The Religious Group of the Prologue

The Religious Group of the Prologue

According to the well-accepted and well-acknowledged definitions of Poet, a poet should be impartial and disinterested like a guide in the presentation of truth. Chaucer is such a poet who come up perfectly to the standard of a poet. He keenly observed the social, moral and religious atmosphere and brought out the incongruities and the foibles in social, moral and religious sector. Being a humanist he did not love any personal prejudice or enmity against anyone. He always targeted the corruption. In this concern ecclesiastical authorities and religious people become the target of his satire and humor. He was not against the religion, he was not against even the sinner but he was against the sin itself. He was greatly tolerant towards religion, Church and ecclesiastical figures.

In the age of Chaucer the Church had become a hotbed of profligacy, corruption and materialism. Even the overlord of the Church, the Pope himself had got worldly ambitions. In the words of W. H. Hudson; “the greater prelates heaped up the wealth and lived in godless way. There was no modesty in their words, no temperance in their food nor even charity in their deeds. If this was the condition of priests we can well-imagine that of laity.” Well does Chaucer say while describing the Poor Parson of the Town “If gold rusts what shall iron do?”

Though Chaucer was not a satirist nor a reformer yet he could not help describing sympathetically and tolerantly the wide-spread corruption which had clept into the religious order and ecclesiastical rail and life. The Monk, The Friar, The Summoner, The Prioress and The Pardoner all were corrupt, materialist and pleasure loving. All these characters signify the all prevailing decadence that had made inroads into the Christian Church in the 14^th century.

Chaucer has drawn the picture of Clergy which though tinged with tolerance and good humor is far from flattering. His description smacks off healthy and kind human attitude rather than better or prejudiced one on the contrary. Chaucer amused by the character and the behavior of those religious figures. This is so because he was a catholic having tolerant and accepting attitude towards humanity with all its imperfections, weaknesses and limitations. He only laughs at their lapses mostly realistically but sometimes indulging into a little kindly exaggeration.

Thus all the portraits are steeped in all pervasive genuine humor and delicate irony. Consequently the Clergymen were enjoined upon to live a simple life of religious purity. They were required to a simple life of study, meditation and prayer. There was a time when religious order maintained strict religion, Christian purity and spirituality. But over the centuries things landed to become slack. The Monasteries came to have materialistic and mundane attitude and atmosphere. But all was not lost there were some priest who still exercised religious restraints and acted upon the Christianity in latter and spirit. The Poor Parson of the Town represents this small minority exercising Christianity in all its pristine beauty.

To begin with the picture of the Prioress is ironical and a delicate satire runs underneath her portrayal. She is well bred but was over-sophisticated. Although she should not swear yet she does so by St. Loy (The very saint who prohibited swearing). Thus she is individualized as Madam Eglantine. Her life is same tinged with affection. She takes pains to imitate the manners of the Court and aristocrats. She speaks French though not fresh and natural. Paris is yet aristocratic according to the fashion of the French of Stratford-le-Bow. Although she shows fake shyness by keeping herself all covered yet her over-formality and over-delicacy is more than evident. Nuns were prohibited to keep pets but Madam Eglantine keeps hounds, cares them in a luxurious way and feeds them with roasted meat, milk and bread of fine sour. Moreover Nuns are required to live life of simplicity but Chaucer’s Prioress shows love for jewelry by wearing the brooch of gold. Even her singing is artificial and formal. She sings her services in the Church “entuned in hir noseful semely”. Moreover she was very tender hearted and wept of when she saw a mouse caught in a trap in the word of Bandon “She is the nun who remembers life beyond the convent walls and who longs for some of the more innocent yet forbidden pleasures of the life. Yet she typifies the traits of contemporary prioress”

The character of The Monk is also ironical and elaborates and shows a strong tilt towards secular, liberal and materialistic side. According to the monastic established by St. Maurus and St. Benedict, The Monk was required to live a life of obedience, poverty, celibacy and labor. Moreover he is supposed to confine himself to his cloister for spiritual studies. However those monks forget their religious duties because they enjoined great riches and powers on account of huge grants from crown given to the monasteries and convents. Thus they left their cloisters and went out hunting. Again the Monk violating the principles by wearing costly clothes, eating dishes and indulging in worldly pleasures. In fact he looks more like a gentle man than a monk. The Monk is not what he should, he is what he should not.

The Friar presents the direct contrast to the Monk. Although the Monk had some serious mawkish voices yet he commanded respect. But the time seems to have no respect anywhere. He is condemned as licentious and dishonest. According to Chaucer the friars were hypocrite. They had license for begging in a particular area but due to cleverness they grabbed a lot of money from people. The general public began to give silver to the poor friars. They also got other opportunities to make money by unfair means. They would even fetch a penny from a widows who even not had shoes to wear. They could be employed as tax-gathers and hear confessions. On love days they acted like a Master or a Pope Chaucer’s Friar has all these opportunities. He is a limiter and makes much more money than his expenses. He has a fine figure and attracts both married and unmarried women specially the rich women of the area.

