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Chaucer's Pilgrims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. R. Hulbert
J. R. Hulbert*
Affiliation:
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Ark.
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Extract

In no other part of his writings was Geoffrey Chaucer more original than in the series of sketches of the pilgrims in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Though the Sources and Analogues is able to provide the source or at least an analogue for every complete tale, it gives (no information of any similar series earlier than Chaucer's time. Clearly the plan was the result of “inspiration.” Much has been written, however, on the sources of particular elements in the prologue. It may be worth while to consider in one place these and other features which contributed to the success of Chaucer's design.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 64 , Issue 4 , September 1949 , pp. 823 - 828
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1949

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References

1 (Chicago, 1941), esp. pp. 4–5. Cf. also Lowes' illuminating comments in his Geoffrey Chancer (Boston, 1934), pp. 198 ff., and the admirable discussion in F. N. Robinson's Complete Works of Chaucer (Boston, 1933), pp. 2 ff.

2 The Poetry of Chaucer (Boston, 1906), p. 161.

3 Transactions American Philological Assn. (1907), pp. 89 ff.; Some New Liglti on Chaucer (New York, 1925).

4 See Miss Rickert's note in the London Times Literary Supplement, 1932, p. 761.

5 That a careless or unconsidered reading of Manly's book could mislead a scholar of note is shown by G. R. Owst's astounding remark: “Professor Manly, we think, would hardly have ventured so rashly to suggest that Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims represent individuals of the poet's acquaintance, had he realized how thoroughly representative and even commonplace many of them are in a contemporary literature [i.e. sermons] which has been wholly neglected”—Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933), p. 330. Of course Manly realized that the characterizatiofis are not wholly individual, and he was well acquainted, as are most mediasvalists, with sermon literature. On the other hand, Professor Tupper well understood and expressed the meaning of Manly's studies; see his Types of Society in Medieval Literature (New York, 1926), p. 16.

6 Chaucer and the Mediœval Sciences (New York, 1926), pp. 79 ff.

7 Op. cit., p. 753.

8 Manly interprets “Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre” as a reference to the French Wars: Canterbury Tales by Chaucer (New York, 1928), p. 499. But the sentence is not complete. In Manly's annotated text the passage is as follows (with his punctuation) :

Ful worthy was he in his lordes werre,
And therto hadde he riden, no man ferre,
As wel in cristendom as in hethenesse,
And evere honoured for his worthynesse.
Apparently the lines are a general introduction to the list of campaigns which follows at once; the first line can hardly be separated from the following ones and understood to refer to particular expeditions in France; cristendom can mean “Pruce” and “Lettow” at least, possibly some of the other places. As the Knight could scarcely be fighting for a feudal lord in his crusades, one may suspect that “his lordes” means God's.

9 Chaucer (London, 1927), p. 152.

10 Chaucer's use of literary sources in the Prologue is not pertinent to the present discussion. I have always delighted in the skill with which Chaucer used a suggestion from the Roman de carite in his description of the Parson; see Kittredge in MLN, xii, 113 ff.