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Article:
Chaucer's The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales by: Samir K. Dash Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales has taken various directions : some critics have praised the portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality, adroit psychology and vividness of felt life; others, working in the genetic direction have pointed out actual historical persons who might have sat for portraits; others appealing to the light of medieval sciences, have shown the portraits to be filled with the lore of Chaucer's days and to have some typical identities like case histories. Resemblance to the Tales of Decameron According to W.H.Clowson, The Canterbury Tales resembles to Boccacio's Decameron in 4 ways: The tales are told in succession by the members of an organized group. This group is brought together by special external circumstances. There is narrative and conversational links between the tales. There is a preciding officer. ‘The general tone of the framing narrative and the general topics of its tales are very similar to those of Chaucer's. […] and in Boccaccio's apology for the impropriety of some of his stories he makes the same defence as that offered by Chaucer for the same fault --- that he must tell what happened, that the reader may skip any tale he wishes, and that such stories are purely for entertainment and are not to be taken too seriously.' But the majority of the scholars of Chaucer believed that this link is not established properly. More over there is no evidence that Chaucer met Bocaccio in 1373 --- during his brief vist to Florence. Unity in diversion in Prologue Chaucer in his Prologue, tried to present portraits of all the ‘strata' of life, but this variety is only the interior frame work which functions with the exterior circle which gives unity to all the characters. Such a unity, it may be argued, is fulfilled only due to the reason ( in A.W. Hoffman's words) that ‘ all the portraits are portraits of pilgrims': “and pilgrimes were they alle” Treatment of ‘Love” in Prologue Love has been treated in the prologue from the beginning as a character, a matter of the body and spirit. The note of love that is sounded in different keys ball through the portraits, such as : The Knight : “… he loved chivalrie…” The prioress : “… Amor vincit omnia …” Wife of Bath : “… of remedies of love she knew perchance, For she koude of that art the olde daunce” The Pardoner : “… com hider, love, to me!” The pilgrims were represented as affected by a variety of destructive and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movements can be described by the mixture of love that drives them and love that calls and summons. Character sketches in Prologue According to William J. Long, ‘In the famous “ Prologue” the poet makes us acquainted with the various characters of his drama. Until Chaucer's day popular literature had been busy chiefly with the gods and heroes of a golden age: it had been essentially romantic, and so had never attempted to study men and women as they are, or to describe them so that the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes, but as his own neighbors. Chaucer not only attempted this new realistic task, but accomplished it so well that his characters were instantly recognized as true to life' Throwing light to another aspect of Chaucer's characterization A. Compton Rickett writes: ‘[…] His people always on the move. Never do they become shadowy or lifeless. They shout and swear, and laugh and weep, interrupt the story teller, pass compliments, and in general behave themselves as we might expect them to in the dramatic circumstances of the narrative. It is never possible to confuse the story teller: each is distinct and inimitable, whether it be the sermonizing Pardoner, the hot-tempered Miller, or the exuberantly vivacious Wife of Bath, who has had five husbands, but experience teaching her that husbands are transient blessings, she has fixed her mind on a sixth!' Prologue copies the exact life: Ambiguity and Double view of pilgrimage The prologue begins by presenting a double view of Canterbury pilgrimage ÂÂÂÂ----- one tiny manifestation of a huge tide of life. This is not so as only because Chaucer sketched the varieties of different species from the human society, but also because of the presence of the Double View of pilgrimage in his portrait, which is also a miniature of the real social life and this one is enhanced and extended by the portraits where it appears, in one aspect, as a range of motivation. This range of motive spreads from the sacred to the secular and on to the profane. All the pilgrims are in fact granted a sacred motive ---- all of them are seeking the shrine. But when we move to actual motivation among the portraits and we find the difference. The Knight and the Parson are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Same is the case of Summoner and the Pardoner. In A.W. Hoffman's words : ‘And the pilgrims who move, pushed by the impulse and drawn by vows, none merely impel and non perfectly committed . and this reflect the common human ambiguity in real life' William Blake's Observation : Characters of all time William Blake says : ‘[…]The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises […] [,but] we see the same characters repeated again and again […]. Names alter, things never alter' and this is the special characteristics of Chaucer's portraits. And moreover what is interesting , according to Blake is : ‘[…] As Newton numbered stars […] Chaucer numbered the classes of men'. Pattern of description of the characters in Prologue: from high to low ranks The military estate is followed by the clerical estates; the clerics by the laity; an upper middle class by a lower one; with the rascals at the end. Further Chaucer had used the arrangement in apparently causal order of descending importance of merit. Even there is an arrangement that has moral patterns. Personality of Chaucer E.Talbot Donaldson proposed [in his essay ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim
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