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Press Release Summary: Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer\'s General Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales has taken various directions : some critics have praised the
portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality,

Press Release Body: Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer\'s General Prologue to the
Canterbury Tales has taken various directions : some critics have praised the
portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality, adroit psychology and
vividness of felt life; others, working in the genetic direction have pointed out
actual historical persons who might have sat for portraits; others appealing to the
light of medieval sciences, have shown the portraits to be filled with the lore of
Chaucer\'s days and to have some typical identities like case histories.
Resemblance to the Tales of Decameron
According to W.H.Clowson, The Canterbury Tales resembles to Boccacio\'s Decameron in
4 ways:
. The tales are told in succession by the members of an organized group.
. This group is brought together by special external circumstances.
. There is narrative and conversational links between the tales.
. There is a preceding officer.
'The general tone of the framing narrative and the general topics of its tales are
very similar to those of Chaucer\'s. [.] and in Boccaccio\'s apology for the
impropriety of some of his stories he makes the same defense as that offered by
Chaucer for the same fault --- that he must tell what happened, that the reader may
skip any tale he wishes, and that such stories are purely for entertainment and are
not to be taken too seriously.\'
But the majority of the scholars of Chaucer believed that this link is not
established properly. More over there is no evidence that Chaucer met Bocaccio in
1373 --- during his brief vist to Florence.
Unity in diversion in Prologue
Chaucer in his Prologue, tried to present portraits of all the 'strata\' of life, but
this variety is only the interior frame work which functions with the exterior
circle which gives unity to all the characters. Such a unity, it may be argued, is
fulfilled only due to the reason ( in A.W. Hoffman\'s words) that ' all the portraits
are portraits of pilgrims\': "and pilgrims were they alle"
Treatment of 'Love" in Prologue
Love has been treated in the prologue from the beginning as a character, a matter of
the body and spirit.
The note of love that is sounded in different keys ball through the portraits, such
as :
The Knight : ". he loved chivalrie."
The prioress : ". Amor vincit omnia ."
Wife of Bath : ". of remedies of love she knew perchance, For she koude of that art
the olde daunce"
The Pardoner : ". com hider, love, to me!"
The pilgrims were represented as affected by a variety of destructive and
restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movements can be described by the
mixture of love that drives them and love that calls and summons.
Character sketches in Prologue
According to William J. Long, 'In the famous " Prologue" the poet makes us
acquainted with the various characters of his drama. Until Chaucer\'s day popular
literature had been busy chiefly with the gods and heroes of a golden age: it had
been essentially romantic, and so had never attempted to study men and women as they
are, or to describe them so that the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes,
but as his own neighbors. Chaucer not only attempted this new realistic task, but
accomplished it so well that his characters were instantly recognized as true to
life\'
Throwing light to another aspect of Chaucer\'s characterization A. Compton Rickett
writes: '[.] His people always on the move. Never do they become shadowy or
lifeless. They shout and swear, and laugh and weep, interrupt the story teller, pass
compliments, and in general behave themselves as we might expect them to in the
dramatic circumstances of the narrative. It is never possible to confuse the story
teller: each is distinct and inimitable, whether it be the sermonizing Pardoner, the
hot-tempered Miller, or the exuberantly vivacious Wife of Bath, who has had five
husbands, but experience teaching her that husbands are transient blessings, she has
fixed her mind on a sixth!\'
Prologue copies the exact life: Ambiguity and Double view of pilgrimage
The prologue begins by presenting a double view of Canterbury pilgrimage ¬¬¬¬-----
one tiny manifestation of a huge tide of life.
This is not so as only because Chaucer sketched the varieties of different species
from the human society, but also because of the presence of the Double View of
pilgrimage in his portrait, which is also a miniature of the real social life and
this one is enhanced and extended by the portraits where it appears, in one aspect,
as a range of motivation. This range of motive spreads from the sacred to the
secular and on to the profane. All the pilgrims are in fact granted a sacred motive
---- all of them are seeking the shrine. But when we move to actual motivation among
the portraits and we find the difference. The Knight and the Parson are at the
opposite end of the spectrum. Same is the case of Summoned and the Pardoner.
