The Proverb as Embedded Microgenre in Chaucer andThe Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf

Abstract

Because current genre theory lays such heavy emphasis on fluid mixing among and within genres, this essay asks what might be learned by attending closely to a set of sharply delineated generic boundaries, those created when small but complete and recognizable genres (“microgenres”) are embedded within longer genres, a nearly universal and yet under-theorized practice in medieval literature. Focusing on the proverb and drawing upon Bakhtin’s spectacularly ambitious outline for a final major work, “The Problem of Speech Genres,” the article uses examples from The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, and the anonymous Middle English Dialogue of Solomon and Marcolf to demonstrate that the proverb’s brevity and its clearly defined, yet voice-permeable, boundaries enable a variety of important effects. Embedded in longer works, medieval proverbs act as generative miniature theories that transform the situations to which they are applied. They indicate courses of action, encapsulate worldviews, console and reconcile their recipients to the ways of this world, and mediate for fictional characters and for readers the overwhelming variety of lived experience.

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