The "General Prologue" is the first part of '' The Canterbury Tales'' by

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

. It introduces the

frame story A frame story (also known as a frame tale, frame narrative, sandwich narrative, or intercalation) is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, where an introductory or main narrative sets the stage either fo ...

, in which a group of

pilgrim The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...

s travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in

Canterbury Canterbury (, ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the county of Kent, England; it was a county borough until 1974. It lies on the River Stour, Kent, River Stour. The city has a mild oceanic climat ...

agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves. The Prologue is arguably the most familiar section of ''The Canterbury Tales'', depicting traffic between places, languages and cultures, as well as introducing and describing the pilgrims who will narrate the tales.

Synopsis

The

of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...

which make up the General Prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage. The narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, is in The Tabard Inn in Southwark, where he meets a group of 'sundry folk' who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, a

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...

reputed to have the power of healing the sinful. The setting is April, and the prologue starts by singing the praises of that month whose rains and warm western wind restore life and fertility to the earth and its inhabitants. This abundance of life, the narrator says, prompts people to go on pilgrimages; in England, the goal of such pilgrimages is the shrine of Thomas Becket. The narrator falls in with a group of pilgrims, and the largest part of the prologue is taken up by a description of them; Chaucer seeks to describe their 'condition', their 'array', and their social 'degree'. The narrator expresses admiration and praise towards the pilgrims' abilities. The pilgrims include a

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

; his son, a squire; the knight's

yeoman Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of Serfdom, servants in an Peerage of England, English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in Kingdom of England, mid-1 ...

; a prioress, accompanied by a nun and the nun's priest; a

monk A monk (; from , ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a man who is a member of a religious order and lives in a monastery. A monk usually lives his life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many reli ...

; a friar; a merchant; a

clerk A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts record keeping as well as general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include Records managem ...

; a sergeant of law; a franklin; a haberdasher; a carpenter; a weaver; a dyer; a tapestry weaver; a cook; a shipman; a doctor of physic; a wife of Bath; a parson and his brother, a plowman; a miller; a manciple; a reeve; a summoner; a pardoner; the Host (a man called Harry Bailey); and Chaucer himself. At the end of this section, the Host proposes that the group ride together and entertain one another with stories. He lays out his plan: each pilgrim will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back. Whoever has told the most meaningful and comforting stories, with "the best sentence and moost solaas" (line 798) will receive a free meal paid for by the rest of the pilgrims upon their return. The company agrees and makes the Host its governor, judge, and record keeper. They set off the next morning and draw straws to determine who will tell the first tale. The Knight wins and prepares to tell his tale.

Structure

The ''General Prologue'' establishes the frame for the ''Tales'' as a whole (or of the intended whole) and introduces the characters/storytellers. These are introduced in the order of their rank in accordance with the three medieval social estates (clergy, nobility, and commoners and peasantry). These characters are also representative of their estates and models with which the others in the same estate can be compared and contrasted. The structure of the General Prologue is also intimately linked with the narrative style of the tales. As the narrative voice has been under critical scrutiny for some time, so too has the identity of the narrator himself. Though fierce debate has taken place on both sides, (mostly contesting that the narrator either is, or is not, Geoffrey Chaucer), most contemporary scholars believe that the narrator is meant to be Chaucer himself to some degree. Some scholars, like William W. Lawrence, claim that the narrator is Geoffrey Chaucer in person. Others, like Marchette Chute for instance, contest that the narrator is instead a literary creation like the other pilgrims in the tales. Chaucer makes use of his extensive literary and linguistic knowledge in the ''General Prologue'' by interplaying Latin, French, and English words against each other. French was considered a hierarchal, courtly, and aristocratic language during the Middle Ages, whereas Latin was the language of learning. The opening lines of The Canterbury Tales show a diversity of phrasing by including words of French origin like "droghte," "veyne," and "licour" alongside English terms for nature: "roote," "holt and heeth," and "croppes."

Sources

John Matthews Manly attempted to identify pilgrims with real fourteenth-century people. In some instances, such as the Summoner and the Friar, he attempts localization to a small geographic area. The Man of Law is identified as Thomas Pynchbek (also Pynchbeck), who was chief baron of the exchequer. Sir John Bussy, an associate of Pynchbek, is identified as the Franklin. The Pembroke estates near Baldeswelle supplied the portrait for the unnamed Reeve. Sebastian Sobecki argues that the General Prologue is a pastiche of the historical Harry Bailey's surviving 1381 poll-tax account of Southwark's inhabitants. Jill Mann argued that the descriptions of pilgrims representing a spectrum of social roles is best understood as standing in the tradition of medieval Estate satire. Stephen Rigby observed the General Prologue as commenting on medieval social inequality, noting that Chaucerians are divided in their interpretations of Chaucer's outlook: some see Chaucer as defending the social order; others argue that he meant to criticize it; and others still hold that he intended to leave it open to the reader's interpretation. On such interpretations, the pilgrims are less likely to correspond to historical individuals and more likely to be versions of representative 'types': the friar, for example, being a figure out of existing anti-fraternal literature.

Translation

The following are the first 18 lines of the General Prologue. The text was written in a dialect associated with London and spellings associated with the then-emergent Chancery Standard. In modern prose: When April with its sweet showers has pierced March's drought to the root, bathing every vein in such liquid by whose virtue the flower is engendered, and when Zephyrus with his sweet breath has also enlivened the tender plants in every wood and field, and the young sun is halfway through Aries, and small birds that sleep all night with an open eye make melodies (their hearts so goaded by Nature), then people long to go on pilgrimages, and palmers seek faraway shores and distant saints known in sundry lands, and especially they wend their way to Canterbury from every shire of England to seek the holy blessed martyr, who helped them when they were ill.

Gallery of the pilgrims

File:The Knight - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Knight File:The Squire - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Squire File:The Prioress - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Prioress File:The Second Nun - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Second Nun File:The Nun's Priest - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Nun's Priest File:The Monk - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Monk File:The Friar - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Friar File:The Merchant - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Merchant File:The Clerk of Oxford from the “Ellesmere Chaucer” (Huntington Library, San Marino).jpg, The Clerk of Oxford File:The Man of Law from the EllsMan of Law from the “Ellesmere Chaucer” (Huntington Library, San Marino).jpg, The Sergeant of Law File:The Franklin - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Franklin File:Cook from the “Ellesmere Chaucer” (Huntington Library, San Marino).jpg, The Cook File:The Shipman - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Shipman File:The Physician - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Physician File:Wife-of-Bath-ms-2.jpg, The Wife of Bath File:The Parson - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Parson File:Canterbury Tales - The Miller - f. 34v detail - Robin with the Bagpype - early 1400s Chaucer.png, The Miller File:The Manciple - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Manciple File:The Reeve - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Reeve File:The Summoner - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Summoner File:The Pardoner - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Pardoner File:Ellesmere Chaucer, mssEL 26 C 9, folio 153v, warmer image.jpg, Chaucer File:The Canon's Yeoman - Ellesmere Chaucer.jpg, The Canon's Yeoman

References

External links

Chaucer, Geoffrey. " The Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue"
''The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer'', Clarendon Press, 1900 . ''Literature in Context: An Open Anthology.'' https://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Chaucer/chaucer-prologue. Accessed: 2024-01-05T21:10:28.228Z

* * ttps://medievalit.com/home/echaucer/modern-translations/general-prologue-translation/ Modern Translation of the General Prologue and Other Resources at eChaucer
"Prologue to ''The Canterbury Tales''" – a plain-English retelling for non-scholars.
{{Authority control General Prologue Canterbury Tales Canterbury Tales, The