In A.W. Hoffman\'s words : 'And the pilgrims who move, pushed by the impulse and
drawn by vows, none merely impel and none perfectly committed . and this reflect the
common human ambiguity in real life\'
William Blake\'s Observation : Characters of all time
William Blake says : '[.]The characters of Chaucer\'s Pilgrims are the characters
which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises [.] [,but] we see
the same characters repeated again and again [.]. Names alter, things never alter\'
and this is the special characteristics of Chaucer\'s portraits.
And moreover what is interesting , according to Blake is : '[.] As Newton numbered
stars [.] Chaucer numbered the classes of men\'.
Pattern of description of the characters in Prologue: from high to low ranks
The military estate is followed by the clerical estates; the clerics by the laity;
an upper middle class by a lower one; with the rascals at the end.
Further Chaucer had used the arrangement in apparently causal order of descending
importance of merit. Even there is an arrangement that has moral patterns.
Personality of Chaucer
E.Talbot Donaldson proposed [in his essay 'Chaucer the Pilgrim\', PMLA, LXIX (1954)]
that Chaucer the pilgrim was a fictional creation of Chaucer the poet, with a
distinct personality of his own which was very unlike that of his creator. This
pilgrim is an amiable, exceedingly naïve bourgeois who admires success of every
kind, but especially material success, who uncritically accepts the values of the
upper class, as these are embodied in the Knight, the Prioress, the Monk and the
Friar; and who recognizes virtue and wickedness only when they are thoroughly
obvious.
But Jhon M. Major [ in his essay 'The Personality of Chaucer the Pilgrim\', PMLA,
LXXV 9June 1960)] says that there are still many things which fall out of this
theory and for which 'we are forced to construct a different kind of narrator from
the one Professor Donaldson has represented\'. 'Granted that Chaucer does employ a
persona in the Canterbury Tales; still, he does not employ him very consistently.[.]
we think narrator as a kind of alter ego of the poet himself, with just so many
shades of difference as allow for ironic play, no difficulty is raised by the
alternating points of view. This narrator reveals himself to be, like his creator,
perceptive, witty, sophisticated, playful, tolerant, detached, and, above all,
ironic. Such a man is very well aware of the significance of what he observes,
though he may show his awareness by subtle means.[.]That real persona, who is far
from being a fool, understands what he sees ought to be clear from a number of
indications. Not that he is given to moralizing; Chaucer the pilgrim, like his
companion the Parson, has a wide tolerance of human weakness, and he can warm up to
almost all of his fellow pilgrims, especially if they are convivial. Most of what he
observes, both the good and the bad, he reports with a straight face with a
deliberate irony.\'
Some important characters of The Prologue to Canterbury Tales :
The Knight and the Squire:
The Knight and Squire with the Squire\'s Yeoman lead the procession, as Chaucer has
placed them in the first position.
William Blake says that : ' the Knight is a true hero, a good great and wise man;
his whole length of portrait on horseback, as written by Chaucer cannot be
surpassed.\' He is 'that species of character which in every age stands as the
guardian of man against oppressor.\'
The portraits of the Knight and the Squire have a particular interest. The
relationship between these two are governed by natural one that of a father and son.
Again there is a dramatic relationship between these two as each one of portrait is
enhanced and defined in presence of another. For instance the long roll of Knight\'s
campaigns and Squire\'s little opportunity; a series of past tenses, a history for
the Knight and for the Squire breaking forth in active participles. Even appearances
and dress of both are compared.
Knight\'s pilgrimage is more nearly a response to the voice of saint.
The Knight is defined in terms of his virtues (lines 45-6) and actions to defend the
faith far more than by his words. Knight\'s fighting in battle field had a religious
cause. He is the antique pattern of the chivalry of Edward- III\'s time.
The Nun ( Prioress)
Prioress is described as of the first rank, rich and honored. She had certain
peculiarities and little delicate affections. She was accompanied by what is truly
grand, polite and elegance.
