Geoffrey Chaucer

1
Geoffrey Chaucers

• Canterbury Tales

A Presentation on the General Prologue, Nuns
Priests and Pardoners Tales Professor
Jacqueline Beamen
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Chaucers Background

• (1343? 1400)
• Known as the Father of English Poetry
• His father was a wine merchant, so he was neither
  an aristocrat nor a peasant
• In his lifetime he was a page in a royal house,
  soldier, diplomat, and royal clerk, so he had a
  perfect vantage point for observing all kinds of
  people.

3
Chaucers background (contd)

• When Chaucer was a diplomat, one of his tasks was
  to go abroad in doing so he brought back
  influence of writers, the most important of which
  was Boccaccios Decameron.
• Many critics say Chaucer did not borrow from
  Boccaccio, but even if he did, Shakespeare was
  guilty of this same imitatio.
• Chaucer was called English Homer by Renaissance
  historians, and evolved into the forefather
  figure of Renaissance English literary history
  (Miskimin 58)

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Chaucers Middle English
Even while Chaucer visits old genres, he is
perfecting a new poetic form. In the Middle Ages,
the meters and sound effects of Old English no
longer suited the English language. He adapted
French poetic forms to the English language.
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Basis of the Pilgrimage

• Chaucers own house in London overlooked the
  pilgrim road that led to Canterbury.
• The pilgrims are on their way to the shrine of
  St. Thomas à Becket, who was appointed Archbishop
  of Canterbury by Henry II.
• Becket was famous for his struggle to keep the
  English church free from royal control, which
  caused tension between him and Henry II (who
  eventually had Becket killed). The shrine built
  to honor him was later destroyed by Henry VIII.
• The detail with which Chaucer devotes to his
  accounts of the normal life of each pilgrim,
  serves, by implication, to emphasize the
  departure from those lives represented by the
  pilgrimage itself (Martin 55)

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Literary Elements

• Social Commentary
• This later bloomed with the invention of the
  novel
• Human nature changes very little (from then until
  now)
• Ex lines 500-506 p. 15 lines 573-575 p. 17
• Direct and Indirect Characterization
• Chaucer presents an astonishing individuality
  and varietyof behavior, of posture, of
  complexion, evenof clothing (Nevo 9)
• Chaucers point was to sharpen our overall
  perceptions on the basis of everyday attitudes
  toward people, of the things we take into account
  and the things we willingly ignore (Mann 25).
• The description of the various pilgrims turns
  rapidly from an article of clothing to a point of
  character and back again with no apparent
  organization. Yet this artful artlessness is so
  effective that each pilgrim stands out sharply as
  a type of medieval personality and also as a
  highly individualized character. (Hopper 92)

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The Prologue

• There are three basic estates
• Aristocracy (the Knight, Squire, Yeoman)
• Clergy (Prioress, Monk, Friar)
• Commons (all the rest)
• In the Prologue, the pilgrims views are not
  individual ones, but attached to their
  callingsin medieval terms, their estates. The
  Prologue is a poem about work as social
  experience conditions personality and then a
  standpoint from which an individual views the
  world (Mann 36).

8
Prologue (contd)

• Chaucers deft juxtapositions of one position
  with another point in a wise, deep way to the
  absurdities, the pain, the poignancy, the
  pretensions, the limited perspectives of the
  human condition. (Nolan 132)
• CT, with its elaborate frame and its Prologue,
  is a prologue to a prologueour earthly life and
  its plenitude, variety and multitudinous. We
  recognize our world in Chaucer's world and cross
  it in reading it another bridge the heavenly
  Jerusalem. Its important to note that he
  pilgrims never reach their destination.. nor do
  we(Bloomfield 111)

9
Chaucer (the author) and his Point of View

• Chaucer not only persuades us that fools and
  rascals can be very charming people, but he is at
  the same time making us suspect that they are
  fools and rascals.
• Ex our judgment of the Friar is less harsh than
  our disgust for the Summoner, mostly because the
  friar is pleasant whereas the Summoner is
  revolting (Mann 26).

