The Semiotics of Comedy in Chaucer’s Religious Tales

Among the Canterbury Tales, the religious tales ¹ have attracted a great deal of attention on such subjects as the appropriateness of the pilgrim teller to tale, the pathos of the tales, the poet’s modifications of his sources, and reading strategies that emphasize the allegorical significance of the stories. Traditionally, comedy has been characterized by the presence of incongruity, of absurdity, ² of play, ³ and, of course, laughter as it exists within the fictive frame of the text as well as in the response it generates from a receiving audience. ⁴ Scholars, however, have been less conscious of the implications of comedy in these tales.