Chaucer's The Introduction to the Town Tales

Criticism of the portraits in Chaucer's General Introduction to the Town Tales has taken various directions : several critics have praised the portraits especially for their realism, sharp individuality, adroit science and vividness of felt life; others, working in the genetic direction have pointed out actual historical persons who power have sat for portraits; others appealing to the light of medieval sciences, have shown the portraits to be filled with the cognitive content of Chaucer's days and to have several typical identities like case histories.

Resemblance to the Tales of Decameron

According to W.H.Clowson, The Town Tales resembles to Boccacio's Decameron in 4 ways: The tales are told in succession by the members of an organized group. This group is brought together by special external circumstances. There is narrative and informal links between the tales. There is a preciding officer.

‘The general tone of the framing narrative and the general topics of its tales are really similar to those of Chaucer's. […] and in Boccaccio's apology for the impropriety of several of his stories he does the same defence as that offered by Poet for the same fault --- that he must tell what happened, that the reader may skip any tale he wishes, and that such stories are strictly for diversion and are not to be taken too seriously.'

But the majority of the scholars of Poet believed that this link is not established properly. Much over there is no evidence that Poet met Bocaccio in 1373 --- during his brief vist to Florence.

Unity in diversion in Introduction

Chaucer in his Prologue, tried to present portraits of all the ‘strata' of life, but this variety is only the interior frame activity which functions with the exterior circle which gives unity to all the characters. Such a unity, it may be argued, is consummated only due to the reason ( in A.W. Hoffman's words) that ‘ all the portraits are portraits of pilgrims': “and pilgrimes were they alle”

Treatment of ‘Love” in Introduction

Love has been treated in the introduction from the beginning as a character, a matter of the body and spirit.

The note of love that is measured in several keys ball through the portraits, such as :

The Knight : “… he adored chivalrie…”

The mother superior : “… Amor vincit omnia …”

Wife of Bath : “… of remedies of love she knew perchance, For she koude of that art the olde daunce”

The Pardoner : “… com hider, love, to me!”

The pilgrims were delineate as affected by a variety of annihilative and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movements can be delineate by the mixture of love that drives them and love that calls and summons.

Character sketches in Introduction

According to William J. Long, ‘In the famed “ Prologue” the author does us familiar with the various characters of his drama. Until Chaucer's day popular literature had been busy in the main with the gods and heroes of a golden age: it had been au fond romantic, and so had ne'er unsuccessful to study men and women as they are, or to describe them so that the reader recognizes them, not as ideal heroes, but as his own neighbors. Poet not only unsuccessful this new realistic task, but accomplished it so well that his characters were instantly recognized as true to life'

Throwing light to another aspect of Chaucer's characterization A. Arthur holly compton Rickett writes: ‘[…] His folk always on the move. Ne'er do they become shadowy or lifeless. They shout and swear, and laugh and weep, interrupt the story teller, pass compliments, and in general behave themselves as we power expect them to in the dramatic circumstances of the narrative. It is ne'er possible to confuse the story teller: each is distinct and inimitable, whether it be the sermonizing Pardoner, the hot-tempered Miller, or the exuberantly spirited Adult female of Bath, who has had five husbands, but experience teaching her that husbands are transient blessings, she has fixed her mind on a sixth!'

Prologue copies the exact life: Ambiguity and Double view of journey

The introduction begins by presenting a double view of Town journey ­­­­----- one diminutive manifestation of a brobdingnagian tide of life.

This is not so as only because Poet sketched the varieties of several species from the human society, but as well because of the presence of the Double View of journey in his portrait, which is as well a miniature of the real societal life and this one is increased and extended by the portraits wherever it appears, in one aspect, as a range of motivation. This range of motive spreads from the sacred to the lay and on to the profane. All the pilgrims are in fact granted a sacred motive ---- all of them are seeking the shrine. But once we come to actual motivation among the portraits and we find the difference. The Knight and the Clergyman are at the opposite end of the spectrum. Same is the case of Summoner and the Pardoner.

