Discuss The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales as a picture gallery of the 14th century English Society.

Answer

Discuss “The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales” as a picture gallery of the 14th century English Society. 

Or, Discuss Chaucer as a representative poet. 

Or, How does Chaucer portray contemporary society in the General Prologue?

Or, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales” as a Picture of Contemporary Society. Discuss.

Or, Chaucer represents his age not in fragments but almost completely. Discuss.  

Literature contains the contemporary tendencies of an age. A literary artist, through the quality of his literary work, becomes the mouthpiece of his age. Pope represents the eighteenth century, the Age of Neoclassicism (1660-1785), Tennyson to the Victorian era (1837-1901), and Wordsworth the Romantic age (1798-1832). Like Wordsworth, Pope, and Tennyson, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) represents his age through his authentic literary work “The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.” He is truly the social chronicler of England in the late fourteenth century. His poetry reflects fourteenth-century England not in fragments but as a complete whole.

Other poets of his age had limited knowledge and attention to their time. But Chaucer was different. In his works, he presents a picture of corruption in the Church, religious hypocrisy, the frivolity of women, a materialistic outlook, political conditions, trade, and so on, making him the representative poet of his time.

Political Landscape: In the “General Prologue to Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer realistically presents the political conditions of his times. He refers to the “Peasant’s Revolt” of 1381 in the Clerk’s Tale and again in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. In the Clerk’s Tale, he refers to the ‘stormy people’, their levity, untruthfulness, indiscretion and fickleness, talkativeness, and foolishness. 

Religious Apostasy: Through the ecclesiastical or religious characters in “The General Prologue to Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer vividly represents the church’s condition and its ministers in his age. Instead of devoting their time and energy to religious meditation, the clergymen have shown their love for money, corruption, and a materialistic outlook.

There are seven wicked ecclesiastical characters in “ The General Prologue to Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer could not tolerate