The General Prologue
Here is God’s plenty[1].
Dryden on the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Who was Chaucer?
-Family originally from France.
-Born c. 1343
-He probably studied at St. Paul’s school.
-His father was a wine merchant. Geoffrey’s father profited from the plague; he lost many relatives but inherited a good deal of[2] property.
-His mother inherited 24 shops.
-Fortunately, when Geoffrey’s was a child his father took his family to Southampton for business reasons just[3] before the Black Death arrived in London.
Given that nearly[4] half the population of London died it was just as well[5] for English literature.[6]
-page, soldier, prisoner of the French (for 4 months in 1360), spy, diplomat, civil servant, Member of Parliament.
The pilgrimage in The Canterbury Tales should not be thought of as an entirely solemn occasion,
- it also offered the pilgrims an opportunity to abandon work and go onholiday[7].
Chaucer did not introduce the frame narrative[8] to English
- his friend John Gower had already written Confessio Amantis (c. 1390) a frame narrative with strong Boethian influences.
- in any case simple proto-frame narratives were common in dream-vision literature.
The TalesPiers Ploughman
One of the models for The General Prologue was almost certainly The Visions of Piers Ploughman (more precisely, the A-Text/Visio).
Coincidences between The General Prologue and the prologue to Piers Ploughman include:
- The spring setting (typical of dream-visions)
- The ideal ploughman
- Merchants who appear to be thriving[9]
- Priests who run off to London chantries[10] to sing for silver
- Friars who dress in fine copes[11] and give absolution in return for cash
- A venal[12] pardoner
- Rich sergeants-at-law
- A group of assorted burgesses[13], mostly cloth-workers, accompanied by a cook.
- In Langland’s ‘field of folk’ there are even story-telling pilgrims.
- In fact, 16 of Chaucer’s pilgrims are reflected in Langland’s work.
The coincidence is unsurprising; when Langland was living on Cornhill, Chaucer was living less than a mile away on Aldgate.
However, notice that the feel of The Tales is completely different.
Chaucer uses subtle irony.
Langland presents characters who do not live up to[14] what is expected of them
- such as the oxymoronic sociable (even lecherous) hermit.
Like Langland, Chaucer offers variety of literary genres
- The Canterbury Tales includes an example of every major medieval literary genre (e.g., fabliau, hagiography, romance, beast fable[15], etc.)
instead of[16] relying solely on one or two story forms, or even a set of themes, such as those found in the Decameron.
Indeed, the story-telling competition raises the central question:
What makes for good/bad literature?
Did Chaucer Sympathize with Wyclif?
Chaucer was a close friend of John of Gaunt, Wyclif’s patron and protector, so the poet must have known the theologian.
Several allusions to Lollard beliefs
- disparaging the mendicants,
- stressing the vernacular, and
- questioning authority, in particular[17]
are found throughout[18]The Canterbury Tales,
Chaucer’s Parson corresponds closely to contemporary descriptions of Lollards.
- indeed, the Parson is twice[19] accused of being a Lollard in The Canterbury Tales, but never denies it.
- “He was a shepherd and not a mercenary[20]” (516). Such absentee priests were severely criticized by the Lollards.
- that his brother, the only other unambiguously unblemished[21] Pilgrim, is a ploughman, suggests a link with[22] Langland.
- we could add the clerk, who puts knowledge before money.
The central question in judging Chaucer’s orthodoxy is whether he is ironizing about pilgrimage as a whole[23] in The Canterbury Tales.
- to the extent[24] that the opening sentence (Chronographia) compares pilgrimages with sexual adventures this is credible.
Chaucer ends his work by dedicating it to “our doctrine”
- a curious expression to use if he is referring to orthodox Roman Catholicism.
If Chaucer was defending Lollardy in his masterpiece, he may have prudently planned not to publish until after his death to avoid reprisals.
Chaucer’s Narrator
Chaucer was the first writer to use a narrator in a frame narrative.
- he may have borrowed this from Langland or from his own dream-visions.
But by having his pilgrims described in gushing[25] terms by his Narrator, Chaucer sets up[26] an extra level of irony.
- for instance[27], when the Narrator praises[28] the Wife of Bath’s skill[29] as a cloth-maker, the audience would be reminded of the notorious[30] poor quality of West Country textiles.
