efforts to do so will be guided by the elusive bodies that the tale simultaneously hides and incites us to pursue, those of the Miller, Chaucer the pilgrim and Alisoun. Their bodies matter, the tale suggests, precisely because they are implicated within, rather than set above, the theatrical power plays and contingent identity configurations that the tale itself sets forth.
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