Assignment Writing: P-105: (History of English Literature from 1350 to 1900)
Hello Beautiful People,
This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 105 (History of English Literatuare from 1350 to 1900)assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).
Chaucer's Art of Characterization in
the
Prologue of the Canterbury Tales
J Introduction:
The
Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories that runs to over 17,000 lines
written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. In 1386,
Chaucer became Controller of Customs and Justice of Peace and, in 1389, Clerk
of the King's work.
The
Canterbury Tales is considered Chaucer's masterpiece and is among the most
important works of medieval literature for many reasons besides its poetic
power and entertainment value, notably its depiction of the different social
classes of the 14th century CE as well as clothing worn, pastimes enjoyed, and
language
J Who was Geoffrey Chaucer?
Geoffrey
Chaucer marks the first greatest development in the history of English poetry.
He also marks the end of the medieval literature and the beginning of the
modern English literature in general and Renaissance English literature in
particular.
Chaucer
sowed the seed of the Renaissance also, besides giving the English literature a
sure modern turn, but it is unfortunate of the English literature that there
would be no more substantial harvest for almost two centuries after him, till
Spenser, who made full use of the achievements of the Renaissance to develop
the English literature; Shakespeare had to be waited for to develop dramas.
Chaucer is the first original genius in the history of the English literature.
Geoffrey
Chaucer ( c. 1340s – 25 October 1400) was an English poet and author. Widely
considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages, he is best known for
The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English
literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry".
He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets'
Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and
astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his
10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a
bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Geoffrey
Chaucer was born to a middle-class family; his father was a distinguished wine
merchant in London. As a boy, Chaucer was a studious student. As his works
exhibit, he should have learned Latin grammar, rhetoric, logic, classical
literature, sand so on, because they were accessible even to the commoners if
they could afford. He also had the chance to observe the life and manners of
people from different parts of the country who came for business to Thames
Street of London where his family lived.
He
mixed up with people of all sorts, heard and learnt several languages, and
became fluent in French. He was appointed as a page to a duke whom he
accompanied in one of the expeditions of the Hundred Years’ War. He was taken
prisoner and was released on a ransom (of 16 pounds!).
Then
he became the personal attendant of the king; he married a maid (Philippa) who
was also a relation to the royal family. Chaucer greatly increased the prestige
of English as a literary language and extended the range of its poetic
vocabulary and meters. He was the first English poet to use the seven-line
stanza in iambic pentameter known as rhyme royal and the couplet later called
heroic. Nevertheless, Chaucer dominated the works of this 15th century English
followers and the so-called Scottish Chaucerian.
For
the Renaissance, he was the English Homer. Edmund Spencer paid tribute to him
as his master; many of the plays of William Shakespeare show the thorough
assimilation of Chaucer’s comic spirit. John Dryden, who modernized several of
the Canterbury tales, called Chaucer the father of English poetry. Since the
founding of the Chaucer Society in England in 1868, which led to the first
reliable editions of his works, Chaucer’s reputation has been securely
established as the English poet best loved after Shakespeare for his wisdom, humour,
and humanity. Chaucer has been rightly called the ‘father’ of English poetry.
His chief works are – The Book of the Duchess; The Parliament of Fowls; The
House of Fame; Troilus and Criseyde: Legend of Good Women; and The Canterbury
Tales.
J Synopsis of ‘The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey
Chaucer’:
The
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a series of different kinds of stories
told by a group of imaginary pilgrims going to Canterbury: The Cathedral, a
place of assassination of Saint Thomas a Becket. One of the pilgrims, Chaucer’s
persona or narrators, who is a civil servant, retells us the stories. Chaucer planned to write a long
series of stories in verse, so as to describe his native country, its people
and their way of life, and to express the experiences of the native people in
the native language, thereby developing a national literature.
Chaucer
planned to write about 120 stories by making each of the 30 pilgrims tell 2
stories each on the way to Canterbury and 2 more each on their way back (as the
leader of the party tells in the prologue). But Chaucer could write only 22
stories. Today the Canterbury Tales is significant not only as the first great
piece of English literature but also a realistic piece of literature that
brings (illustrates) the 14th century England more vividly than the most
laborious history.
The
very description of the team of pilgrims in its introduction (The General
Prologue) is a “virtual art gallery” that gives a complete picture of the 14th
century English society including the entire range of people from all classes,
ranks, profession, both sexes, the good and the bad… and in such a realistic
manner that makes Chaucer one of the greatest realists in the history of
English literature. The prologue and the tales together both tell and show us
the people’s way of life, their food, dress, interests, and habits, beliefs and
attitudes, superstitions, religious life, rituals, social etiquette, table
manners, hypocrisies, and many other details that create a vivid picture of the
society.
Individual characters :
Chaucer’s
characters are types as well as individual characters; each of the individuals
represents his class, profession, age, gender or some sort of type, but at the
same time each one of them is described with such personal details about facial
features, build, dress, individual traits, likes and dislikes, and so on, in
order to make us feel that he is a real individual human being of the time. For
instance, the Knight is a typical medieval crusader, faithful servant of the
British royalty, a knight who loved chivalry, honesty, truth and courtesy, and
like all ideal knights, a respected and reputed man all over the country. In
this way, he represents a class of human beings, the knights of the fourteenth
century England. But at the same time, he has his own very individual
qualities: he is “as meek as a maid,” and he has his own favourites in dress
and food and so on.