As we have seen, the idea of the slow-witted narrator probably came from Langland’s Will.
- however, there is a level of ambiguity and we never decide if the Narrator is an enthusiastic simpleton[31] or a clever dissimulator[32].
- the Narrator is never entirely naïve nor entirely ironic
- he is a teasing[33]persona[34] who shifts ground[35] and refuses to be defined.
The Narrator is also materialistic.
- He concentrates on the pilgrims’ wealth and status as indicated by their possessions, and openly admires the wealth of the middle-class characters.
Some of Chaucer’s irony rests on the gradual degradation of words.
- terms like gentil, noble and worthy are used for less and less reputable characters as The General Prologue progresses, emptying them of meaning.
Of course, Chaucer setsup26further[36] irony in that his persona (‘I’) is an awful[37] story-teller,
- despite Chaucer being the author of the greatest work of mediaeval English literature!
Merits & Defects of The Canterbury Tales
Why is The Canterbury Talesspecial?
-It is the first long poem in English about ordinary life,
though The Prologue is similar to the introduction of dream-vision works.
There is a guide (the Host) and the dreamer (the Narrator) just[38] as in dream visions.
Notice that Chaucer had written a number of dream-visions such as House of Fame (1374) and Parliament of Fowls (1382).
-However, Chaucer describes believable individualsrather than[39]just[40] types.
-The characters are not presented directly but in terms of how they strike[41] their fellow-pilgrim, the Narrator.
They have spoken to him and he is passing on what they have said.
The revelation of character through ‘dialogue’ is usually an aspect of drama.
Here it leaves open the possibility of self-deception[42].
-The forming of a spontaneous group of pilgrims is a natural process as people travelled in companies for security reasons.
-On the other hand, it would have been impossible for a group of 20+ people to hear each other telling stories on horseback.
-However, Chaucer scores the double coup of having a superficially believable context, which is also a metaphor – “Life’s a pilgrimage”. As it says in The Knight’s Tale:
This world nys but a thurghfare ful of wo, /
And we ben pilgrymes, passynge to and fro.[43] [2847-48]
-The Canterbury Tales is a collection of short stories like The Decameron.
However, all Boccaccio’s story-tellers are of the same age and class, and, if it weren’t for their names, might be of the same sex, too.
They all talk at the same level and in much the same urbane[44] style, whatever the topic[45].
By contrast, there is much more unity amongst Chaucer’s pilgrims because those telling the stories are important and they interact. Practically none of the tales could be told by anyone except the person who tells it.
-The characters in some cases tell stories as answers to previous stories (e.g. TheMiller’s Talemocks[46] the Knight’s idealism, TheReeve’s Tale answers The Miller’s.
-The Friar and the Summoner also tell tales against each other.
-Intellectual debates are undertaken through the stories
(e.g. The Wife’s Tale and The Clerk’s Tale).
- What makes a happy marriage?
- What constitutes good literature?
- The merits of secular vs. spiritual love
- realism vs. empiricism
-Unity is also achieved by the presence of the Narrator.
-Realism is provided by interruptions (e.g. The Host interrupts the Narrator’s story – The Tale of Sir Thopas – because it is so boring!).
The Host’s game nearly comes to an end as soon as the Knight finishes because the drunken Miller flaunts the Host’s authority and demands to tell his story.
-Many of the pilgrims seem aware[47] that they inhabit a socially defined role and seem to have made a conscious effort to redefine their prescribed role on their own terms.
Almost every Pilgrim has something to hide.
-Much of the force of the portraits as individuals comes from the knowledge – shared by author and audience – of what is expected of the profession to which the individual belongs and how far s/he falls short of that idea.
-The Canterbury Tales is written with wit[48] –
e.g. using irony and bathos (= ironic wit, humorous anticlimaxes) combined with the satire (= holding up of vices to ridicule) of mediaeval tradition (e.g. Piers Plowman).
-Chaucer presents himself the Narrator as a fat little man who is too shy[49] to tell good stories.
-Notice that the level of irony gradually increases as Chaucer moves down the social scale.
-Chaucer seems to question the popularity of courtly love in his own culture,
and to highlight the contradictions between courtly love and Christianity.
