The Canterbury Tales
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Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton
In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has given his readers a background on the personality, values, as well as social status of the narrators. A strong relationship exists between the narrator’s character and the respective story he or she tells. This relationship comes in handy to add to the readers understanding of Miller, the Pardoner, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, as well as the Knight. Though this appropriateness of stories to their narrators is so attractive, Chaucer did not have a precedent to come up with the relationship. The creation of this appealing relationship has been seen by adaptation of Chaucer to have the tales be told by a wide variety of pilgrims, rather than a single narrator, as is the case in most poetic works. Chaucer has been acclaimed for the unique realization that every tale ought to be suited to its narrator because this enhances the reader’s understanding of the characterization.
Chaucer uses two principal ways to reveal to the readers how he intends to relate the narrators to the stories they are just about to narrate. Firstly, to each narrator, he assigns the stories that suit the societal classes to which are members. To the low class members he assigns ribald stories while persons high in the social strata narrate refined stories. In addition, when Chaucer suspects the appropriateness of a particular story to its narrator is not likely to be obvious, he uses links he composes solely to make the narrators who tell those tales appear to fit to the story.
In the Prologue, we encounter the narrator speaking as he narrates the story using the first person. He describes each of the story’s pilgrims vividly as they had appeared earlier to him. Although Chaucer uses different narrators to tell about each of the pilgrims, no story has used the same approach of narration as the other. Each has been told from the point of view of a third-person, whom Chaucer has made omniscient in order to provide the audience with the actions and thoughts of the various characters. At the beginning, it is quite clear the narrator is also one of the characters in this literary work. Though named Chaucer, the reader ought to be wary of taking the opinions and words he poses as those of Chaucer himself. In the General Prologue, this narrator is presented as a naive and gregarious person. Later on, we see him being accused of having grown too silent and then sullen. Since the narrator takes time to put down the impressions he has of the narrated pilgrims from his memory, some factors are worth consideration. For instance, who does the author admire or does not admire, as well as what he decides not to forget are all-important. They tell the reader a lot about the prejudices the narrator has about his characters (Lawton 54).
The first member of the story’s pilgrimage is the primary storyteller. He is anonymous, despite claims by critics that this narrator is Geoffrey Chaucer himself. The narrator is extremely naive. The rest of the pilgrimage members narrate the remaining tales. The first narrator has managed to incorporate a wide variety of personal attitudes toward literature and general life. The tales show alternation to being satirical, pious, comical, earthy, and elevated as well as bawdry. Most critics advise all readers not to accept this naive point of view of the narrator as Chaucer’s own (Chaucer 34).
Upon emancipation from the dreams he has been experiencing, the Chaucerian pilgrim is deprived of a role he has played actively all along. The poet denies this narrator the authority of being an ordinary eyewitness. The writer must find another role for this persona in order that he does not turn to be redundant. Nevertheless, only one active role he can play comfortably. Just like the work of the exponent, the storyteller either partly or wholly is fictionalized. The proposition can be easily reversed, and perhaps the reversed version can make more sense compared to the present form. Of note, later in the course of the poem, Chaucer has chosen to dramatize or fictionalize the performance act and composition moments wherever this narrator plays any part. This primary narrator is able to retain a narratory persona that has the ability to not only sign but also enact a fiction because of this.
The other narrators inscribe the character’s identity in extremely devious fashion. At one time, the author is presented before the eyes of his readers, and at other times, he is not in view. A number of narrators use words that the primary pilgrim reports quite ostensibly. This helps to maintain authority debatable like it happens in an insomniac. The narrator has no role in challenging or calling into question statements other characters say or the meaning of any line in a verse in the poem. Though this contributes to the tone of the poem, it hardly determines the meaning. Nevertheless, it has been described as complementing meaning through the insistence that it cannot find a place in fictionalized performances. Such function of the narrator can be considered intrinsic to the subject and treatment of the poem. There also exists on extrinsic function. The narrator persona teases and challenges the imaginary audience of the poet while mediating between Chaucer, the specific and actual poet, as well as the actual audience on stage.
In the poem, 29 pilgrims meet in London, at the Inn Tabard to prepare for a pilgrimage to St. Thomas a Becket Shrine in Canterbury. The stories they narrate to one another along the way shows each narrator’s character and background. The story each narrator tells helps to add to what the audience understands of the Miller, the Pardoner, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and the Knight. One narrator bears a close resemblance to the protagonists in the tale of the Pardoner. All of them indulge in the vices to which the Pardoner subscribes. These include gluttony, gambling, swearing, as well as drunkenness. Such traits bring out the protagonists as evil and leads to their ultimate downfall. The protagonists at first are apparently personified vices. However, their belief of a personified concept of death becomes the real cause of the resultant undoing (Pearsall 235).
Similarly, in the tale of The Wife of Bath, there is a narrative of a woman with several husbands. She admires the three who came to her life first because they were rich. However, she could order them at will, extorted money from them, and hoaxed them occasionally. The narrator of this story has been depicted as quite materialistic in many critical works. As for the Miller, an extremely poor student pursuing astronomy is depicted. The narrator of this narrative was actually a student during the time the pilgrimage occurred. This student had grown up in a background one could consider challenging. In the Knights story, the duke and conqueror of Athens has his story told, and it is a representation of the ideal of a man-at-arms. The narrator of the Knight has taken part in over 15 crusades during his era. Like the character of which his story majors, he is brave, prudent, and widely experienced.
In conclusion, Chaucer has suited each of the tales in his poems to its narrator to enhance the reader’s understanding of the characterization. Each narrator has character traits and socio-economic background corresponding to those of the characters in his or her story.