Chaucer has portrayed this character with such care and tenderness that it is often
remarked that Chaucer really liked the prioress very much, even though he satires
her so gently ---- very gently. But E.T Donaldson believes that this is just an
understatement and Chaucer may not be said to be have liked her, rather he was only
charmed by her beauty.
Eileen Power\'s illustration show with what extra-ordinary skill the portrait of the
Prioress is packed with abuses of typical 14th century nuns. Though these abuses are
petty, it is clear the Prioress is anything but a perfect nun and attempts to white
wash her.
It has been argued that Chaucer\'s appreciation for the Prioress as sort of heroine
of courtly romance actually due to Chaucer\'s sophisticated living, where he cared
little whether amiable nuns are good and this sophistication permits itself to
babble superlatives.
Anyway Prioress\'s very presence in the pilgrimage, as many point out, is the very
first satiric touch. In the case of Prioress blemish is sufficiently technical to
have only faint satiric coloring. But this places her at a spot in the sequence ---
at one end --- in which more obviously blemished Monk and friar appear.
In the portrait of the Prioress the double view of pilgrimage appears both in
ambiguities in the surface and in an implied inner range of motivation.
In the surface there is a name Eglentyne --- means romance --- and 'simple and coy\'
is a romance formula, but she is a nun. There are coral beads and green gauds, --- a
religious emblem. What shall be taken as principal? Are her courtly manners or her
dedication at divine service explains her? And on the front of motivation, the
perfect explanation lies in the lines of A.W.Hoffman : 'There is such an impure but
blameless mixture as Prioress .\'. Deficiency of knowledge may be remedied (which
caused due to Chaucer\'s attempt to make more gentle criticism on the Prioress). It
is because, as many believe, Chaucer has a sister or a daughter who was a nun.
Prioress is the character who is found to be pre-dominating in some ages. William
Blake has observed that 'The characters of women Chaucer has divided into two
classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of
men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath, in
whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge
and blight\'.
Wife of bath
William Blake has observed that 'The characters of women Chaucer has divided into
two classes, the Lady Prioress and Wife of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages
of men? The lady Prioress in some ages predominates; and in some the wife of Bath,
in whose character Chaucer has been equally minute and exact because she is a
scourge and blight\'.
The main features of her character are common-sense and pre-occupation with sex, and
an important element in Prologue is her desire to explain life in terms of her
values. For instance: 'She is willing to admit, for her convention\'s sake that
chastity is the ideal state. But it is not her ideal.
In prologue, she explains her five husbands.
She was a good woman but unfortunately rather deaf. The deafness is a significant
detail --- the result of a blow from her fifth husband.
In medieval theory and law, biblical in origin, the man is the head of the woman,
and should be obeyed. The Wife, however, is not receptive to this doctrine, and her
deafness is the symbolic of this unwillingness to listen. Physical characteristics
in her portrait have a moral import. Other such characteristics in case of Wife of
Bath are the following. The Wife is a gate-toothed. Medieval students of physiology
held that to have teeth widely spaced was a sign of boldness, falseness, gluttony
and lasciviousness. The Wife born under Venus (who was not saint) regards it as
confirmation of venereal nature. Her 'gate-teeth\' gave her many opportunities to
wander off the road.
The Wife\'s portrait begins with a standard feature of the dreadful women, whom
clerks in the Middle Ages liked the same way as the wives of the Guilds men (lines
376-8). This liking for display is cleverly combined by Chaucer with her profession
(cloth-making). Her stockings are scarlet and tight laced, and her shoes are
"moisten and newel". She is thus the scarlet woman, whom preachers against female
vanity love to hate. But this is Chaucerian as she is both sexually attractive and
at the same time ridiculously over dressed.
The Wife turns out to be the monster of anti feminist comedy --- aggressive,
nagging, gossiping, lustful and wasteful. Yet she is not unattractive.
Apart from five husbands and other youthful company we are told that she had passed
"many a strange strum". Then : "Of remedies of love she knew per chance
For she koud of that art the olde daunce"
(lines 475-6)
The 'remedies\' and 'olde daunce\' do not suggest virtue. All in all she is quite
contract to the chastity, modesty and refinement of the Prioress.


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