There
are balances of several kinds in the characterization of the characters. Like
the balance between the individual and typical qualities in the description of
each character, Chaucer has kept a balance between the positive and negative
traits of each class and individual characters. Not all the civil servants are
ideal like the knight; there is a tax-evading Reeve who was richer than his
lords by means of fraud and fright! Thus, he balances between the good and bad
people in each class (nobility, clergy and laity), each gender, each
profession, and so on.
For instance, there is a ‘hunting’ mock who had practically renounced and even denounced his religious duties and codes of conduct, but he is praised for his being a practical man and a good rider! All knights might not be necessarily so virtuous.
characterization with the variety of details:
Another
striking technique is the characterization with the variety of details and the
way the narrator shifts from one type of detail to another. The narrator
notices features as specific as the color of a woman’s lips, the mole on the
nose-tip about a man, the red face and rolling red eyes of a monk. But he also
mentions features as general as the craze for aristocratic etiquette of a nun,
the love roasted swan in the monk, the golden thumb of the miller, or the
practice of virtue before preaching it by a ‘good man’ parson. The narrator
shifts from specific and individual details to general ones. But at times he
shifts abruptly from any type of detail to any other type, giving us the
impression that these data are actually being gathered on the ‘field’ itself.
The
narrator includes every aspect of each character; their facial features
including moles and scars. Their dress and the horse they are riding, their
voice and temperament, their passions and foibles, their affectations and
degradations, their virtues and ideals, their profession and abilities, their
past lives and present status, their behaviour and humours. This variety and
natural shift in the inclusion of the details also reinforces the impression of
reality in the characterization.
Mirror of Society:
Chaucer
barely holds the mirror up to the society of his time. Even when we read only
the prologue to The Canterbury Tales, we meet all the kinds of people of his
time, leaving probably only the topmost, the king, and the very bottom, the
beggar. He has included all the three estates, the nobility, the clergy and the
commoners. To make the picture more representatives, he has selected the
virtuous and the corrupted as well as the mixed “human” types from all the
three estates.
As
we read the description of his characters, we are given the impression that
Chaucer’s age was a time of transition from the medieval world to that of the
Renaissance. Unlike the other writers who were lost in dreams and allegories,
Chaucer has presented real life and people with their activities, tendencies,
weaknesses, greatnesss, individual and professional behaviours, their passions
and their absurdities. From their descriptions, we understand the social and
economic as well as the religious and moral aspects of the society of
fourteenth century England. The characters are types representing their
respective professions, gender, religious traditions and social statues: the
details of a character can be generalized as representing their class,
profession, gender etc. But there are personal features like description of
facial and dress details, emotions and tendencies in the description of each
character. This makes the prologue even more realistic.
J Art of Characterization in the
Prologue of the Canterbury Tales:
Chaucer
is the first great painter of character because he is the first great observer
of it among English writers, in fact, next to Shakespeare, Chaucer is the
greatest delineator of character in English literature. In the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer tried to paint faithfully the body and soul of the fourteenth century
life. Before the Canterbury Tales we do not know a poem of which the primary
aim was to depict and display the truthful spectacle of life.
It
is the greatness of Chaucer that in the Prologue his twenty-nine characters
drawn from different classes of society represent the fourteenth century
society as vividly and clearly as Pope represented early eighteenth-century
life in his poems such as The Rape of the Lock and Dunciad. In the Prologue to
the Canterbury Tales Chaucer's England comes to life. We meet the Knight
travel-stained from the war and as meek as a girl in his behaviour; the Squire
with curly locks 'embroidered' like a meadow full of fresh flowers, white and
red; the Yeoman clad in coat and hood of green; the Prioress, earnest to
imitate the manners of high society; the jolly Monk; the wanton and merry
Friar; the drunkard Cook; the Merchant; the Oxford Clerk; the Lawyer; the
Doctor; the Dartmouth Sailor; the Summoner; the Pardon; the Reeve; the Wife of
Bath; the gentle Parson; the five guildsmen; the Ploughmen etc. All these
characters are vivid and nicely sketched in the Prologue, which is a veritable
picture gallery.
In
presenting the characters, Chaucer follows the method of an artist with a brush
in his hand, but his method in painting the characters is primitive. He is
primitive also by a certain honest awkwardness, the unskilled stiffness of some
of his outlines, and such an insistence on minute points as at first provokes a
smile. Chaucer has adopted no definite pattern in the description of portraits.
He
seems to amass details haphazardly. Sometimes the description of the dress
comes first and then he describes physical features. Sometimes he begins with
analysis of character and adds touches of dress afterwards describes physical
features. Sometimes he begins with analysis of character and adds touches of
dress afterwards.
