Chaucer's constructional methods in the general prologue

Abstract

A great deal has been written about the framework of The Canterbury Tales, and the superiority of Chaucer's product to other mediaeval collections of tales, by Boccaccio or Sercambi; the results are admirably summarised in the introduction to Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Something has also been said about the various categories into which the individual portraits fall; J.M.Manly in Some New Light on Chaucer discusses Chaucer's debt to the characters of actual contemporary personages, while W.C. Curry in Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences establishes a physiognomical bridge between the outward physical appearance of certain pilgrims and their inward moral qualities. But even such valuable contributions as these have been put forward as single theses, and not considered as alternative methods of presenting character. I believe - and hope to show hereafter- that Chaucer consciously rang the changes on a number of different methods of building up his individual portraits. Thirdly, very little, if anything, has been written about Chaucer's artistry of arrangement in positioning his portraits within the framework of the General Prologue.