House of Notes

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

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 sai

The Prologue as a Picture of Fourteenth Century England Apart from its great poetical and literary merits, The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales forms a wonderful commentary upon English life in the Middle Ages . Dryden has beautifully remarked that Chaucer 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 humours of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. Leguois says, "Chaucer...is truly the social chronicler of England at the end of fourteenth century. What he has given is a direct transcription of daily life, taken in the very act, and in its most familiar aspects." The same critic adds : "Chaucer's work is the most precious document for whoever wishes to evoke a picture of life as it then was." The fact is that Chaucer had intimate knowledge of the crosscurrents of English society of his time. His keen observa

                                      Discuss Chaucer as a Humourist?                                               Chaucer Humour. Chaucer, the born humourist, is called a first great multi-sided humourist of Europe. His humour does not only compel us to laugh but actually he is a monarch of many-sided humour. According to One Critic,                               “Chaucer is a great renaissance gentleman mocking the middle ages” Chaucer’s humour can be used to a large extent. The first impressive trait of his humour is his humanism because he loves mankind with their merits and demerits without any sense of enmity. But his attitude displays kindness and tolerance. For instance, We find his humanistic attitude towards The Doctor of Medicine who cures his patient by natural magic. There is none like him expert in surgery and medicine . But he loves gold very much.                    “For gold in physics is cordial                    So he loved gold in special.”