General Prologue, The

(ca. 1386)

   Geoffrey CHAUCER’s CANTERBURY TALES opens with one of the most famous introductions in literary history, the narrative poem commonly known as the General Prologue. Composed in rhyming couplets of iambic pentameter lines, the poem divides into three main parts, each of which helps to establish a context for the events of the Canterbury Tales. The first part, just five sentences long, indicates that the story takes place in the springtime, when people go on pilgrimages; introduces the narrator’s distinctive voice; and locates the collection’s opening scene in the Tabard Inn in Southwark, across the River Thames from London (Benson 1987, 23, ll. 1–42), where English pilgrims gather to journey to Canterbury. A central section provides descriptions of 27 pilgrims who will be the narrator’s companions (Benson 1987, 23–34, ll. 43–714). The final part is the most disparate: It opens with an apology in which the narrator disclaims responsibility for any off-color content, adds the character description of the Host who will lead the company, and closes by introducing Chaucer’s central narrative device—the pilgrims will participate in a storytelling contest (Benson 1987, 34–36, ll. 715–858).

   The 18-line opening sentence is as moving as it is syntactically brilliant: When April’s sweet showers pierce the drought of March and Nature awakens, then people yearn to go on pilgrimage, and in England this means a trip to St. Thomas’s shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. In this intensely lyrical sentence Chaucer articulates the spiritual frame for his book: The journey to Canterbury replicates the passage from drought to moisture, from winter to spring, from sickness to health. The following sentences are typical of Chaucer’s technique as they do three important things at once: They indicate the narrative’s spiritual and spatial movement from tavern to cathedral, they introduce the narrator’s self-deprecating voice, and they announce the presence of a congenial company of “sondry folk” (Benson 1987, 23, l. 25), the assorted travelers whom Chaucer will now introduce.

   The heart of the General Prologue is a descriptive list of the pilgrims who will travel together and tell stories. Twenty-seven pilgrims are portrayed in terms of their profession (“whiche they weren”), rank (“of what degree”), and appearance (“in what array that they were inne”) (Benson 1987, 24, ll. 40–41). The company comprises members of the three estates that traditionally categorized medieval social classes—those who fight, those who pray, and those who plow—along with a large group of those new people whom Chaucer apparently found fascinating: tradesmen and professionals. The general ordering of the pilgrims is loosely hierarchical. A Knight is pictured first, along with his son, a Squire, and his servant, a Yeoman. A group of major ecclesiastical figures are described next: a Prioress accompanied by a Nun and three priests, followed by a Monk and a Friar. Then come four high-level professionals (Merchant, Clerk, Lawyer, and Franklin), followed by five guildsmen (Haberdasher, Carpenter,Weaver,Dyer, and Tapestry weaver) and their Cook. The list continues with three more modest professionals (Shipman, Physician, and Wife) and two men from the countryside: a Parson and a Plowman. The final group of portraits includes five disreputable clerics and tradesmen (Miller, Manciple, Reeve, Summoner, and Pardoner).

   The genre of the portraits is that of ESTATES SATIRE, a form in which writers satirize the various occupations by highlighting characteristic failings and abuses. Chaucer recasts the genre by individualizing the pilgrims’ activities and appearance, and by relaying the portraits in a deadpan voice that makes it unclear whether a particular pilgrim is being mocked, praised, or simply described. The closing section of the General Prologue opens with an apology: Chaucer disingenuously asks readers not to blame him for the vulgar language that some pilgrims will employ in their tales. In this disclaimer of responsibility for the realistic voices and characters that he has created, Chaucer blurs the line between fiction and fact, as it is the quality of Chaucer’s mimetic artistry that makes the Canterbury Tales such an effective evocation of the variety of life and thought in late 14th-century England.

   The final character introduced in the General Prologue is the Host, later identified as Harry Bailly. Having a tavernkeeper lead the pilgrimage accents Chaucer’s audacious intermingling of serious spiritual concerns and playful worldly matters. A similar fusing of the thoughtful and the pleasurable underscores the rules Harry proffers for a storytelling contest to entertain the pilgrims as they travel. The pilgrims are asked to tell “Tales of best sentence and moost solaas” (Benson 1987, 36, l. 798), that is, stories offering both the most valuable message and the greatest enjoyment. The balance between delight and instruction mirrors that between the tavern in Southwark and the cathedral in Canterbury, the two poles in the pilgrims’ journey. Fashioning a narrative that engages a reader even as it raises complex and politically sensitive issues is Chaucer’s accomplishment in the General Prologue, as it is in the Canterbury Tales as a whole.

   Bibliography

   ■ Benson, Larry D., et al., ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

   ■ Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

   ■ Morgan, Gerald. “Moral and Social Identity and the Idea of Pilgrimage in the General Prologue,” Chaucer Review 37 (2003): 285–314.

   ■ Nolan, Barbara. “ ‘Poet Ther Was’: Chaucer’s Voices in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales,” PMLA 101 (1986): 154–169.

   ■ Wallace, David. “The General Prologue and the Anatomy of Associational Form.” In Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy, 65–82. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997.

   David Raybin