The Dark is Light Enough: The Layout of the Tale of Sir Thopas

Sir Thopas — Chaucer’s “rym” (VII.709) that so disappoints the Host —is not generally discussed in terms of dark moments or abyssal themes. In fact, in its wilful and relentless ineptitude, Chaucer’s parody of the tail-rhyme romance represents one of the most sustained comic moments in all of the Tales, culminating in Harry’s uncompromising interruption. However, beneath the surface of Chaucer’s parody of the likes of “Ypotas,” “Bevys” and “sir Gy” (VII.898–899), the repeated elision of a specific paratextual feature of Thopas in both a large proportion of the fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Tales as well the vast majority of printed editions points toward the potential inscrutability not only of medieval textual records but also early-modern and modern records as well.1 This paratextual feature — Chaucer’s use and subtle amplification of the traditional tail-rhyme verse layout — forms part of a focus in Fragment VII of the Tales on both the resources available to the English poet writing at the close of the fourteenth century and, more generally, the very act of reading and the problematic nature of interpretation itself.