Most importantly, whereas[50] previous frame narrative had existed to justify a collection of short stories
- Chaucer’s Tales appear more as a means to reveal character than as an end in themselves.
Problems with The Canterbury Tales
The most interesting part of The Canterbury Tales for us today is the frame, the portraits of the Pilgrims.
- However, arguably the Tales was really written as a vehicle for the short verse stories.
Some of these were written much earlier than The Canterbury Tales and adapted for inclusion.
As the work is unfinished some of these adaptations are incomplete.
The Shipman’s Tale was originally designed for The Wife of Bath,
- he speaks of himself two or three times as a woman!
The Second Nun refers to herself as ‘an unworthy[51] sone of Eve’.
- ‘son’ could only designate male[52] offspring, (but notice that ‘girl’ meant ‘child’ not ‘female child’).
Difficulties of The Canterbury Tales
The Tales are infused with philosophical discussions that reflect the mediaeval mindset[53]:
A major theme is love with the sharp pre-Modern distinction between cupiditas[54] and caritas[55].
- and how love interacted with marriage.
Another theme is gentilesse[56].
- traditionally this referred to the responsibility of the strong towards the weak, noblesse oblige, magnanimity
- however, some (e.g. the Wife of Bath) were beginning to question the idea that the aristocracy were more ‘noble’ than everyone else and to suggest that nobility of mind depended on how one behaved[57] not who one was.
A Belief in the Four Humours
Medieval medicine taught that the human body contained four fluids: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
When all of these are in balance (eucrasia), the individual is healthy
- imbalance indicates infirmity.
These fluids also determine a person’s personality traits, depending on which is predominant, and are related to the astrological four elements as well as the four seasons.
- The complete schema[58] of these was set out[59] in Galen’s On the Temperaments.
These could be interconnected to make more complex personality assessments[60] (e.g., choleric-sanguine).
Humour / Temperament / Character / Temperature / Season / Elementblood / sanguine / optimistic, cheerful, fun-loving / warm and moist / Spring / air
phlegm / phlegmatic / calm, unemotional, shy / cold and wet / Winter / water
black bile / melancholic / considerate, creative, perfectionist / cold and dry / Autumn / earth
yellow bile / choleric / ambitious, dominant / warm and dry / Summer / fire
In the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer relies on the four humours to reveal the Pilgrims’character traits.
- So, for example, the Reeve is typically choleric and the Franklin is quintessentially sanguine.
A belief in Physiognomy
Physiognomy: the medieval belief that the physical appearance of the body
- reflected the purity (or impurity) of one’s soul, or at least
- offered insight[61] into an individual’s character.
Physiognomy was a common university subject, and its tropes were almost universally understood
- so much so that they were used throughout[62] British literature until the 20th Century.
It is particularly[63] important in Geoffrey Chaucer’s General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, in which the pilgrims’ true natures are revealed through their physical descriptions.
- the Pardoner’s yellow ringlets, beardless face, and high voice (like a goat’s), indicate he is effeminate.
- the Wife of Bath’s gapped teeth indicate that she is lustful[64].
- the Prioress’s broad[65]forehead[66] indicates her stupidity.
The Opening Sentence
It is a chronographia – a literary setting[67] in time and place.
- Typical elevated opening like that of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
It is Nature that makes people long to go on pilgrimages.
- It offers a sequence from meteorological → vegetable → animal → human.
Notice how Chaucer mischievously rhymes ‘pilgrimages’ with the sexual ‘corages’.
The Opening Sentence implies that the movement from
sickness → health,
winter → spring,
death → life,
is the movement of both secular romance and Christian belief.
The General Prologue begins in a manner reminiscent of a dream-vision poem, with a springtime setting and a chance[68] encounter.
- but instead of[69] allegorical characters, the narrator encounters ‘real’ people.
It demonstrates that
- love and penitence,
- fallibility and the seeking of perfection,
- the order of nature and the order of the spirit,
cannot in practice be disentangled[70].
What is The Prologue for?
-to gain the good will of the audience.
-to explain what will follow
-to apologize for inadequacies
-to introduce the theme of secular versus sacred love
people long to go on pilgrimages both when they feel religious zeal[71] and physical desire.
