ABSTRACT
I would like to approach Chaucer’s low humor from on high: from the vantage point of Saint Augustine’s theory of time, and from the point of view of the Retraction. Chaucer’s scatological tales give us an “up-so-doun” world in which a kiss is a fart and a fart is a problem in logic, so perhaps the best way to approach them is upside-down or backwards. An interpretive strategy that looks backward from Chaucer to Augustine and from the Retraction to the tales has at least the advantage of hindsight. This over-the-shoulder critical stance mimics the retrospective process underlying both narrative and the temporal nature of human experience, and provides a way of looking at the connection between time and narrative.
