General Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Tales General Prologue

An Analysis of Chaucer's General Prologue

Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales sets the scene for the numerous stories that follow. By drawing a parallel between the arrival of spring (April showers, the awakening of life) and the desire of English pilgrims to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, Chaucer connects the journey of the "palmers" (petitioners, men and women at prayer) to the awakening of a new spirit, of life, of grace in the soul. If the April rains draw flowers from their buds, so too does God's grace seem to draw the English people from their homes (now that winter and March have passed) into the outdoors, where the sun and the fresh air urge them to give thanks to God by visiting England's favorite saint in Canterbury, "the holy blessed martyr," St. Thomas Beckett.

The General Prologue introduces the reader to the various characters whom Chaucer will depict throughout the Tales. There is the Knight and Squire, the members of the clergy (the Prioress, the Monk, the Friar and the Parson), the laborers (the Cook and Plowman) and many others. Every class and walk of life is represented by Chaucer, who lends his own voice to the General Prologue, describing in the first-person how he has arrived at the inn at the same time as this diverse band of pilgrims and how he joins them for the remainder of the journey to Canterbury.

The actual details of the pilgrimage are not the subject of the Prologue nor of the Tales but merely provide the reason for their existence. While the pilgrimage certainly has an objective (and each pilgrim a different goal, some holier than others), Chaucer's idea is to divide the work into individual stories, each one told by a different pilgrim, each one supposed to be edifying, yet some more (or less) edifying than others. The General Prologue sets out the theme of the work, which is presented by a merry man at the inn: he suggests that the pilgrims have a merry time on their journey by telling merry stories. The destination is a holy and venerated site, one that should inspire devotion, a spirit of penance, and peace; and it is fitting that a merry man should be the one to invite the other pilgrims to the game of the telling tales.

Unlike Dante's pilgrimage through the afterlife, which tends toward a much more spiritual focus, Chaucer's pilgrimage is earthly in the sense that its main focus is on human nature, in all its different shapes and sizes. If Dante analyzes the effects of sin and virtue on the human soul by viewing them from the realm of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, Chaucer analyzes the effects of sin and virtue on the human soul by viewing them from the everyday people he meets on a pilgrimage to a real place in real time: Canterbury.