Genre and Authority: The Eighteenth-Century Creation of Chaucerian Burlesque

Abstract

According to Warton, the late eighteenth-century reading of Sir Thopas is radically different from earlier readings. Although the earlier consensus Warton imagines (that Sir Thopas is a heroic narrative) is surely a fiction, Warton is essentially correct. The characterization of Sir Thopas as a form of literary criticism (discerning the improprieties in books) is not found before the work of Warton and his contemporaries Warburton, Percy, and Richard Hurd. Warton's language here actually conflates poet and critic: he has recreated the text in his own image. In sharp contrast to this now familiar reading of Sir Thopas is the eighteenth-century interpretation of the Squire's Tale, a tale many of us find equally critical of preceding works and thus equally parodic. Although Warton noted the elements in the Squire's Tale as early as 1754, neither Warton nor his contemporaries labelled it a burlesque work or a parody. The Squire's Tale was seen as the very grave heroic narrative Warton imagines Sir Thopas once to have been. In this paper, I shall consider the reasons for this double reception, and argue that Sir-Thopas-the-Burlesque is better characterized as an eighteenth-century creation than as an eighteenth-century critical discovery. Eighteenth-century scholars had recent access to the supposed targets of Chaucer's parody; they were described both in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry and in Warton's History. More importantly, they had a new critical vocabulary, borrowed largely from the