10
Chaucer (the author) and his Point of View
(contd)

• Chaucer aware that there ought to be meaning in
  everything his works in general contained a lot
  of proverbs.
• In his works he hints that chivalry is breaking
  down.
• Canterbury Tales represents rising middle class.

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Chaucer as Narrator

• Chaucer applies a double irony in appearing as
  himself masked in the masquerade. It is
  necessary that he do so, for his mask of the
  innocent, the simpleton, is the means whereby he
  can present in seemingly unsuspecting acceptance,
  the worldly scale values of the pilgrims. (Nevo
  19)
• The narrator himself constantly identifies with
  the pilgrims point of view and encourages us to
  see the world from this angle a large part of
  the narrators criteria for judging is personal,
  based on pleasantness, charm, and social
  accomplishments. (Mann 30) (see narrative
  intrusion)
• Chaucer the pilgrim, the naive narrator of the
  Prologue, so often misses the point of the
  complex phenomena he describes in order that
  Chaucer the satirist or the poet or the man can
  make sure WE see how very complex they are
  (Leicester 95).

12
Chaucer as narrator contd

• We deal with a speaker who withholds himself from
  ushe displays his difference from his
  externalizations, his speaking, and his act of
  externalizing himself (Leicester 98)
• Narrative Intrusion some examples
• L. 39 (p 2)
• L. 117 ( 4)
• L. 183-188
• L. 330
• L. 725-736
• L. 395 p. 12

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Money in the Prologue

• Every character has a mention of, or a connection
  to, money!
• Pilgrims are described in terms of how they make
  a living or how they go about spending money, or
  some form of array. (Eberle 114)
• The Prologue is a classification of society based
  on the various sources of income in which the
  pilgrimage is a structural frame (Nevo 14).
• The Prologue is a symbol for cupidity Chaucer
  assumes his audience has a lively interest in the
  world of getting and spending money as well as
  commerce which he neither praises nor condemns
  rather, he takes it for granted (Eberle 115) .

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Money in the Prologue (contd)

• Gold plays a big role in the Prologue
• See Prioress (St. Loy), Monk (his brooch), Clerk,
• Doctor, etc.
• Sumptuary Laws dictated what people could wear
  fabrics, decorations, etc.
• Clothing was a uniform for some to what extent
  does it define personality?

15
Religion/ Morality (see Prioress, Monk, Friar,

Summoner, etc.)

• CT crystallizes one of the most painful lessons
  of medieval Christianity that human beings in
  their condition of exile must depend on their
  knowledge on limited powers of observation, an
  imperfect understanding of events, and a language
  essentially different from, and inadequate to,
  the truths it seeks to express. (Nolan 137)
• Except for the Knight, Parson, Plowman, and
  scholar, these pilgrims are totally taken up
  with the world and the flesh. (Nevo 17)
• The two possibilities of virtue and corruption
  are entertained in layman and cleric
  alikecupidity. (Nevo 18)

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Characters Pilgrims in Canterbury Tales(blank).doc

• There are less individualized characters, like
  the Knight, Parson, Plowman, but they are not
  idealized, perhaps qualifying this as a species
  of realism (Parker 52). Each in his own way
  emulates a moral ideal that demands the
  suppression of individuality, and we ought to
  give Chaucer and his time the benefit of the
  doubt that some people managed to live up to
  their ideals. (Parker 52) Like the Friar,
  Summoner, and Pardoner, Harry Bailey knows how to
  turn a tidy profit from a religious occasion like
  a pilgrimage. He comes up with the idea, for
  which someone else will have to pay meanwhile
  hell collect the profits (Eberle 121).
• Why are these pilgrims on this journey? With whom
  would you choose to ride?

