GEOFFREY CHAUCER

THE
CANTERBURY
TALES
THE GENERAL PROLOGUE
Unit Outline
TOPICS TO BE DISCUSSED

14th Century England

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and France
Country and Town,
Church and
Pilgrimage
Chaucer, the Public
Individual
"English", Medieval
early modern
Literature
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The
Canterbury
Tales
A STORY COLLECTION
Like Boccaccio's The
Decameron but unlike any other
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MANORIAL
SYSTEM
UPTIL THE 1600S:
CHRISTIAN WORLD
ORDER

Lowest/peasantry
Knightly
Clerical.
 The Canterbury Tales are a perfect fusion of 2
fictional levels:
The world of the frame
The world of the tales themselves
Renaissance Unity: Tales form an inter-pilgrim
dialogue
Renaissance device of fictions within fictions like play within play

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The Social
Hierarchy
IN CHAUCER'S TIMES

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1300'S FEUDALISM
At the top of the feudal hierarchy was the king, who
was the theoretical sovereign owner of all the land in
the country. The king granted holdings of land to
aristocratic “tenants-in-chief” in exchange for military
support. The tenant-in-chief paid for his landholding
by promising military service in time of war, bringing
a stipulated number of armed followers to fight
under the king’s command for a specified number of
days.
The tenants-in-chief in turn granted landholdings to
lesser aristocrats under similar terms. The smallest
unit of aristocratic landholding was the manor, which
was a parcel of land (commonly a few hundred to a
thousand acres) more or less sufficient to support a
mounted knight. The manor lord granted parts of his
manor to peasant farmers, who paid for their
holdings with labor service.
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Paul Strohm describes

Chaucer’s Knight as “virtuous”
and “judicious”, and his tale as
a “sober romance”. In Terry
Jones’s 1980 book Chaucer’s
Knight, he demonstrates that
the supposedly gentlemanly
knight is nothing but a
mercenary, a professional
killer, and his tale a crude
parody of Boccaccio’s Teseida
that reveals the Knight’s own
lack of education and little
understanding of the tenets of
chivalry.

The Knight
 Free peasants were those who held free holdings
or who were born to free parents. Yeoman was
traditionally the term for the servant that ranked
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below a squire, and in Chaucer’s day the word

was coming to be applied to the class of people
from which such servants were drawn. This class
also provided the archers who distinguished
themselves in the wars against France, hence this
Yeoman's sheaf of arrows.
Yeomen were freemen with holdings of 50 acres
or more, enough to offer a reasonable standard
of living and the prospect of economic
advancement. They lived comfortably and many
were wealthier than some squires.
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The Spanish Chapel, Way of Salvation, 1365-68, fresco,
Cappellone degli Spagnoli , fresco by Andrea di Bonaiuto
 THE THREE ESTATES
THE CONCEPT OF THE THREE ESTATES DIVIDED SOCIETY INTO CLERGY, NOBLES,
AND COMMONS. SINCE IT WAS A CLERICAL INVENTION, IT IS NO WONDER THAT
THE CLERGY CONSTITUTED THE FIRST ESTATE, BUT THIS ALSO REFLECTED THE
PRIVILEGED POSITION OF RELIGION IN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY. THE IDEA OF A
SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE WAS UNTHINKABLE, AND THE
CHURCH WAS FIRMLY EMBEDDED IN THE STRUCTURES OF SOCIETY AND
GOVERNMENT.

