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Discuss how the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and one of the tales themselves could function as a criticism of the three estates of medieval culture; that is, the social hierarchy of the 14th century. How do Chaucer’s descriptions of the pilgrims in the prologue contribute to this?
In the Medieval Culture there were three estates of the society. There were those, who prayed, those who fought and those who worked. In Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer the representatives of each estate go into the journey, and right from the Prologue each participant starts to tell the stories that show all the dark sides of the human soul. Pilgrims apply to all sectors of the medieval English society. Among them there are a knight, a monk, a priest, a doctor, a skipper, a merchant, a weaver, a cook, a yeoman, etc. We can clearly see the division into three classes. They are the clergy, the nobility and the commoners or peasants. To show the diversity of pilgrims in Chaucer's story, each character has individuality and style (Stevens and Mandel). Actually, in the Prologue a reader just gets acquainted with them.
In the Prologue there is a setting of time and place. It is spring, and the story begins from the telling the stories that make the reader forget about the beauty of the time. Also it gives an opportunity to make a lot of different journeys together with the storyteller instead of one. A pilgrimage is a journey of soul and belief. The stories that were told to the reader or actually preparation to their telling is the preparation of the reader to look closer to the sins of different people. Nobody is ideal, and that is what a reader may see in the stories of the travelers. So a reader can make a lot of soul journeys just by reading one book.
The storyteller himself is an indefinite hero. There are two versions that may tell who he is. On the one hand, he may be another character, invented by Chaucer, like the other 29 pilgrims. On the other hand, it may be Chaucer himself (Stevens and Mandel).
But each story in the book is original. Pilgrims tell stories, but do not invent them. Each story may represent different literary genre. For example, the story of the Knight is a traditional romance, the story of Miller is a fabliau, and priest’s tale is a sermon. Through each of the stories comes to the theme of seven deadly sins. It bind them together, creating a frame that combines so many different people. It's not only a pilgrimage that is common to all of them. The main narrator is a hero who passes the history of sin and virtue,. Chaucer draws attention not only to the stories themselves, but also to the storytellers. The majority of them is not alien to sin. For example, greedy miller (Chaucer; Koff). Portraying his hero as a thief, a writer must have known medieval notions about people of his profession. But Chaucer is not limited to the caste of professional features. Miller is a representative of the wealthier sectors of the third estate. This fact produces a lot of features, due to this circumstance. He is a man with a strong sense of self-esteem, comically passing in boastfulness. But he possesses no traditional reasons for pride: he was not of noble origin. The basis of the miller's independence was his wealth created by him by deception and theft (Chaucer; Koff).
That is why each story may serve as a criticism of representatives of different social estates of Medieval times, and itself the pilgrims. They belong to the different society groups and do not even try to hide their negative character features.
In the prologue to The Canterbury Tales the author sets up the reader to the following detailed description of the story, each pilgrim, his appearance, position in society. He sets the frame to the whole book and sets the rhythm and mood of the further story.
The pilgrims are representatives of various sectors of society. According to the social status they can be divided into certain groups:
Scientists (doctors, lawyers);
Landowners (Franklin);
Householders (Miller, Majordomo);
Merchant Class (skipper, merchant);
Artisans (Dyer, Carpenter, Weaver, and so on);
Lower class (Plowman).
In the Prologue Geoffrey Chaucer introduces the reader to almost every pilgrim. He just mentions his presence, or presents the details of his character (Stevens and Mandel). Prologue in some way prepares the reader to the further stories and to the behavior of pilgrims. Because of the Prologue the reader gets an idea what stories will be told, as well as the essence, the inner world of each pilgrim. The behavior of the characters described by Chaucer reveals the essence of their personalities, their habits, personal life, and mood, good and bad sides (Koff). Based on the attitude of Chaucer each character can be organized in certain groups:
Ideal images (Knight, Squire, Student, Plowman, Priest);
Characters, that are chuckled (abbess, monk of Bath Weaver);
"Neutral" images, the disclosures of which are not represented in the Prologue. Chaucer mentions only their presence (priests of the abbess environment);
Images of some negative traits (Skipper, Economy);
Hardened sinners (Carmel seller of indulgences, the ecclesiastical court bailiff, all church employees) .
Chaucer finds an individual approach to each character. This is expressed in the way the author introduces them (Chaucer; Stevens and Mandel).
The poetics of Canterbury Tales has a national compositional framing, a setting of the scene: a tavern near the road leading to Canterbury. The crowd of pilgrims presented, in essence, all English society, from the feudal lords to the cheerful crowd of artisans and peasants. In total, the company recruited 29 people. Almost every one of them is alive and fairly complex image of a man of his time. Chaucer’s masterful verse describes the different habits and dresses, demeanors, speech features of these characters.
Chaucer uses different stylistic devices for different characters. He says with a friendly irony about brave knight, because he looks too anachronistic with his courtesy in the rough, noisy crowd of common people. The author speaks with tenderness about the son of a knight, since a boy is full of enthusiasm. of thieving the butler, who was miser and cheated speaks with disgust but with respect about a peasant and righteous priest, an Oxford student in love with books. That is why a reader can follow personal attitude to each character of the author, who helps to say clear what actions and features are good and which one are bad, so he definitely has clear Christian morality.
In the course of work, the pilgrims tell different stories. Knight is an ancient courtly story in the spirit of romance; Carpenter is a funny and profane story in the spirit of modest urban folklore, etc. Each story reveals the interests and sympathies of a pilgrim, thus achieving the individualization of the character, his image problem is solved from the inside.
Chaucer was called the father of realism (Stevens and Mandel). After reading The Canterbury Tales, we can safely speak of realism as a creative method. It is connected to a generalized image of a true man, various social occurrences, and also gives a reflection of the changes occurring in society (Stevens and Mandel).
Thus, the English society in the portrait gallery of Chaucer is a society in motion, in the development of a society in transition, where the feudal system is strong, but out of date, which revealed a new person in developing city. The Canterbury Tales laid the foundation of the new English poetry, based on the entire experience of the best European literature and song traditions. The Prologue to the story sets the borders of time and place, it represents the participants and gives the overall picture. A reader knows that soon there will be a lot of action and different stories that happened to people from different social layers. A reader is prepared to see how different are the people that tell the stories from those who were the heroes of those stories. So right after the introduction the reader is ready to go into the journey together with pilgrims and Chaucer.
Work Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. New York: Viking, 2009. Print.
Koff, Leonard Michael. Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling. Berkley: University of California Press, 1988. Print.
Stevens, Martin, and Jerome Mandel. Old English Literature. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968. Print.
