Chaucer's Art of Characterization in the Prologue of the Canterbury
Tales
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 Pardoner; 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 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 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.
Chaucer's
characters are both individuals and types. The Knight is a chivalrous character
of all ages. He is a great warrior and a conqueror who in every age stands as
the guardian of man against the oppressor. But the Knight has been
individualized by his horse, dress and gentle and meek behavior. The young
Squire stands for the type of warriors who are not always lost in the dreams of
warfare, but are also interested in singing and playing upon a flute. But he
has been individualized by his curly locks, embroidered clothes, and his short
coat with long wide sleeves. The Yeoman is the type of expert archers, but he
has been individualized by his cropped head and his brown visage. The Prioress
is the type of a woman who tries to imitate courtly manners, but she has been
individualized by her nasal tone, tenderness of heart, and her physical
features
The
monk is a type of the monks who had deserted their religious duties and passed
their, time in riding and keeping greyhounds for hunting. But Chaucer's Monk is
an individual with a bald head and rolling eyes glowing like fire under a
cauldron. Chaucer's Friar is a type of those friars who were wanton and jolly,
interested in gay and flattering talk. But Chaucer's Friar is individualized by
his melodious voice, his skill in singing songs and by his knowledge of taverns
and barmaids. In Chaucer's time The Clerk of Oxford represented studious
scholars who devoted their time in the acquisition of knowledge, but he is also
an individual person with his volumes of Aristotle, his hollow cheeks, grave
looks and threadbare clock. The Man of Law is a typical figure. The Doctor of
Physik with his love of gold and his little knowledge of the Bible is a typical
doctor. But the Man of Law and the Doctor of Physik have also been
individualized by their physical traits and features. There are many other
characters who represent their class, their profession, but they are also
individual figures with notions, idiosyncrasies, arguments and particular physical
features. Thus Chaucer has maintained a balance between the typical and the
individual features of a character.
The
Prologue to the Canterbury Tales presents a social group of persons, larger and
more diversified. Chaucer's group of pilgrims is not schematically
representative of English society, but covers well enough the main social
elements. The nobility and the lowest class of laborers are excluded as it was
unlikely for them to travel in the fashion of this group.
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.
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