Dame Sirith: Complexity and Sophistication as a Model for Chaucerian Tales

Compared with the complexity and the sophistication of Dame Sirith and the Chaucerian tales, the stylistic tendency of linearity and straight forwardness in a popular narrative allows the audience less creativity in the reading of the tale; since the meaning or the truth in the narrative is simply given through the narrator’s direct voice or his manipulation of the characters’ voices by his intention. In addition, the meaning or the truth of a narrative is clear and prescribed in that the conflict is the archetypal battle between good and evil, and good triumphs over evil. What is required of an audience in a popular narrative is to accept the authority of narrator and the story told by him without question. The presentation of events, characters, the narrative styles, and the plot are all integrated to the narrator’s end of monopolizing the meaning of a tale. Contrary to a popular narrative, the narrative stylistics of Dame Sirith in conjunction with characterization are integrated in accordance with the effect of creating the gap between the “outer story” and the “inner meaning.” The artistic sophistication of Dame Sirith requires more intelligence and critical judgment to fill in the gap from a reader. The narrator of Dame Sirith does not provide the reader with the explicit guidance or any direct statement. The narrator, eschewing his position of omniscience, permits his characters to reveal their own voices respectively, and he lets a reader seek out and decide upon the truth or authenticity of the multiple perspectives the characters voice. In this regard, the effects produced by the tale-telling artistry of the Dame Sirith-narrator and the reader’s response are incipiently akin to those in the Chaucerian narrative.