CLERGY NOBLES COMMONS

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THE PRIORESSE
Nuns belonged to the first estate, but
did not enjoy the same privileges as
their male counterparts. They could

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not become priests, their abbesses
did not have a place in the House of
Lords, and they were appended to
the male clerical hierarchy rather
than integrated into it. Nonetheless,
some nunneries were quite wealthy;
the abbess of such an establishment
could be an important woman in her
own right, enjoying a degree of
independence and authority rare for
a medieval woman.
THE MONK
Monasticism was intended to foster
spirituality by placing the monks in a
monastery, secluded from the world
to lead austere lives devoted to

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prayer and holy contemplation. Every
monastery and monk belonged to a
particular order, which had its own
administration and rules.
The principal responsibility of monks
was originally a daily cycle of prayers
called the canonical hours, but over
the centuries they had assumed
important roles as scribes, teachers,
and healers, and it was by no means
unusual for them to be seen outside
their monasteries
THE FRIAR
Friars, like monks, lived under the authority of
the rule of their order; in particular, they were
not allowed to own private property—all their
possessions belonged to their order. However,

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rather than retiring from the world, their
mission was to minister to the spiritual needs
of the lay public, particularly through
preaching, teaching, and hearing confession.

Chaucer’s portraits of the Monk and the Friar

are in keeping with contemporary satirical
attitudes to the orders: the Monk delights in
horses, hounds, and hunting; the Friar flirts
with the women to whom he is administering
Confession, and can wheedle a widow out of a
donation even if she has “not a shoe".
 The Marchant
DICK WHITTINGTON'S EXAMPLE
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Richard Whittington, as the third son of a

Gloucestershire knight born around the middle of
the century, had a limited future, since he was
unlikely to inherit his father’s landholding.
Whittington relocated to London to learn to be a
cloth merchant. He grew rich on trade in the 1380s
and 1390s, eventually becoming a major
moneylender hose clients included Richard II and
Henry IV. Known in legend as Dick Whittington, he
became famous as a medieval emblem of social
advancement, serving multiple terms as Mayor of
London, an office that made him among the most
important individuals in the kingdom.
 The Sergeant of the
Law
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Legal authority was complicated by the

sometimes overlapping jurisdictions of church and
secular authorities, and by emerging systems of
national governance that were in the process of
displacing feudal jurisdictions.
The dispersed network of authority represented
by feudalism and by burghal self-governance was
manifested primarily at the local level, through
manorial courts in the country, or borough courts
in the towns. These were administered by local
officers known as stewards or bailiffs, and served
both legislative and judicial functions, regulating
matters pertaining to the common interest of the
community, and judging local civil disputes and
petty criminal cases.
THE GUILDSMEN:

HABERDASSHERE, CARPENTER,
WEBBE, DYER AND TAPICERE
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COMMONFOLK

THE COOK THE SHIPMAN THE DOCTOUR OF

PHYSIK
 A boy headed for a career in the church or as a
physician might continue on to university—Oxford,
Cambridge, or a university on the Continent. University
teaching was conducted in Latin. The course of study
for the baccalaureate degree concentrated on
Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic,
Astronomy, and Music. Advanced degrees were
available in Canon Law (that is, church law),
Philosophy, and Medicine.
PROFESSIONAL OR HIGHER LEARNING
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 The physician was primarily a theorist, educated at a
university faculty of medicine. He was expected to
have mastered the physiological learning passed down
from the ancients about the workings of the body in
sickness and health and the efficacy of diverse
substances against specific illnesses. His primary skills
were in diagnosis and in prescription of remedies. By
examining the patient’s appearance, taking the pulse,
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smelling the breath, inquiring after symptoms, and

other forms of observation, the physician would
attempt to analyze the problem and prescribe a
remedy.
Like other mainstream intellectuals of the period, he
favored authority over experience: medical learning
was acquired by reading treatises by long-dead
authors rather than by systematic analysis of observed
phenomena.

The Doctour of Physik

THE THEORY OF HUMOURS IN MEDICINE
THE WYF OF BATH
Wool could be a better cash crop than grain: it required
comparatively little labor to produce, it traveled well, and
there was a constant demand for this staple fabric of
medieval clothing, especially since English sheep yielded
particularly fine wool. The wool trade stimulated

