General Prologue

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The first lines from the General Prologue at the openng folio of the Hengwrt manuscript.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

The General Prologue is the assumed title of the series of portraits that precedes The Canterbury Tales. It was the work of 14th Century English writer and courtier Geoffrey Chaucer. The conceit of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the general prologue, is that of a religious pilgrimage. Chaucer is in the Tabard Inn, and meets a motley crew of middle class folk from all around England. Coincidentally, they are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the Shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket. He seeks to describe their 'condition', their 'array', and their social 'degree':

To telle yow al the condicioun

Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,

And whiche they weren, and of what degree,

And eek in what array that they were inne;

The general outline or summary,

While the genre of the Canterbury Tales as a whole is a "frame narrative," the General Prologue constitutes an example of "Estates Satire," a genre which satirizes the corruption that occurs within the three Medieval social Estates (clergy, nobility, and peasantry).

The pilgrims include: a knight, a squire, a yeoman, a prioress, a second nun, the nun's priest, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant of law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, a tapestry weaver, a cook, a shipman, a doctor of physic, a wife of Bath, a parson, a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the host and a portrait of Chaucer himself. A canon and his yeoman join the pilgrimage later and tell one tale.

After a classically poetic, highly amorous introduction, which describes the renewed reproductive energy of Spring, after a long winter, Chaucer introduces the first pilgrim, the 'perfect, gentle Knight.' This crusader had travelled the length of Europe to the borders of Asia Minor defending his religion. The highest ranked of all the pilgrims; he is followed by portraits of the members of his retinue. His son, the Squire, 'loved hotly,' and had pressed curls in his hair. He is the personification of the springtime vigour and sexual energy Chaucer embraces in his introduction, and it is this energy he seeks to highlight even in his less attractive pilgrims.

There follows short descriptions of many of the other pilgrims containing details on how they are dressed, the horses they ride and often sly digs at their personalities. Some of the people in the prologue have descriptions but no tale assigned to them whereas characters such as the second nun are not described. Directly after mention of the second nun it says and preestes thre but this causes problems with line 24 which says that twenty-nine pilgrims set out and there is only one nun's priest. It is assumed a short portrait of the second nun and the priest would be included by Chaucer in a later amendment.

The portraits of the characters are one of the distinguishing parts of the Tales as they have far more life and depth than most other characters in literature at this time. Not only does Chaucer describe the pilgrims' clothing he also puts in details about their physiognomy, a familiar short-cut for medieval people in understanding a character. Appearance was linked to the balance of the four humours within a person and so the Reeve's choleric humour is shown in his tall, slender nature and suggests his likelihood to become quarrelsome.

Chaucer's satirical asides directed at these people are more muted than what was typical in contemporary stories. Similar characters at that time were often savagely attacked by their narrators leaving a character little more than a cipher. When Chaucer does attack his characters it is usually done by one of the other protagonists between tales and frequently with not quite the obvious clichés. Only Hubert the Friar and Eglentyne the Prioress are given names during the prologue although others are named later. The general prologue seems deliberately disorganised implying the same sort of confused rabble that have set out that April day.

• Read "The General Prologue" with interlinear translation at Harvard
• A side by side translation with modern English version in iambic pentameter
• 15th century pictures of Chaucer's pilgrims from the Ellesmere manuscript

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

The Canterbury Tales/General Prologue