“Angry as a pissemyre”: Churlish Anger in Chaucer’s The Summoner’s Tale

Abstract

Although The Summoner’s Tale currently tends to be read as anti-fraternal satire that gives the last laugh to aristocratic characters, this study argues that Geoffrey Chaucer (d. 1400) included another layer of irony that appealed to members of his own social station serving as courtiers to England’s volatile aristocracy. Guided by the study of medieval obscene comedy, it is attentive to how lower-status characters express criticism of the social order and power relationships between other social stations. This study reconsiders the anger of Thomas the “churl” as a model for those who must resist their superiors passive aggressively and dissemble their anger. Thomas is characterized with anti-peasant stereotypes, including animal metaphors, that warn against provoking seemingly docile subordinates. These stereotypes reflect subordinated people’s tactics for hiding their indignation from those who deny their agency. Scholastic analysis the emotions and pastoral discourse about the vices help explain how indignation can be expressed sometimes as sadness and other times as anger. Friar John’s sermon against Wrath brings the discussion to the level of Chaucer’s peers by considering the options available to the courtiers of tyrants. Although the friar’s advice is to placate the powerful instead of correcting them, both Thomas and Jankyn know how to resist overbearing masters while appearing to give in to their unreasonable demands. Thomas’s fart is a form of scatological resistance that is on the boundary between agency and reflex. Subjects expose the folly of their superiors’ unreasonable demands by dissembling indignation and artfully concealing correction as compliance.