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secondary economic activity, as the raw material required
multiple stages of processing to make it ready for wearing.
The various stages of clothmaking constituted one of the
major engines of economic activity after agriculture itself.
The thread was sold to the growing cloth industry, which
was one of the most mechanized parts of the English
economy. Cloth was woven on sophisticated horizontal
hand-looms and fulled (cleansed and thickened) in water-
powered fulling mills. Clothmaking was not yet an export
industry in England, so English-made cloth was only for the
home market. Wool was exported raw, bound for foreign
looms, especially those of Flanders; but English weavers
were gaining in skill, and over the next few centuries they
would come to dominate the trade in woolen cloth.
 Towards the bottom end of the church hierarchy was
the parish priest/parson. Simple parsons of rural
parishes often came from peasant families and lived
a life not much different from their peasant
neighbors. Some parishes produced revenues of
hundreds of pounds, but most were worth less than
£10 a year. Often much of the revenue was siphoned
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off to an absentee rector. The poorest must have

been particularly dependent on the harvest from the
parson’s share of the village fields (called a glebe).
Many had to work those fields themselves, and some
kept beasts or threshed corn in the churchyard or
stored malt in the church.
On such low wages it was hard to attract good help.
The poorer parishes can hardly have attracted well-
educated parsons.

The Parson
 THE MILLER
Grinding grains to make flour was a significant sector in the
economy, performed in mills powered by water or wind.
Millers were to be found in every village, where they ranked
with the blacksmith as one of the most important
community figures. They could also be found in and around
the towns.
The medieval listeners would pick up clues from the Miller's
red spade beard, his flattened nose with its wide nostrils,
the wart on top of that nose and the mouth gaping like a
furnace, and deduce from these that the Miller was an
aggressive, argumentative and lecherous type.
Chaucer's audience would certainly connect the Miller's
huge mouth, and the fact that he played the bagpipe, with
the work of the Devil, the mouth in particular representing
the ateway to Hell. What issued from it was the product of
the fires of Hell, the work of Satan to subvert mankind.
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 THE MANCIPLE
The Manciple, is described entirely through his
deeds. A manciple was a servant who bought
provisions for a college at university or an inn of
court which would accommodate lawyers. No one
emerges with much credit from this tart little
portrait. The lawyers, the 'heep of lerned men' who
employ this 'lewed' manciple, are cheated by him
easily and profitably. The tone of the portrait is not
sufficiently comic for us to celebrate the triumph of
the native wit of the shady manciple over the
refined intelligence of the thirty or so lawyers.
There is a new spirit abroad, which Chaucer does
not find congenial - a spirit of competitiveness for
wealth clearly demonstrated by so many of the new
professional class among the pilgrims. It is almost
as though Chaucer is regretting that, for many, the
ideal is no longer honour, but money.
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 THE REEVE
The Reeve's appearance is that regularly
associated by physiognornists with a testy and
choleric nature, so to that extent he is a typical
character. However, because he is given a
particular place to live, near Baldeswelle in
Norfolk, and a named horse to ride, Scot, there is
some sense of an individual in the portrait.
The Reeve seems to be somewhere between a
steward and a bailiff in his management of his
lord 's estates. In fact, such is his skill that the
whole estate : 'Was hoolly in this Reves
governinge' . It seems to have been a matter of
sour pride that, to any outside observer, he is
meticulous at his work . His accounts balance so
that no auditor can spot any embezzlement, he
bills are paid promptly and he knows all the
dodges that might be practised by the workmen.
 A major player in governance was the church. The
country was divided into about 9000 parishes,
grouped in a hierarchical network of deaneries,
bishoprics, and archbishoprics. The church had
jurisdiction over many aspects of daily life. All
laypeople were required to pay tithes to the church,
consisting of one-tenth of their income in money or
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produce.
Church courts had jurisdiction in matters of marriage
and sexuality, wills, heresy, and a host of other areas
relating to the precepts and practices of medieval
Christianity. Chaucer’s Summoner is an agent of such
a court. The poet’s unflattering portrayal of this
character reflects something of the popular hostility
toward these courts, especially in an age when many
people in England felt that the Church was in dire
need of reform.

The Summoner
 The Pardoner's profession is somewhat dubious—they
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
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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”
The Pardoner
themselves.