Another important ecclesiastical character of the Middle Ages was the Pardoner. According to the Bandon; Pardoner in Chaucer’s days were employed in selling pardons, relics and preaching. Chaucer’s Pardoner is expert in selling pardons. He made a lot of money in one day. Chaucer says that the Pardoner’s income of one day was more than that of a Poor Parson’s in two months.

The Summoner is another important character in Chaucer’s Prologue among officials connected with religious courts. His duty was to call offenders to ecclesiastical courts. Summoner were notorious in harassing the poor and ignorant and thus they made great amount of money. They were also sexually immoral and morally corrupted. Chaucer’s Summoner and the Pardoner are the corrupt ecclesiastics but that is not the whole thing. There is a good ecclesiastical character who presents an antithesis to the corrupt clergy. He is the Poor Parson of the Town. Though materially poor, he is “rich in his hooly thoughts and werk”. He is kind to his parishioners. He does not ex-communicate those poor people who cannot pay the tithe. He rather pays out of his own pocket. Moreover like a true priest he is loyal in his religious duties. He visits even during his sickness those Parishioners who live in the farthest parts of the Parish. He always cares about his sheep like a good pastor. He is living model of poverty, austerity and chastity. He lives a simple life and practices what he preaches. Chaucer has idealized Poor Parson as a scholar, a man of true virtue and of true humanitarianism. In fact he is a symbol of hope telling mankind that although vice leans large in the world yet the world has not wholly become bankrupt of true virtue and such ideal character. Although they are one in ten thousand yet they do exist, here and there to remind mankind that all is not lost

Another significant aspect of Chaucer is that he has painted without any line or color. As pointed out by Prof. Dereck Brenner in his book “An introduction to Chaucer” there were three Medieval estates which has been idealized by Chaucer, The Knight, The Parson and The Ploughman and they have not been satirized. The Parson and the Ploughman are the most idealized of all and the least individualized. In fact they are theories rather that persons. The second significant thing is that the trilogy represents secular personalities (secular characters – figures out of monastery or cloister)

Composed By; Malik Muhammad Asad Hussain

www.AsadSays.blogspot.com www.SolutionsEasy.tk www.Facebook.com/Asad.mkhel

Download Doc File

Detailed Analysis Of Major Characters In Prologue

THE CANTERBURY TALES

Geoffrey Chaucer

Analysis Of Major Characters

The Knight

The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue, and his story is the first in the sequence. The Host clearly admires the Knight, as does the narrator. The narrator seems to remember four main qualities of the Knight. The first is the Knight’s love of ideals—“chivalrie” (prowess), “trouthe” (fidelity), “honour” (reputation), “fredom” (generosity), and “curteisie” (refinement) (General Prologue, 45–46). The second is the Knight’s impressive military career. The Knight has fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian lands and attempted to convert whole cultures by the force of their swords. By Chaucer’s time, the spirit for conducting these wars was dying out, and they were no longer undertaken as frequently. The Knight has battled the Muslims in Egypt, Spain, and Turkey, and the Russian Orthodox in Lithuania and Russia. He has also fought in formal duels. The third quality the narrator remembers about the Knight is his meek, gentle, manner. And the fourth is his “array,” or dress. The Knight wears a tunic made of coarse cloth, and his coat of mail is rust-stained, because he has recently returned from an expedition.

The Knight’s interaction with other characters tells us a few additional facts about him. In the Prologue to the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, he calls out to hear something more lighthearted, saying that it deeply upsets him to hear stories about tragic falls. He would rather hear about “joye and greet solas,” about men who start off in poverty climbing in fortune and attaining wealth (Nun’s Priest’s Prologue, 2774). The Host agrees with him, which is not surprising, since the Host has mentioned that whoever tells the tale of “best sentence and moost solaas” will win the storytelling contest (General Prologue, 798). And, at the end of the Pardoner’s Tale, the Knight breaks in to stop the squabbling between the Host and the Pardoner, ordering them to kiss and make up. Ironically, though a soldier, the romantic, idealistic Knight clearly has an aversion to conflict or unhappiness of any sort.