Chaucer
has shown his characters by presenting them as foils to each other. The
Summoner and the Friar, the Miller and the Reeve, the Prioress and the Wife of
Bath, the Cook and the Manciple, the conscientious Parson and the unscrupulous
Pardoner are foils. All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each
other; and not only in either inclinations, but also in their appearances and
persons. Even the grave and the serious characters are distinguished by their
several sorts of gravity; their discourses are such as belong to their age;
their calling and their breeding such as are becoming of them and of them only.
In
the Prologue various characters comprise all sorts and conditions of men, some
of them are so real that they can be easily the sketches devised to provide a
representation of the chief classes of English society under the higher
nobility. Moreover, the sketches not only give typical traits of temperament,
appearance and manners, but incorporate the essentials of medicine, law,
scholarship, religion, the theory of knighthood and also a satire on faults in
social life; they summarize the noblest ideals of the time and the basest
practices.
The
result, therefore, is a conspectus of medieval English society; it would be
possible to use the Prologue as the basis for a survey of fourteenth century
English life.
Chaucer's
characters are both individuals and types. The Knight is a chivalrous character
of all ages. He is a great warrior and a conqueror who in every age stands as
the guardian of man against the oppressor. But the Knight has been
individualized by his horse, dress and gentle and meek behavior. The young
Squire stands for the type of warriors who are not always lost in the dreams of
warfare, but are also interested in singing and playing upon a flute. But he
has been individualized by his curly locks, embroidered clothes, and his short
coat with long wide sleeves. The Yeoman is the type of expert archers, but he
has been individualized by his cropped head and his brown visage. The Prioress
is the type of a woman who tries to imitate courtly manners, but she has been
individualized by her nasal tone, tenderness of heart, and her physical
features.
The
monk is a type of the monks who had deserted their religious duties and passed
their, time in riding and keeping greyhounds for hunting. But Chaucer's Monk is
an individual with a bald head and rolling eyes glowing like fire under a
cauldron. Chaucer's Friar is a type of those friars who were wanton and jolly,
interested in gay and flattering talk.
But
Chaucer's Friar is individualized by his melodious voice, his skill in singing
songs and by his knowledge of taverns and barmaids. In Chaucer's time The Clerk
of Oxford represented studious scholars who devoted their time in the
acquisition of knowledge, but he is also an individual person with his volumes
of Aristotle, his hollow cheeks, grave looks and threadbare clock.
The
Man of Law is a typical figure. The Doctor of Physik with his love of gold and
his little knowledge of the Bible is a typical doctor. But the Man of Law and
the Doctor of Physik have also been individualized by their physical traits and
features. There are many other characters who represent their class, their
profession, but they are also individual figures with notions, idiosyncrasies,
arguments and particular physical features. Thus Chaucer has maintained a
balance between the typical and the individual features of a character
The
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales presents a social group of persons, larger and
more diversified. Chaucer's group of pilgrims is not schematically
representative of English society, but covers well enough the main social
elements. The nobility and the lowest class of laborers are excluded as it was
unlikely for them to travel in the fashion of this group.
The
lifelikeness of most of the Canterbury pilgrims has given rise to several
scholarly attempts at identifying them among Chaucer's known contemporaries.
The Host of the Tabard Inn, later in The Canterbury Tales called Herry Bailly
most probably pictures an actual fourteenth century Southwark innkeeper called
Henery Bailly; and here and there are scattered throughout the portraits, hints
of possible actual persons. One can think of several personal features so
distinctive that one feels that Chaucer's own observation noticed them
somewhere in real life, but more often it is the occurrence of a name that adds
lifelikeness to a portrait: the shipman hails from Dartmouth and is master of
the barge `Madelaine, the Reeve comes from Bawds- well in Norfolk; the
Merchant's trading interests were largely concentrated in Middleburg in Holland
end Orwell near Harwich ; the knight had taken part in campaigns some of which
were topical in 1386 in connection with a famous lawsuit in which a knightly
family known to Chaucer was involved. Such details of names of persons or
places may well derive from Chaucer's own knowledge, and with them some of the
particulars of the persons described, and it is certainly no discredit to
Chaucer's art if he did derive some of his inspiration from living people.
J Conclusion:
So
here we see that who is Chaucer? Then some brief introduction of The Canterbury
Tales and Also Chaucer's Art of
Characterization in the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales.
Some
of the lessons are love conquers all, lust only gets you in trouble, religion
and morality is virtuous, and honour and honesty is valued. Although there are
some contradictory stories, Chaucer kept to this set of morals through most of
his tales. The
Canterbury Tales is considered Chaucer's masterpiece and is among the most
important works of medieval literature for many reasons besides its poetic
power and entertainment value, notably its depiction of the different social
classes of the 14th century.
J References:
1. “Geoffrey Chaucer.” The Illustrated
Magazine of Art, vol. 1, no. 1, 1853, pp. 7–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20537875.
Accessed 12 Feb. 2021.
2. Higgs, Elton D. “The Old Order and
the ‘Newe World’ in the General Prologue to the ‘Canterbury Tales.’” Huntington
Library Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 2, 1982, pp. 155–173. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/3817150. Accessed 12 Feb. 2021.
3. Lumiansky, R.M.. "Geoffrey
Chaucer". Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Jan. 2021,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Geoffrey-Chaucer. Accessed 12 February
2021.
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