General Prologue: The
Knight through the Man of Law
The narrator begins his character portraits
with the Knight. In the narrator’s eyes, the Knight is the noblest of the
pilgrims, embodying military prowess, loyalty, honor, generosity, and good
manners. The Knight conducts himself in a polite and mild fashion, never saying
an unkind word about anyone. The Knight’s son, who is about twenty years old,
acts as his father’s squire, or apprentice. Though the Squire has fought in
battles with great strength and agility, like his father, he is also devoted to
love. A strong, beautiful, curly-haired young man dressed in clothes
embroidered with dainty flowers, the Squire fights in the hope of winning favor
with his “lady.” His talents are those of the courtly lover—singing, playing
the flute, drawing, writing, and riding—and he loves so passionately that he
gets little sleep at night. He is a dutiful son, and fulfills his
responsibilities toward his father, such as carving his meat. Accompanying the
Knight and Squire is the Knight’s Yeoman, or freeborn servant. The Yeoman wears
green from head to toe and carries an enormous bow and beautifully feathered
arrows, as well as a sword and small shield. His gear and attire suggest that
he is a forester.
Next, the narrator describes the Prioress,
named Madame Eglentyne. Although the Prioress is not part of the royal court,
she does her best to imitate its manners. She takes great care to eat her food
daintily, to reach for food on the table delicately, and to wipe her lip clean
of grease before drinking from her cup. She speaks French, but with a
provincial English accent. She is compassionate toward animals, weeping when
she sees a mouse caught in a trap, and feeding her dogs roasted meat and milk.
The narrator says that her features are pretty, even her enormous forehead. On
her arm she wears a set of prayer beads, from which hangs a gold brooch that
features the Latin words for “Love Conquers All.” Another nun and three priests
accompany her.
The Monk is the next pilgrim the narrator
describes. Extremely handsome, he loves hunting and keeps many horses. He is an
outrider at his monastery (he looks after the monastery’s business with the
external world), and his horse’s bridle can be heard jingling in the wind as
clear and loud as a church bell. The Monk is aware that the rule of his
monastic order discourages monks from engaging in activities like hunting, but
he dismisses such strictures as worthless. The narrator says that he agrees
with the Monk: why should the Monk drive himself crazy with study or manual
labor? The fat, bald, and well-dressed Monk resembles a prosperous lord.
The next member of the company is the Friar—a
member of a religious order who lives entirely by begging. This friar is
jovial, pleasure-loving, well-spoken, and socially agreeable. He hears
confessions, and assigns very easy penance to people who donate money. For this
reason, he is very popular with wealthy landowners throughout the country. He
justifies his leniency by arguing that donating money to friars is a sign of
true repentance, even if the penitent is incapable of shedding tears. He also
makes himself popular with innkeepers and barmaids, who can give him food and
drink. He pays no attention to beggars and lepers because they can’t help him or
his fraternal order. Despite his vow of poverty, the donations he extracts
allow him to dress richly and live quite merrily.
Tastefully attired in nice boots and an
imported fur hat, the Merchant speaks constantly of his profits. The merchant
is good at borrowing money, but clever enough to keep anyone from knowing that
he is in debt. The narrator does not know his name. After the Merchant comes
the Clerk, a thin and threadbare student of philosophy at Oxford, who devours
books instead of food. The Man of Law, an influential lawyer, follows next. He
is a wise character, capable of preparing flawless legal documents. The Man of
Law is a very busy man, but he takes care to appear even busier than he
actually is.
Analysis
The Canterbury Tales is more than an
estates satire because the characters are fully individualized creations rather
than simple good or bad examples of some ideal type. Many of them seem aware
that they inhabit a socially defined role and seem to have made a conscious
effort to redefine their prescribed role on their own terms. For instance, the
Squire is training to occupy the same social role as his father, the Knight,
but unlike his father he defines this role in terms of the ideals of courtly
love rather than crusading. The Prioress is a nun, but she aspires to the
manners and behavior of a lady of the court, and, like the Squire, incorporates
the motifs of courtly love into her Christian vocation. Characters such as the
Monk and the Friar, who more obviously corrupt or pervert their social roles,
are able to offer a justification and a rationale for their behavior,
demonstrating that they have carefully considered how to go about occupying
their professions.
Within each portrait, the narrator praises the
character being described in superlative terms, promoting him or her as an
outstanding example of his or her type. At the same time, the narrator points
out things about many of the characters that the reader would be likely to view
as flawed or corrupt, to varying degrees. The narrator’s naïve stance
introduces many different ironies into the General Prologue. Though it is not
always clear exactly how ironic the narrator is being, the reader can perceive
a difference between what each character should be and what he or she is.
The narrator is also a character, and an
incredibly complex one at that. Examination of the narrator’s presentation of
the pilgrims reveals some of his prejudices. The Monk’s portrait, in which the
narrator inserts his own judgment of the Monk into the actual portrait, is the
clearest example of this. But most of the time, the narrator’s opinions are
more subtly present. What he does and doesn’t discuss, the order in which he
presents or recalls details, and the extent to which he records objective
characteristics of the pilgrims are all crucial to our own ironic understanding
of the narrator.
