Slips of the Tongue: Some Overlooked Examples of theMisdirected KissStorytelling Motif (Thompson K1225)

Abstract

This article considers the popular storytelling device of the misdirected kiss, classified in Stith Thompson’s index as motif K1225. It argues that the dominance of Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale over current scholarship has led us to conceptualise the motif in unduly reductive terms. To demonstrate the variability and complexity of the kiss as a narrative element, a number of neglected witnesses are reviewed from medieval and early modern French, English, German and Dutch. The article appends a translation and edition of one of the most eccentric specimens of the kiss from the late medieval period, the “Refereynen vande jonghe Kamer van Haerlem” (1561).