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Chaucer's Art of Characterization

In the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts 29 characters representing different classes of 14th century English society. He paints each character vividly through details of their appearance, temperament, occupation, and behavior. Chaucer presents the characters as foils to one another to highlight their differences. While his method is primitive, Chaucer captures the essence of each character through precise observations that bring his characters to life. The Prologue serves as a portrait gallery and conspectus of medieval English life.

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708 views3 pages

Chaucer's Art of Characterization

In the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts 29 characters representing different classes of 14th century English society. He paints each character vividly through details of their appearance, temperament, occupation, and behavior. Chaucer presents the characters as foils to one another to highlight their differences. While his method is primitive, Chaucer captures the essence of each character through precise observations that bring his characters to life. The Prologue serves as a portrait gallery and conspectus of medieval English life.

Uploaded by

Chak Mitha
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Page.

Chaucer's Art of Characterization (Prologue of


the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer)

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 behavior; 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
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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


Page.3

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.

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 `Mandelaynel, 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.

(Preparation notes of Umair Hassan. Studying MA English 1st Semester)

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