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Characters In The Canterbury Tales

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A: Chaucer’s has portrayed all the pilgrims in “The prologue of the Canterbury tales” with great complexity. By reading the prologue we can say that Chaucer had first observed the people of the 14th century and their lifestyle with great depth and then he wrote the prologue. He has observed different people holding different ranks in his society. Because of his deep and close observations of the knights, the squires, the millers, etc, he was able to develop such a realistic portrayal of the pilgrims in the prologue. I have selected three characters from The General Prologue to analyze that whether they are depicted as “type” or “Individuals”. The characters that I have selected are The Knight, The Squire and The Miller. Chaucer has provided …show more content…

Also the great battles (mentioned in The Prologue) The Knight took part in also display a typical image of heroism and Knighthood to some extent. To The Squire Chaucer has added traits that are all these three elements combined. These elements are typicality, individuality and universality. Squires were viewed as young men who had reached the age of puberty and had taken their first step towards manhood. The care of the squires handed over from the medieval ladies to the knights. Apart from the chivalrous training the squires were also taught how to play music and how to dance. The squires of the medieval period were raised in such a manner that they posed to be very daring and active (Alchin, 2017). “And wonderly delyvere, and of greet strengthe.” This line typifies The Squire as the youth always poses to be more active and displays more strength. This also brings universality to the character as the youth of every generation has a lot of ambition and passion for what they do. The youth has poses more passion as compared to people of other age

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