In A.W. Hoffman's words : ‘And the pilgrims who move, pushed by the impulse and drawn by vows, none but impel and non dead committed . and this reflect the common human ambiguity in real life'

William Blake's Observation : Characters of all time

William Poet says : ‘[…]The characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations: as one age falls another rises […] [,but] we see the same characters continual once more and once more […]. Names alter, things ne'er alter' and this is the special characteristics of Chaucer's portraits.

And what is more what is engrossing , according to Poet is : ‘[…] As Newton numbered stars […] Poet numbered the classes of men'.

Pattern of description of the characters in Prologue: from high to low ranks

The military estate is followed by the clerical estates; the clerics by the laity; an upper middle class by a lower one; with the rascals at the end.

Further Poet had used the arrangement in apparently causative order of degressive importance of merit. Even as there is an arrangement that has moral patterns.

Personality of Poet

E.Talbot Donaldson planned [in his essay ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim', PMLA, LXIX (1954)] that Poet the pilgrim was a fictional production of Poet the poet, with a distinct personality of his own which was really unlike that of his creator. This pilgrim is an amiable, extremely naïve bourgeois who admires success of every kind, but especially material success, who uncritically accepts the values of the upper class, as these are embodied in the Knight, the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar; and who recognizes virtue and and wickedness only once they are thoroughly obvious.

But Jhon M. Major [ in his essay ‘The Personality of Poet the Pilgrim', PMLA, 75 9June 1960)] says that there are still many a things which fall out of this theory and for which ‘we are forced to construct a several kind of speaker from the one Academic Donaldson has represented'. ‘Granted that Poet does employ a persona in the Town Tales; still, he does not employ him really consistently.[…] we think speaker as a kind of alter ego of the author himself, with simply so many a shades of difference as allow for ironic play, no difficulty is raised by the cyclic points of view. This speaker reveals himself to be, like his creator, perceptive, witty, sophisticated, playful, tolerant, detached, and, above all, ironic. Such a man is really well aware of the significance of what he observes, tho' he may show his awareness by subtle means.[…]That real persona, who is far from being a fool, understands what he sees ought to be clean from a number of indications. Not that he is given to moralizing; Poet the pilgrim, like his companion the Parson, has a wide tolerance of human weakness, and he can warm up to all but all of his fellow pilgrims, especially if they are convivial. Most of what he observes, several the nice and the bad, he reports with a straight face with a deliberate irony.'

Some important characters of The Introduction to Town Tales :

The Knight and the Squire:

The Knight and Squire with the Squire's Yeoman lead the procession, as Poet has placed them in the 1st position.

William Poet says that : ‘ the Knight is a true hero, a nice great and wise man; his whole length of portrait on horse back, as written by Poet can not be surpassed.' He is ‘that species of character which in every age stands as the guardian of man against oppressor.'

The portraits of the Knight and the Squire have a particular interest. The relationship between these two are folk by natural one that of a father and son. Once more there is a dramatic relationship between these two as each one of portrait is increased and defined in presence of another. For instance the long roll of Knight's campaigns and Squire's little opportunity; a series of past tenses, a history for the Knight and for the Squire breaking forth in active participles. Even as appearances and dress of several are compared.

Knight's journey is more nearly a response to the voice of saint.

The Knight is defined in terms of his virtues (lines 45-6) and actions to defend the faith far more than by his words. Knight's fighting in battle field had a religious cause. He is the antique pattern of the chivalry of Edward- III's time.

The Nun ( Prioress)

Prioress is delineate as of the 1st rank, rich and honored. She had certain peculiarities and little delicate affections. She was attended by what is truly grand, polite and elegance.

Chaucer has delineate this character with such care and tenderness that it is often remarked that Poet actually likeable the mother superior really much, even as tho' he satires her so gently ---- really gently. But E.T Donaldson believes that this is simply an statement and Poet may not be aforementioned to be have likeable her, rather he was only charmed by her beauty.