The Pardoner

The Pardoner rides in the very back of the party in the General Prologue and is fittingly the most marginalized character in the company. His profession is somewhat dubious—pardoners offered indulgences, or previously written pardons for particular sins, to people who repented of the sin they had committed. Along with receiving the indulgence, the penitent would make a donation to the Church by giving money to the pardoner. Eventually, this “charitable” donation became a necessary part of receiving an indulgence. Paid by the Church to offer these indulgences, the Pardoner was not supposed to pocket the penitents’ charitable donations. That said, the practice of offering indulgences came under critique by quite a few churchmen, since once the charitable donation became a practice allied to receiving an indulgence, it began to look like one could cleanse oneself of sin by simply paying off the Church. Additionally, widespread suspicion held that pardoners counterfeited the pope’s signature on illegitimate indulgences and pocketed the “charitable donations” themselves.

Chaucer’s Pardoner is a highly untrustworthy character. He sings a ballad—“Com hider, love, to me!” (General Prologue, 672)—with the hypocritical Summoner, undermining the already challenged virtue of his profession as one who works for the Church. He presents himself as someone of ambiguous gender and sexual orientation, further challenging social norms. The narrator is not sure whether the Pardoner is an effeminate homosexual or a eunuch (castrated male). Like the other pilgrims, the Pardoner carries with him to Canterbury the tools of his trade—in his case, freshly signed papal indulgences and a sack of false relics, including a brass cross filled with stones to make it seem as heavy as gold and a glass jar full of pig’s bones, which he passes off as saints’ relics. Since visiting relics on pilgrimage had become a tourist industry, the Pardoner wants to cash in on religion in any way he can, and he does this by selling tangible, material objects—whether slips of paper that promise forgiveness of sins or animal bones that people can string around their necks as charms against the devil. After telling the group how he gulls people into indulging his own avarice through a sermon he preaches on greed, the Pardoner tells of a tale that exemplifies the vice decried in his sermon. Furthermore, he attempts to sell pardons to the group—in effect plying his trade in clear violation of the rules outlined by the host.

The Wife of Bath

One of two female storytellers (the other is the Prioress), the Wife has a lot of experience under her belt. She has traveled all over the world on pilgrimages, so Canterbury is a jaunt compared to other perilous journeys she has endured. Not only has she seen many lands, she has lived with five husbands. She is worldly in both senses of the word: she has seen the world and has experience in the ways of the world, that is, in love and sex.

Rich and tasteful, the Wife’s clothes veer a bit toward extravagance: her face is wreathed in heavy cloth, her stockings are a fine scarlet color, and the leather on her shoes is soft, fresh, and brand new—all of which demonstrate how wealthy she has become. Scarlet was a particularly costly dye, since it was made from individual red beetles found only in some parts of the world. The fact that she hails from Bath, a major English cloth-making town in the Middle Ages, is reflected in both her talent as a seamstress and her stylish garments. Bath at this time was fighting for a place among the great European exporters of cloth, which were mostly in the Netherlands and Belgium. So the fact that the Wife’s sewing surpasses that of the cloth makers of “Ipres and of Gaunt” (Ypres and Ghent) speaks well of Bath’s (and England’s) attempt to outdo its overseas competitors.

Although she is argumentative and enjoys talking, the Wife is intelligent in a commonsense, rather than intellectual, way. Through her experiences with her husbands, she has learned how to provide for herself in a world where women had little independence or power. The chief manner in which she has gained control over her husbands has been in her control over their use of her body. The Wife uses her body as a bargaining tool, withholding sexual pleasure until her husbands give her what she demands.

Download MS Word Document File

Prologue To The Canterbury Tales As Picture Gallery Of 14th Century

The Prologue as the Picture Gallery Of 14^th Century

Coghill in his book on Chaucer says; “He has painted the real picture of England of the 14^th century “. Another critic Campton Rickett says; “Like Shakespeare, Chaucer makes it his business to paint life as he sees it and paves others to say the morals. Another famous critic Legouis says; “Chaucer’s pilgrims belongs to his own age. They are as they were in reality. They are true to life and form the very background of that history which is the history of 14^th century. From the opinions of famous critics it becomes clear that the prologue is an important social document, a great social chronicle in which Chaucer presents with great fidelity the body and the soul of the society of his own times. It is the full-blooded and full-flooded view of the variegated panorama of the 14^th century. In other words he holds a mirror to his age. It has been rightly said that Prologue evinces the true color and aroma of the 14^th century England. In fact, the twenty nine pilgrims encompass the whole range of the English society of Chaucer’s time excluding of course the highest and the lowest. In the words of Dryden; “There is God’s plenty”. Chaucer’s view is humanistic view. He was writing from a worldly and secular angle which include in its range both the good and the bad because he knows that the warp and woof of life is made up of both the angels and the devils. That is why there is an unprejudiced acceptance of everything. This is what makes him the impartial and objective in his presentation of the life of his age. If we have the noble person like the Poor Parson of the town on the one hand we have also the rogues like the Pardoner and the Friar on the other hand.