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The Nuns Priest Tale

• Parody Mock-Heroic (Mock Epic) style Exemplum,
  Fable
• The Nuns Priest reappears when the Knight
  objects to a tragic tale told by the Monk. The
  storytelling looks as though it will end in
  bitterness when the Host spots the Nuns Priest
  and asks him to tell a tale. Chaucer describes
  this character as riding a jade, but hes
  merry, sweet and goodly.
• Chaunticleers colorsgold, red, black, etc.
  mimic royalty.

18
Nuns Priests Tale (contd)

• The widow who frames the tale is not as important
  as the chickens who are more the subject of the
  story we should focus on the storys
  implications for humans (Brody 114).
• The implication is that stories can mirror human
  passions or influence human behavior, even if it
  is about animals. It is also about the
  elusiveness of truth and the need to pursue it
  (Brody 120).

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The Pardoners Tale

• Exemplum, archetypal narrative elements
• Ironically, the Pardoners own tale confirms the
  connection of symbols and controls. It concerns
  the young rioters who reject both. The rioters,
  who have little sense of symbolism, do not
  acknowledge loyalty to any abstraction like a
  social unit, even one of their own making. It is
  in this sense that it is a moral tale. The windy
  sermonizing in the Pardoners Talewords
  unnecessary to the plot itselfrecalls a modern
  idea that words are not the things they stand
  for. Words are a symbolic order apart from
  reality. The pardoner finds it easy to exploit
  the falsity inherent in language. (Justman 130)

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Pardoners Tale (contd)

• The Pardoner has defeated any attempt to trick
  his companions by exposing his greed before the
  tale is told.
• What the Pardoner says to others partly reflects
  what he is already is and what he will be.
  Chaucer suggests transformations through the
  effect of the language of the tale he chooses to
  tell (Bloom 3).
• The audience, in a spirit of penance from the
  pilgrimage, alters his audience's perspective of
  his tale (Martin 58)
• Harry Bailey is the only pilgrim who doesnt
  seem to understand this he gives a violent
  verbal attack.

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The End

• Works Cited
•  
• Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Modern Critical
  Interpretations Geoffrey Chaucers The General
  Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. Harold
  Bloom,. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
  4-7. Print.
• Bloomfield, Morton W. The Canterbury Tales as
  Framed Narratives. Modern Critical
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  Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. Harold
  Bloom,. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
  101-112. Print.
• Chaucers Canterbury Tales (Selected) An
  Interlinear Translation. Ed. Vincent Foster
  Hopper. New York Barrons Educational Series.
  1970. Print.
• Eberle, Patricia J. Commercial Language and the
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  Tales. Ed. Harold Bloom,. New York Chelsea House
  Publishers, 1988. 113-124. Print.
• Justman, Stewart. Literal and Symbolic in the
  Canterbury Tales. Modern Critical Views
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  Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. 57-78. Print.
• Leicester, H. Marshall. The Art of
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  85-100. Print.

• Mann, Jill. Medieval Estates Satire and the
  General Prologue Modern Critical
  Interpretations Geoffrey Chaucers The General
  Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. Harold
  Bloom,. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
  21-36. Print.
• Martin, Loy D. History and Form in the General
  Prologue. Modern Critical Interpretations
  Geoffrey Chaucers The General Prologue to the
  Canterbury Tales. Ed. Harold Bloom,. New York
  Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. 51-66 Print.
• Miskiman, Alice S. From Medieval to Renaissance
  Some Problems in Historical Criticism. Modern
  Critical Views Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. Harold
  Bloom.
• New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. 57-78.
  Print.
• Nevo, Ruth. Chaucer Motive and Mask in the
  General Prologue. Modern Critical
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  Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Ed. Harold
  Bloom,. New York Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
  9-20. Print.
• Nolan, Barbara. A Poet Ther Was Chaucers
  Voices in the General Prologue to The Canterbury
  Tales. Modern Critical Interpretations Geoffrey
  Chaucers The General Prologue to the Canterbury
  Tales. Ed. Harold Bloom,. New York Chelsea House
  Publishers, 1988. 125-148. Print.
• Parker, David. Can We Trust the Wife of Bath?
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  Harold Bloom. New York Chelsea House Publishers,
  1985. 49-56. Print.