Essays on Chaucerian Irony

A.T.J. Cairns was Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary.

These essays, originally written between 1937 and 1960, distill Dr. Birney’s academic specialty. Though his position as perhaps the closest Canada has come to a genuinely great poet has tended to overshadow his more traditional critical career, the (overdue) reissue of these essays in a single volume serves to remind us that his credentials in this field are very much in order.

Though over a quarter century of ongoing activity in the Chaucer industry has produced a vast amount of material since these pieces were composed, they hold up very well. In fact, difficult as it is to realize now, when the part played by irony in this poet’s work is taken for granted, Dr. Birney was one of the first to consider its depth, range, and variety (in his 1936 University of Toronto doctorate). Stressing “dramatic irony,” “structural irony,” and “verbal irony,” he concentrates particularly on the comic tales. The volume contains separate chapter/essays on the “Miller’s Tale” (succinct and lively) the somewhat neglected “Friar’s Tale” (perhaps a bit tedious) the “Summoner’s Tale,” and the “Manciple’s Tale” (both thoughtful and informative). In “Is Chaucer’s Irony a Modern Discovery” he deals with the misconception that an understanding of the ironic nature of Chaucer’s humor did not really begin before the mid-nineteenth century, tracing it well back into the fifteenth century. He also discusses “English Irony before Chaucer” and, in “The Two Worlds of Geoffrey Chaucer,” elucidates the polished duality of an artist who lived at once in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, giving a concise overview of the poet’s audience and his concessions to them.

Beryl Rowland, who edited this volume, has prefaced it by her own informative essay on “Seven Kinds of Irony.”

All in all, the understated good sense, often ironic insights, and impeccable prose we take for granted in this author are all here, if in a somewhat unfamiliar context.