The General Prologue - The Canterbury Tales Essay -- English Literatur

The customary Prologue - The Canterbury TalesThe General PrologueThe most popular part of the Canterbury Tales is the General Prologue,which has long been admired for the lively, individualized portraitsit offers. more than recent criticism has reacted against this approach,claiming that the portraits are indicative of social types, part of atradition of social satire, estates satire, and insisting that theyshould not be canvas as individualized character portraits like those ina novel. that it is sure that Chaucers capacity of human sympathy,like Shakespeares, enabled him to go beyond the conventions of his age and create images of individualized human subjects that tolerate beenfound not and credible but endearing in every period from his featureuntil now.It is the General Prologue that serves to establish firmly theframework for the entire story-collection the pilgrimage that risks be turned into a tale- prescribeing competition. The title GeneralPrologue is a modern invent ion, although a few manuscripts call itprologus. There are very few major(ip) textual differences between thevarious manuscripts. The structure of the General Prologue is a transparentone. After an elaborate introduction in lines 1 - 34, the narratorbegins the serial publication of portraits (lines 35 - 719). These are followed bya report of the phalanxs suggestion of a tale-telling combat and itsacceptance (lines 720 - 821). On the following morning the pilgrimsassemble and it is resolute that the Knight shall tell the first tale(lines 822 - 858).Nothing indicates when Chaucer began to compose the General Prologueand there are no variations between manuscripts that might suggestthat he revised it after making an initial version. It... ...ed ifhe does not fix up nation in the order of their social rank, My wit isshort, ye may closely understand. This persona continues to profess theutter naivety that we have already noteworthy in his uncriticaldescriptions of the pilgrims.I t is in this way, too, that we should approach the conclusion of thePrologue. Here the Host of the Tabard Inn (Harry Bailey, a historicalfigure) decides to go with them and ironically it is he, not Chaucer,who proposes the story-telling contest that gives the framework of theTales. He will also be the ultimate value of which is the best ofbest sentence and most solas. He is, after all, sound prepared by hisjob to know about the tales people tell One model for the literarycompetition would seem to be the meetings of people interested inpoetry, known in French as puys, with which Chaucer would have beenfamiliar.