General Prologue
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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, in Southwark, where he meets a motley crew of middle-class folk from various parts of England. Coincidentally, they are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the Shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket. In the Prologue, Chaucer 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,
- And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.
The General Prologue seems deliberately disorganised, implying the confusion of the assorted rabble that has set out for Canterbury on that day. 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 that satirizes the corruption that occurs within the three medieval social estates (clergy, nobility, and peasantry). The clergy are not liked by Geoffrey Chaucer.
The pilgrims include a knight, his son a squire, the knight's yeoman, a prioress accompanied by a second nun and 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, his brother a plowman, a miller, a manciple, a reeve, a summoner, a pardoner, the host, and a portrait of Chaucer himself. The order the pilgrims are introduced places them in a social order, describing the nobility in front, the craftsmen in the middle, and the peasants at the end. A canon and his yeoman later join the pilgrimage and tell one of the tales.
The General Prologue is the basis for Chaucer’s mirror of society (Wimsatt, 174)*. The idea that there are so many characters with their own stories to tell is representative of a real society. Societies require multiple dimensions in order to be called a society. Even the corrupt people in some way, are if not desired, certainly required in a society because it is impossible to have a completely ideal society where everyone is happy and ethical. In addition to the numerous characters, Chaucer offers the reader “addition ranks and segments of society within the various tales” (Wimsatt, 174). Rulers are represented extremely well with stories about emperors, kings, popes and bishops. These examples are of course the most obvious examples of rulers in his stories. Chaucer places less obvious but equally as important subclasses in many of his other Tales. There is the judge in the Physician’s Tale, the apprentice in the Cook’s Tale and the schoolchild in the Prioress’s Tale. This class system and representation of the various components that make up society was a way for Chaucer to accurately mirror his current society’s situation in his tales. An extremely clear example of the parallel Chaucer draws between thirteenth century England and his tales is seen through the monk. “Part of the reason for the rise and success of the fraternal orders in the early thirteenth century was the decadence of monastic practices” (Wimsatt, 176). This tremendous wealth attained by the monks quickly led to corruption among the various monasteries. The monastic orders became businesses versus places to stay close to God. Everything became extravagant and the need to be productive and help others diminished as the living conditions became more and more comfortable. Chaucer reflects this perspective in his General Prologue when he writes, He yaf nat of that text a pulled hen, That seith that hunters ben nat hooly men, Ne that a monk, when he is reecheless, Is likend til a fish that is waterlees That is to seyn, a monk out of his cloister. (A, 177 – 181) This passage is a way for Chaucer to poke fun at monastic rules by pointing out the ridiculousness of the current situation in his society. The monk in this passage is described as a fish that is no longer surrounded by the water it needs to survive. This water is paralleled with the riches of the monk, suggesting that the riches and extravagant lifestyle is the water of the monk and without them, the monk cannot live.
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 has 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 that he seeks to highlight even in his less attractive pilgrims.
There follow short descriptions of many of the other pilgrims containing details on how they are dressed, the horses they ride and frequent sly digs at their personalities. Some of the people in the prologue have descriptions but no tale assigned to them – the knight's yeoman, the haberdasher, the carpenter, the weaver, the dyer, the tapestry-weaver, the plowman, and the host – whereas characters such as the second nun are never described. Directly after mention of the second nun, Chaucer says "and preestes thre", but this conflicts with line 24 which says that twenty-nine pilgrims set out and there is only one nun's priest. It is assumed Chaucer intended to include a short portrait of the second nun and the priest in a later amendment.
The collection of portraits of the characters is 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, so the Reeve's choleric humour is shown in his tall, slender nature and suggests his likelihood to be quarrelsome.
Chaucer's satirical asides directed at these people are more muted than was typical in contemporary stories. Similar characters at that time were often savagely attacked by their narrators, leaving them little more than a cipher. When Chaucer does attack his characters it is usually by one of the other protagonists in between the tales, and frequently with not quite the obvious clichés. Only Hubert the Friar and Eglentyne the Prioress are given names during the prologue, though others are named later.
[edit] External links
- Side by side Translation into Modern Verse - Illustrated
- Modern Translation of the General Prologue and Other Resources at eChaucer
| Preceded by N/A |
The Canterbury Tales | Succeeded by The Knight's Tale |
