Messy Chaucer

ABSTRACT Chaucer is famous for his rhetorical control of narrative architecture. But for the puzzling construction of some narrative poems, such as the Merchant’s Tale (with its incongruous assemblage of genres), rhetorical theory does not provide a rationale. Ancient and medieval rhetorical thought did not have a category for architectural breakdowns, what this article calls “messiness.” Using the Merchant’s Tale to exemplify what is meant here by “messiness,” this article surveys possible comparanda in rhetorical theory—theories of sublimity or grandeur, varietas, and dispositio—to demonstrate that none of these constitutes a true theory of literary structure that admits messiness as a critical component of writing. From these rhetorical models, this article turns to another theoretical category that is outside of rhetoric strictly speaking: the exegetical category of the forma tractatus, which allowed medieval readers to resolve, repair, or accept the “messiness” that confronted them in classical and sacred texts.