The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales reflects
contemporary life. Discuss.
Apart from its
great poetical and literary merits, The Prologue to The
Canterbury Tales forms a wonderful commentary upon English life in the
Middle Ages. Dryden has beautifully remarked that Chaucer must have been a man
of a most wonderful comprehensive nature because he has taken into the compass
of his Canterbury Tales the very manners and humours of the whole English
nation in his age.
Not a single character
has escaped him. Leguois says, "Chaucer...is truly the social chronicler
of England at the end of fourteenth century. What he has given is a
direct transcription of daily life, taken in the very act, and in its most
familiar aspects." The same critic adds : "Chaucer's work is the most
precious document for whoever wishes to evoke a picture of life as it then
was." The fact is that Chaucer had intimate knowledge of the crosscurrents
of English society of his time. His keen observation, vast study, extensive
travel and variegated experience in the service of the state had familiarised
him with the entire pageant of social life of those days. And perhaps it was
with the intention of describing his boundless knowledge of men and manners
that he conceived the plan of the Canterbury Tales which encompass every aspect
of life in the fourteenth century England.
The group of pilgrims described in the Prologue is itself an
unequalled picture of the Society of Chaucer's time. Here are some thirty
persons belonging to the most different classes. There is a Knight lately come
from the foreign wars, a man who has fought in Prussia and in Turkey,
jousted in Tramisene, and been present at the storming of Alexandria. He
is a high-minded gentle-mannered, knightly adventurer, type of the courteous,
war-loving chivalry which was passing rapidly away. With him is his son, a
young Squire, curly haired and gay, his short, white-sleeved gown embroidered
like a mead with red-and-white flowers. He is an epitome of the gifts and
graces of brilliant youth. Their servant is a Yeoman, in coat and hoof of a
green, a sheaf of peacock-arrows under his belt, a mighty bow in
his hand, and a silver image of Saint Christopher upon his breast. He is the
type of that sturdy English yeomanry which with its gray goose shafts humbled
the pride of France at Crecy and Agincourt.
