Write a note on Chaucer's comic vision.
Answers
Explanation:
Humour is the sympathetic appreciation of the comic, the faculty which enables us to love while we laugh. It is the humour which enables us to see the person's point of view, to distinguish between crimes and misdemeanours. Above all, it is humour which points out those enduring peculiarities, those little foibles and harmless weaknesses which give a character a warm place in our affections. There is no sting in humour, no consciousness superiority. On the contrary, it contains an element of tenderness. Obviously humour is distinct from satire, but it can be distinguished from farce and wit only insisting on the externals when speaking of them. Humour is indeed the soul of all comedy. Satire, being destructive, not constructive, is in a class apart, but even satire may become so softened by humour as it does in Chaucer that it may lose the element of caricature and serve only to give a keener edge to wit.
Chaucer's whole point of view is that of the humorist. He is a comic poet who saunters gaily through life pausing the notice every trifle as he passes. He views the world as the unaccustomed traveller views a foreign country. He possesses the faculty of amused observation in a pre-eminent degree. Again and again he contrives to invest some perfectly trifling and commonplace incident with an air of whimsicality, and by so doing to make it at once realistic and remote.
Chaucer's humour is essentially English. It is not the "wit" of the Frenchman. It is born of a strong commonsense and a generous sympathy ; and there are the qualities of the greatest English humorists like Shakespeare and Fielding. R.K. Root terms Chaucer's humour as “protean in its variety", ranging from broad farce and boisterous horseplay in the tales of the Miller