The Characters

The pilgrims are first introduced in the General Prologue. At first sight their pen-portraits appear as a mere accumulation of detail, for the most part haphazard. In fact, Chaucer chooses his detail with great care, in order to give an integrated sketch of the person being described.

A good WIF was ther of biside BATHE

But she was somdel deel, and that was scathe <…>

Hir coverchiefs ful fine weren of ground - She wore fine headclothes

I dorste swere they weyden ten pounds - I suppose they must have weighed ten pounds

That on a Sonday weren upoh hir heed - the ones she wore on Sunday on her head

Hir hosen weren of fin scarlet reed.

The characters as representatives of certain trades of social groups, and the motley gathering becomes a comprehensive picture of medieval society, a collective picture of England:

- the upper classes are represented by the Knight and his son, the Squire (they are also warriors);

- the Doctor, the Man of Law, the Clerk of Oxford, the Poet give a glimpse of the liberal professions;

- there are representatives of monastic orders: the Friar, the Monk, the Prioress;

- the land is represented by the Plowman, the Miller;

- the trade – by the Shipman and the Merchant;

- crafts – by the Wife of Bath, the Carpenter, the Weaver, etc.

. The types of people that Chaucer’s fictitious pilgrimage includes had long inhabited literature as well as life.

(E.G. The Knight is an ideal warrior who had fought against the pagans in all the great fights of the last half-century – a typical romantic hero; the Squire is a young lover out of any love poem; The Wife of Bath is the remarkable culmination of antifeminism that was nurtured by the medieval church; the hunting Monk and the flattering Friar are chief butts of medieval satirists; the too-busy and too-rich Man of Law, the fraudulent Doctor and so on down trough the lower orders to the Pardoner, the flamboyant hypocrite, a living vice.)

But the initial appearance of flatness is deceptive. The more one reads, the more complex and significant the portraits become. Chaucer provides entertainment on the most primitive level, and at the same time, increases considerably the reader’s ability to comprehend reality. What seems at first sight a haphazard accumulation of detail (their pen-portraits in the General Prologue) turns out on lose reading to be full of slight innuendo, subtle irony and smart observations of human nature. The characters are not full-blown literary symbols: they mediate between the world of types and that of real people.

(E. g. The Prioress with her absence of vocation and love of jewelry represents the typical features medieval satirical literature condemned nuns for. Chaucer shows clearly her inability to be what she professes to be, a nun. But instead of enhancing her weaknesses, the poet also shows the great human charm of what she is, a woman. Another aspect of her personality is her ambition to be a lady, which Chaucer laughs mildly at. The elements of the portrait are divided between the critical and the admiring, express the paradox without attempting to resolve it.)

The older allegorical tradition establishes immediate connections between the abstract and the concrete, the corporeal and the spiritual. The medieval poet sees through his objects to their ideal symbolic essence. Chaucer’s method is different: he watches, observes and compares.

Compare, for instance, Chaucer’s book with the Vision of Piers Plowman by Langland. Langland also presents a collective image of society, all the life’s ‘field full of folk’, between the Tower of Truth and the Dungeon of Evil. But his book is an allegory of human existence. In Chaucer there is not a second, symbolic or allegoric plane, behind the pilgrims. His Knight is not the Valour personified, nor is his Miller or Wife of Bath a mere illustration for one of the deadly sins. Chaucer introduces a new system of measurements into literature. He does not measure his characters against moral issues, against vice or virtue, but against other men. It is in their interaction that the moral qualities of each are revealed.

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