However, the bulk of the Prologue is taken up by an estates satire:
The Prologue as an ‘Estates Satire’
There is no evidence that the Anglo-Saxons ever used satire.
Estates Satires were common throughout[72]late-mediaeval Western Europe.
- They enumerated the various estates and often described how each fell short of an ideal.
The description of the Parson is closest to that of an Estates Satire because much of it is taken up with[73]describing the vices that this parson does not commit.
In its simplest form the Estate Satire divided the world into three Estates:
- Those who fought (bellatores) 200 noblemen plus 1000 knights.[74]
- Those who prayed (oratores): 2-3% of the population.
- Those who laboured (laboratores): 96% of the population.
Often women were presented as a separate estate
- this goes some way to explaining how the Wife of Bath effectively counterbalances so many men.
Sometimes women were presented as having a separate system, the so-called three feminine estates of
- virgins
- widows
- wives
The Wife of Bath’s Prologue seems to engage this denomination.
Estates satires tend to be mostly invective, so it is Juvenalian satire
- for example Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme (c. 1379 in French) and his Vox Clamantis (c. 1381 in Latin), which influenced Chaucer’s General Prologue.
Chaucer’s criticisms are much subtler and more ironic.
- it is Horatian satire.
- Unlike[75] Langland, Chaucer is never reduced to savage indignation by the follies[76] and injustices of this world.
The hierarchy of estates was the basis for the Great Chain of Being (we’ll have more on that when we look at King Lear).
The Parson and the Ploughman are the only unambiguouslyideal characters on the pilgrimage
- the Knight and the Clerk are more ambiguous.
Notice how Chaucer in each case uses the professional jargon of the pilgrim (e.g. law, medicine, etc.)
We have shown that The General Prologue uses material associated with dream vision and Estate Satire. However,
- dream vision’s investigative and interrogative modes are noticeably absent
- Estates Satire’s overt criticism is also nowhere to be found.
The General Prologue consistently denies[77] criticism in favour of ostensible magnanimity
- as a result, the dominant mode is irony.
The Principal Pilgrims
The Military
The Knight - symbol of chivalry. Didn’t really exist anymore in the 1380s.
- He is the ideal of his estate.
- He is a crusader, though the Crusades had lost most of their prestige since the 4th Crusade sacked[78] Byzantium (the greatest city in Christendom!) in 1204. Henry Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) had been off on crusade, massacring the poor old Wends in north-eastern Europe in 1390.
- Notice that the Knight has fought for the pagan ‘lord of Palatye’ (against other pagans).
- English knights are not known to have participated in all the campaigns Chaucer mentions, and some of them (such as the combat at Tramyssene, Tlemcen in Algeria) may never have happed at all!
- The ones that did take place were less glorious than the portrait makes them sound.
- The General Prologue tells us much more about the Knight’s life history (i.e. the past) than his present state.
- As we will see in the next tutorial, he may be a mercenary.
- He couldn’t possibly have fought in so many battles, which should lead us to[79] question whether anything he says is true.
The Squire – knight’s son. Lover.
- He is the only poet on the pilgrimage besides[80] Chaucer.
- While[81] the portrait is mainly[82] positive the fact that he cannot sleep for lovesickness makes him a little ridiculous.
- If we accept that the Knight is a mercenary, then the idea that his son has fully assimilated the knightly ideas and courtly love is hugely[83] ironic.
Yeoman – follower of the knight. Forester by trade[84]. Archer[85] in war.
The Clergy
There is a steady decline in standards through the three pilgrims from religious orders.
The Prioress – lady nun.
- A beautify and charming[86] woman whose courtesy[87] is her dominant characteristic. She is an ideal lady but not an idea nun.
- Keeps little dogs in disobedience to rules. This is possibly a reference to the historical Prioress of St. Helen Bishopgate (London) who, in 1385 was rebuked[88] for keeping many lapdogs.
- The Narrator seems to be mesmerized by her mouth: he mentions her smiling, her singing, her French accent, her eating, and her drinking.
- Clearly, the Prioress is a noblewoman who has been placed in charge of a nunnery[89], despite having little or no spiritual vocation
- she values material pleasures over spiritual responsibilities.
Like many of the pilgrims, she is making the best of a life in a role she feels ill-adapted to.