Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: A Faithful Account of People from Different Social Strata of Contemporary England.

 

This paper intends to understand and analyze the people from different strata of contemporary England described by Chaucer in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. To accomplish this small endeavor of ours, we have mainly depended on the primary source text itself and, put forth our own understanding and analysis and, also the critical analysis of our teacher who ultimately made us understand the text. We hope this work will be handy for the future readers to understand and analyze the text. 

“Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” by Chaucer provides us a critical but faithful account of people from different social strata of the then contemporary England. The poet creates the characters on his own and identifies them with the people of contemporary society. He, even in order to describe the people more accurately, chooses a perfect occasion, the pilgrimage, because the pilgrims came from all social strata and formed a perfect group of representatives of the time. The poet encounters the people and describes them as they seemed to him.  He says,

“To inform you of the state of everyone

Of all of these, as it appeared to me.

And who they were, and what was their degree.”

The poet actually makes a satire on the society and on its people for being on both the extreme levels. He begins his tale of satire with a knight and continues with the knight’s son, a prioress, and a monk, friar, clerk, a sergeant of law, merchant, sailor and so on.

The Knight and the Squire

The first pilgrim Chaucer describes in the general prologue is the knight. The knight represents the ideal of a medieval Christian man-at-arms. He has participated in no less than fifteen of the great crusades of his era. The ‘knight’ stands for the chivalry and chivalric values that give him the right to govern and responsibility to protect the community.

Knight’s son Squire, who is about twenty years old, though he has fought in battles with great strength and agility, like his father, he is devoted to love. There is a clear contrast set up in ideas of chivalry between the knight and his son. Knight and his son represent aristocracy. They are the pilgrims with the highest social status. While the knightly classes were still important in Chaucer’s England, their hold on wealth and influence was less exclusive than in previous generations.  Knight’s son squire represents the noble class, and the warrior class.

The Prioress and the monk

Chaucer presents the prioress and the monk as the epitomes of the luxury and hypocrisy. These two characters perfectly represent the show-off religiosity of the priests and nuns, and of their luxurious life.

The prioress represents the contemporary clerical or sophisticated decorum of the religious people. She was no way closer to the real teachings of Christ. She was simply a lady of self-obsession, self-possessed and of self-consciousness. She is such a lady, worthy of contempt that she seemed to have wept if a mouse got caught in a trap, but she herself had pet dogs that she fed on roasted flesh, or milk and fine white bread. She seemed to be less bothered about people around but busy with her pets. Yet she pretended to present herself as very faithful to Christ.

“Full well she sang the services of the divine,

Intoning through her nose, becomingly.”

The account of the monk is also very satirical. Chaucer portrays him as one not possessing the true qualities of a monk. He was “a manly man” who always rode on horse and love hunting of the hare. He was a monk contrary to the cloistered monk, though he chose a life of cloister. Sometimes he seemed to be a very practical man, but not suited for the cloistered monkhood. The monk too just like the prioress was a man of luxury. He would for no cost spare the pleasure of hunting because “Hunting were all his love.” He was more worldly than spiritual.

The friar and the clerk

The Friar, the mendicant monk, named Hubert lived happily and excessively. In Chaucer’s criticism, he was the best beggar in town and was so smooth that he could even get the poorest little old ladies to give him money.

He is the irony of religion and always ready to befriend young women or rich men who might need his services, especially those of marriage and confession. The guy had a lot of nice stuff, including a fair amount of jewelry in his robes that he used to woo the ladies. He knew all the bars in town and every bartender and barmaid too. He knew them much better, any of the lepers or beggar women or other poor people whom he was supposed to be helping. It would not have been fitting for him, the powerful man that he was, to be seen with such people. Besides, there is no money to be made hanging out with the likes of them. Instead, he would spend all his time with the wealthy, flattering them so that they would give him money. None was more virtuous than him in a nightmare.

There was a Clerk too from Oxford who studied philosophy. He was a poor. He looked hollow and serious. Having spent his money on books and learning rather than on fine clothes, he wore a threadbare cloak and wans. He didn’t have a job because he didn’t want one. He had no official or worldly desire being “philosopher” in a clerk body. Whether it is religious or philosophy books “in black and red” or of “Aristotle” was adorably in his bed as he is going to dream them not any fancy kaftans or cloaks, kit or musical instrument for luxury but at least twenty tomes. As Chaucer portrays him, he seems to be just on the other extreme level of life.

The Lawyer and the Merchant

Chaucer gives an account of a lawyer in order to present the corruption of the legal system of that time.

The lawyer, who was appointed by the king, often serves as a judge, and he specializes in land deeds. He used to always talk about laws, cases, and judgments, a great show of his learning. He wanted everyone to believe that he stayed very busy in his profession, but in truth, he did not. He used to charge the clients very heavily.

Chaucer also presents the merchant as someone recently who recently became rich. He wore a cloak of "motley" (variegated, colorful pattern), a Flemish beaver hat, and had a forked beard, all of which were current fashions at this time period. The merchant's main motivation was making money. Although he appeared prosperous, we know that the Merchant is actually in debt. He manages to keep his head above water by borrowing more and more. He tried to give the impression that he was wealthy and successful, and he did a good job of fooling people into believing it. He was arrogant, wants to be recognized, thinks highly of his appearance; Chaucer gently mocking.

Chaucer also portrays various other people, for example, Yeoman, sailor and a few others. All that the poet intended was to satire on the contemporary English people for not living up to their religious and social ethics or ideals. And, no doubt, that the poet greatly accomplished his task.

 

References

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales, the General Proloague. n.d.

Akter, Habiba. senior lecturer, Notre Dame University Bangladesh