Chaucer’s world was the Medieval world. It was the age of chivalry and ecclesiastics. The knight is the symbol of Medieval world of chivalry in the traditional sews. With him his son The Squire who represents the new trends which were making in road in the old system. The knight of Chaucer belongs to that order in which the sword was combined with the cross that is why all the wars in which knight participated were the religious wars or The Crusades fought against the infidels. The prologue began with the knight and the stories also began with the story of the knight. This is the indication that the knight was the most respectable person of the social hierarchy of the Medieval Times.

The second aspect of the 14^th century that’s reflected in the Prologue is that Chaucer’s world was basically the religious world. That is why the ecclesiastical group has such a large representation. Now the ecclesiast in general reflect the wide spread decadence that has come in the religious ranks. Although the majority is irreligious and corrupt and there is all-pervading profligacy yet all wars not lost. There were some noble and really devoted ecclesiast like poor Parson of the town who acted upon the Christian principles in latter and spirit. Chaucer has portrayed the religious characters like the Monk and the Prioress as strongly leaning toward the worldliness. That is why they evince the glamour and glory of this world. in spite of living a religious piety and purity they are indulging in this world’s grandeur and aristocratic showiness by showing courtly manners.

The Prologue also reflects the 14^th century in another way. The very framework of the poem is symptomatic of Chaucer’s age and pilgrims were familiar figures. Thus Chaucer says that he met 29 persons in the Tabard Inn who were going to the shrine of the Saint Thomas A. Backet and “Pilgrims were they all”. In fact people from all walks of life would assemble as we have the modern Haj companionships. Only Chaucer’s caravans were much larger and more kaleidoscopic and thus more socially representatives. The pilgrims were in there holiday moods were relaxed and self-revealing. The journey was undertaken on horses and the pilgrims forgetting all social formalities, distinction, prohibitions and prejudices of daily life.

Thus Chaucer was provided with simple opportunity to peep onto their souls and bring out their true personalities. On the external side Chaucer described their dresses, their manner, their weapons, their jokes and their pleasantries and thus gave a vivid picture of these merry persons. From the knight to the ploughman we have the highest and the lowest position respectively of the Medieval social hierarchy. In this way we have evince the color and temperament of this grand social pageant internally, we have their real thinking and attitudes. For example, the knight is noble and serious, the squire is fresh and youthful, the wife of bath is formally religious but informally lascivious, the friar, the pardoner and the summoner are real rogues under the veneer (disguise) of religion, the Monk and the Prioress are worldly  minded and away from religion though the members of the ecclesiast system. In the poor Parson and his brother Ploughman Chaucer has presented the pristine portraits of true Christianity. Thus the pictures are perfect and complete externally as well as externally. It is the all-ranging variegated vista of the 14^th century. And Dryden’s observation is very opt when he says that “Here is God’s plenty.”

There is another dimension (aspect) from which Chaucer parse the social chronicle of the 14^th century. He presents his characters as types i.e. the type of people as they were found in his century. But he has shown them individuals also. Moreover, he has also pointed out disperse between the ideal and the real because a decadence and disintegration was appearing. Chaucer was realistic and he presented what he saw and observed around him. He was no reformer or preacher. He was a painter, an artist and a social historian. So he could not close his eyes to the great difference between the real and the ideal, the corrupt and the pure. Thus when he presented the profligacy (corruption) of the ecclesiast in the persons of the Monk, the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner, along with them he also presents the noble spirituality of the poor Parson of the town who practiced what he preached. He satirizes the corrupt and idealizes the pure. But this satire is not bitter or scathing. It is rather gentle, tolerate, sympathetic and genial. It springs from his love of humanity. It reflects his broad humanitarianism in which angels and devils go together.

Chaucer is also representative poet of his century. His age was Medieval and Modern. Although 14^th century was basically age of transition. The old order was changing giving place to new. The age of chivalry and religion was waning and almost vanishing and the new off shoots of modernity (later on known as Renaissance) were appearing. Thus as an individual’s their humanistic or modern sides are emphasized. Chaucer emphasizes this transitional aspect of his century. In fact the tinge (taint) of the Medieval religiosity is disintegrating and secular outlook is gaining ground. This is epitomized by their worldliness of the Prioress and the Monk who are indulging in every worldly activity which they were not suppo0sed to do religiously. In the words of Campton Rickett; “There was the leaven of the Renaissance, beneath Medievalism.” That is why Chaucer has been righty called as “The Morning Star of Renaissance” and “The Evening Star of the Medievalism.” Thus we find a fine juxtaposition of the old and the new, the Renaissance and the medievalism. Regarding Choker’s position as the representative poet of 14^th century. The final judgment comes “Chaucer symbolizes as no other poet does the Middle Ages"

                                                                     

For More Notes
www.AsadSays.Blogspot.com

Download Ms Word File