The Knight, the Squire, and the Yeoman
The Knight has fought in crusades the world
over, and comes as close as any of the characters to embodying the ideals of
his vocation. But even in his case, the narrator suggests a slight separation
between the individual and the role: the Knight doesn’t simply exemplify
chivalry, truth, honor, freedom, and courtesy; he “loves” them. His virtues are
due to his self-conscious pursuit of clearly conceived ideals. Moreover, the
Knight’s comportment is significant. Not only is he a worthy warrior, he is
prudent in the image of himself that he projects. His appearance is calculated
to express humility rather than vainglory.
Whereas the narrator describes the Knight in
terms of abstract ideals and battles, he describes the Knight’s son, the
Squire, mostly in terms of his aesthetic attractiveness. The Squire prepares to
occupy the same role as his father, but he envisions that role differently,
supplementing his father’s devotion to military prowess and the Christian cause
with the ideals of courtly love (see discussion of courtly love under “Themes,
Motifs, and Symbols”). He displays all of the accomplishments and behaviors
prescribed for the courtly lover: he grooms and dresses himself carefully, he
plays and sings, he tries to win favor with his “lady,” and he doesn’t sleep at
night because of his overwhelming love. It is important to recognize, however,
that the Squire isn’t simply in love because he is young and handsome; he has
picked up all of his behaviors and poses from his culture.
The description of the Knight’s servant, the
Yeoman, is limited to an account of his physical appearance, leaving us with
little upon which to base an inference about him as an individual. He is,
however, quite well attired for someone of his station, possibly suggesting a
self-conscious attempt to look the part of a forester.
The Prioress, the Monk, and the Friar
With the descriptions of the Prioress, the
Monk, and the Friar, the level of irony with which each character is presented
gradually increases. Like the Squire, the Prioress seems to have redefined her
own role, imitating the behavior of a woman of the royal court and
supplementing her religious garb with a courtly love motto: Love Conquers All.
This does not necessarily imply that she is corrupt: Chaucer’s satire of her is
subtle rather than scathing. More than a personal culpability, the Prioress’s
devotion to courtly love demonstrates the universal appeal and influence of the
courtly love tradition in Chaucer’s time. Throughout The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer seems to question the
popularity of courtly love in his own culture, and to highlight the
contradictions between courtly love and Christianity.
The narrator focuses on the Prioress’s table
manners in minute detail, openly admiring her courtly manners. He seems
mesmerized by her mouth, as he mentions her smiling, her singing, her French
speaking, her eating, and her drinking. As if to apologize for dwelling so long
on what he seems to see as her erotic manner, he moves to a consideration of
her “conscience,” but his decision to illustrate her great compassion by
focusing on the way she treats her pets and reacts to a mouse is probably
tongue-in-cheek. The Prioress emerges as a very realistically portrayed human
being, but she seems somewhat lacking as a religious figure.
The narrator’s admiring description of the Monk
is more conspicuously satirical than that of the Prioress. The narrator zeroes
in on the Monk with a vivid image: his bridle jingles as loud and clear as a
chapel bell. This image is pointedly ironic, since the chapel is where the Monk
should be but isn’t. To a greater degree than the Squire or the Prioress, the
Monk has departed from his prescribed role as defined by the founders of his
order. He lives like a lord rather than a cleric. Hunting is an extremely
expensive form of leisure, the pursuit of the upper classes. The narrator takes
pains to point out that the Monk is aware of the rules of his order but scorns
them.
Like the Monk, the Friar does not perform his
function as it was originally conceived. Saint Francis, the prototype for
begging friars, ministered specifically to beggars and lepers, the very people
the Friar disdains. Moreover, the Friar doesn’t just neglect his spiritual
duties; he actually abuses them for his own profit. The description of his
activities implies that he gives easy penance in order to get extra money, so
that he can live well. Like the Monk, the Friar is ready with arguments
justifying his reinterpretation of his role: beggars and lepers cannot help the
Church, and giving money is a sure sign of penitence. The narrator strongly
hints that the Friar is lecherous as well as greedy. The statement that he made
many marriages at his own cost suggests that he found husbands for young women
he had made pregnant. His white neck is a conventional sign of lecherousness.
The Merchant, the Clerk, and the Man of Law
The Merchant, the Clerk, and the Man of Law
represent three professional types. Though the narrator valiantly keeps up the
pretense of praising everybody, the Merchant evidently taxes his ability to do
so. The Merchant is in debt, apparently a regular occurrence, and his supposed
cleverness at hiding his indebtedness is undermined by the fact that even the
naïve narrator knows about it. Though the narrator would like to praise him,
the Merchant hasn’t even told the company his name.
Sandwiched between two characters who are
clearly devoted to money, the threadbare Clerk appears strikingly oblivious to
worldly concerns. However, the ultimate purpose of his study is unclear. The
Man of Law contrasts sharply with the Clerk in that he has used his studies for
monetary gain.
REFERENCE
BLAMIRES,
ALCUIN. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
BROWN,
PETER, ed. A
Companion to Chaucer. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, reprint
edition 2002.
CHAUCER,
GEOFFREY. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Larry Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1987.
COOPER,
HELEN. The Structure of THE
CANTERBURY TALES. London: Duckworth Press, 1983.
HOWARD,
DONALD. The Idea
of THE
CANTERBURY TALES. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
KNAPP,
PEGGY A. Chaucer and the Social Contest. New York:
Routledge, 1990.
PEARSALL,
DEREK. The Canterbury Tales. London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1985, reprint
edition 1993.
WETHERBEE,
WINTHROP. Chaucer: THE
CANTERBURY TALES. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 2003.
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