What are the salient features of Chaucer’s art of characterization? Discuss with illustrations from the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Or Comment on Chaucer’s method of characterization, pointing out whether his characters, as depicted in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, are types of individuals. Or Discuss Chaucer’s technique of characterization in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.

The character-painting in the Prologue has won wide acclaim. It has been said that, of all the character-writers in English literature from Ben Jonson to Wordsworth, none is so great as Chaucer. “I see all the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales”, says Dryden, “their humours, their features, and their very dress as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark. He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the very manners and humour of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him”.

Chaucer’s characterization of various persons in the Prologue, says a critic, has “a concentrated brilliance”. Chaucer describes a man as if his eyes were wondering over him, noticing a detail here and a detail there. He records his observations in a casual, haphazard manner. This impression of casualness and variety of detail indicate “an art which conceals art”. Chaucer does not follow any fixed pattern in describing the various characters. Sometimes certain items of dress are indicated first and through these we see the character of the man. For instance, the Knight’s gipon is still marked by the rust and oil from his armour. This is apparently mere factual information. Yet from this we can judge that the Knight has wasted no time after his return home to go on a pilgrimage. He is not keen about a smart outward appearance. Sometimes Chaucer describes a person’s character and adds almost as an after-thought those details of dress which bring that person vividly before our eyes and reinforce what we already know him. This is so in the cases of the Lawyer, the Physician and the Franklin, for eg.

In sketching the character of the pilgrims, Chaucer takes up the details that would strike the eye of a fellow-traveler. There is a deliberately contrived disorder in the way in which the facts about each character are brought to our attention. For example, Chaucer describe the Cook’s skill in roasting, boiling, grilling and frying and then tells us that the Cook had a mormal on his skin and that he made “blackmanger” the best. The after-thought about blackmanger gives an air of absolute naturalness to the description and this air of innocent observation can be put to most effective ironic uses when Chaucer so desires. The author as a fellow-pilgrim notes what he sees or learns about others in the casual order which occurs to him. He adds details to details, often in a non-logical order.

In the Prologue, Chaucer selected a large number of representatives of contemporary society. His selection of characters deserves consideration. In his time the clergy were relatively far more numerous than they are today. The Oxford Clerk, the Summoner and the Pardoner would, for example, be all in minor order. Thus there are as many as eight representatives of the clergy and excluding Chaucer himself, nineteen laymen, seven of whom are countrymen, eleven townsmen and a sailor. The countrymen range from the Knight and his son, the Squire to the Reeve and Plowman. Of the town-dewellers, there are five wealthy Guildsmen, a merchant, a business-woman and two professional men. Three of the pilgrims are women: the prioress, her Nun and the Wife of Bath who is also something of a professional pilgrim, having visited a large number of shrines.

Irony and satire are among the most striking features of Chaucer’s characterization in the Prologue. There is, indeed, a predominance of comic satire. Almost all the ecclesiastical characters, with the solitary exception of the Parson, are objects of mockery and ridicule. The very dress and the fashionable manners of the Prioress and ironically described. Her aristocratic pretensions are also ironically conveyed to us. Her vanities are fully exposed. In short, the ironic implication throughout the portrait of the Prioress is that, in spite of her holy calling, she is more concerned with worldly things than with the spirit. In the case of the Monk, Chaucer ironically refers to his violation of the rules of monastic discipline, his shirking both manual work and intellectual pursuit, his wearing a gold pin in the shape of a love-knot, his appetite for a roasted fat swan and so on. The Friar had performed many marriages of young women “at his own cost”, a fact the implication of which is obvious. He is “a noble pillor” of his order, just as the Monk is “a fair prelate’, the irony in each case being obvious. The Friar’s greed is also ironically conveyed, as is his dabbling in secular affairs, such as settling disputes on love-days. The lawyer seems busier than he actually is. The Fracklin’s chief interest in life is eating choice dishes and drinking superior wines. The wives of the Guildsmen are ambitious of heading the ceremonial processions. The shipman is ironically called a good fellow, meaning a rascal. The Doctor loves gold especially, “for gold in medicine is a cordial”. The Manciple is always a gainer, whether he buys provisions for cash or on credit. The Reeve gives loans to his lord, the lord’s own goods and receives thanks in return, besides a coat and a hood as his reward. The Summoner’s impiety and Pardoner’s fraudulent practices are also thoroughly exposed. Thus we find Chaucer unmasking the absurdities, the greed, the immorality and the hypocrisy of various characters, Chaucer’s use of the weapon of irony is, indeed, masterly.