Eileen Power's illustration show with what extra-ordinary skill the portrait of the Mother superior is packed with abuses of typical Ordinal century nuns. Tho' these abuses are petty, it is clean the Mother superior is thing but a perfect nun and attempts to white wash her.

It has been argued that Chaucer's appreciation for the Mother superior as sort of heroine of dignified romance actually due to Chaucer's sophisticated living, wherever he cared little whether amiable nuns are nice and this sophistication permits itself to babble superlatives.

Anyway Prioress's really presence in the pilgrimage, as many a point out, is the really 1st sarcastic touch. In the case of Mother superior blemish is sufficiently technical to have only faint sarcastic coloring. But this places her at a spot in the sequence --- at one end --- in which more apparently blemished Monk and friar appear.

In the portrait of the Mother superior the double view of journey appears several in ambiguity in the surface and in an implicit inner range of motivation.

In the surface there is a name Eglentyne --- means romance --- and ‘simple and coy' is a romance formula, but she is a nun. There are coral beads and green gauds, --- a religious emblem. What shall be taken as principal? Are her dignified manners or her dedication at divine service explains her? And on the front of motivation, the perfect explanation lies in the lines of A.W.Hoffman : ‘There is such an impure but clean-handed mixture as Mother superior …'. Deficiency of noesis may be remedied (which caused due to Chaucer's attempt to do more gentle criticism on the Prioress). It is because, as many a believe, Poet has a sister or a female offspring who was a nun.

Prioress is the character who is found to be pre-dominating in several ages. William Poet has determined that ‘The characters of women Poet has divided into two classes, the Lady Mother superior and Adult female of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Mother superior in several ages predominates; and in several the adult female of Bath, in whose character Poet has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight'.

Wife of bath

William Poet has determined that ‘The characters of women Poet has divided into two classes, the Lady Mother superior and Adult female of Bath. Are not these leaders of the ages of men? The lady Mother superior in several ages predominates; and in several the adult female of Bath, in whose character Poet has been equally minute and exact because she is a scourge and blight'.

The main features of her character are common-sense and pre-occupation with sex, and an important element in Introduction is her desire to explain life in terms of her values. For instance: ‘She is willing to admit, for her convention's sake that chastity is the ideal state. But it is not her ideal.

In prologue, she explains her five husbands.

She She was a nice woman but alas rather deaf. The hearing disorder is a significant detail --- the result of a blow from her fifth husband.

In medieval theory and law, biblical in origin, the man is the head of the woman, and should be obeyed. The Wife, however, is not receptive to this doctrine, and her hearing disorder is the symbolic of this temperament to listen. Physical characteristics in her portrait have a moral import. Different such characteristics in case of Adult female of Bath are the following. The Adult female is a gate-toothed. Medieval students of physiology command that to have teeth wide spaced was a sign of boldness, falseness, gluttony and lasciviousness. The Adult female born under Venus (who was not saint) regards it as confirmation of genital nature. Her ‘gate-teeth' gave her many a opportunities to wander off the road.

The Wife's portrait begins with a standard feature of the dreadful women, whom clerks in the Middle Ages likeable the same way as the wives of the Guilds men (lines 376-8). This feeling for display is smartly combined by Poet with her profession (cloth-making). Her stockings are scarlet and tight laced, and her shoes are “moiste and newe”. She is thus the scarlet woman, whom preachers against female vanity love to hate. But this is Chaucerian as she is several sexually attractive and at the same time ludicrously over dressed.

The Adult female turns out to be the monster of opposing feminist comedy --- aggressive, nagging, gossiping, lustful and wasteful. Yet she is not unattractive.

Apart from five husbands and different immature institution we are told that she had passed “many a strange strem”. Then : “Of remedies of love she knew per chance

For she koud of that art the olde daunce”

(lines 475-6)

The ‘remedies' and ‘olde daunce' do not suggest virtue. All in all she is quite contract to the chastity, modesty and refinement of the Prioess.

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This article was denote on Gregorian calendar month 07, 2005