Not all the characters are treated ironically, however. The aristocracy represented by the Knight is excluded from the scope of Chaucer’s satire. The Knight is almost idealized; he is a great warrior; he values truth, honour and generously. The Clerk of Oxford is another character represented in a most favourable light. He is studious, scholarly, unworldly and frugal in his habits. Chaucer eulogizes him in the following words: “And gladly wolde he learne and gladly teche”. Other characters who receive nothing but praise are the Parson and the Plowman. The Parson is poor in a worldly sense but rich in holy thoughts and holy work. The Plaowman loves his fellow human beings next only to god. Thus Chaucer does not satirise those pilgrims who represent the medieval ideal of the three basic orders of socity-Knighthood, the Clergy and the Plowmen. It has, however, to be admitted that the characterization of the good persons is not as interesting as that of the bad ones. The good persons are more or less theories, not living or animated human beings; the bad ones are much more lively and much more vividly presented.

Chaucer wrote about people as he saw them. We never feel that he is describing puppets. Some of his characters were actually based on real people. Harry Bailly, innkeeper of Southwark, Host to the pilgrims, actually existed and seems to have been a person well-known in London. Some of the other pilgrims too have been indentified as having actually lived. Many of the figure in the Prologue seem almost to leap out of the page. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the description follow no set order; items appear to tumble out just as they come into the narrator’s mind. The second is Chaucer’s way of converting the portrait of a type into one of an individual typical of a class by adding distinctive personal detail-the wife of Bath’s deafness, for instance. Even brief portraits can include significant detail, the Yeoman has hi St. Christopher medallion and Cook has his ulcer, just as the Prioress, who is described at length, has her pet dogs. The effectiveness of these sketches is thus greatly enhanced. The sketches are not mere assemblages of general traits, composite photographs, types in the Theophrastian sense, but contain many individual details. Says one critic: it is by their successful blending of the individual with the typical that the portraits of Chaucer’s Prologue attain so high a degree of effectiveness. The Wife of Bath is typical of certain primary instincts of women, but she is given local habitation besides Bath. And is still further individualized by he partial deafness and the pecu;iar setting of her teeth. A wholly different type of womanhood, the conventional as opposed to the natural, is furnished by the Prioress. The description of this gentle lady abounds in minute personal, individual characteristic, physical and moral; yet all these individualizing traits are at the same time suggestive of that type which finds its fullest realization in the head of a young ladies’ school. What is true of these two is also true of all the other personages of the Prologue. The details enumerated nearly always suggest at once the individual and the type.

Furthermore, the sketches develop in a casual but not discursive manner. They are models of compression in expression and selection of significant details. Often the expression has an epigrammatic pointedness which is comparable to that of Alexander Pope.

Finally, the success of these sketches is considerably due to the variety in method and attitude in the different characterizations. A sketch may be entirely general; for instance, the accounts of the Yeoman, the Physician and the Burgesses are quite in the Theophrastian manner. It may join realistic details to typical statements; for instance, the Man of Law, the Franklin, the Merchant, the Cook, and the Shipman. Or it may join specific details to idealism; for instance, the sketch of the Knight expresses the finest concepts of chivalry but joins to them the list of campaigns and the detail that he was not “gay”. It may be purely ideal, the aim being to express in the highest degree the qualities desirable in a certain rank of life; for instance, the Clerk, the Plowman, the Parson. It may represent an entirely individual character, who at most is typical of a general class of human beings; for instance, the wife of Bath. It may join satire to typical statements and possibly individual traits; for instance, the kindly satire of the Squire and the Prioress, the slightly more serious satire of the Monk, the sharper satire of the rogues, especially the Summoner, the Pardoner and the Friar. Any sketch may be lightened by humour; for instance, the Squire, the Prioress, the Manciple and the Man of Law, or it may be made more serious by a suggestion of moral disapproval as in the case of the Friar, the Summoner and the Pardoner. Indeed, the fact of variety in elements and method is hardly to be challenged. In this connection, it is worth while quoting the following opinion: “The portraits of the pilgrims are not all drawn in the same way. It is true that Chaucer endeavored to picture individuals with an outstanding peculiarity-a physical trait like the Miller’s wart, a humour like the Franklin’s love of rich dishes, or a passion like the Knight’s love of prowess and truth; but the portraits differ in kind, as well as in degree. Some of the portraits are idealized. Other portraits are so realistic that they must have been drawn from life.”

Chaucer’s success in the characterizations is due to many factors-the range of classes which his pilgrims represent, the compression resulting from a high degree of selection of details and pithiness of utterance, the use of individual details together with typical statements and the varying ways in which he combined the elements in the different descriptions. “Never before in English literature had there been anything like this company of real, unidealised, contemporary men and women; and there was to be nothing comparable again until Shakespeare began to write two hundred years later".

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The Age of Chaucer -Introduction