The Pilgrim In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of frame tales written near the end of the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer. The tales within the story all usually have one or more underlying themes and are meant to teach a lesson. Themes in the stories of The Canterbury Tales include greed, foolishness, flattery, marriage, and evil. The people telling the tales in the story are pilgrims on a holy journey to Canterbury. These pilgrims are resting at the Tabard Inn which is owned by the host who is the narrator of the story and leads the telling of the tales. George Lyman Kittredge described how Chaucer mainly intended to write The Canterbury Tales to personify the pilgrims in the story. Kittredge described how the various dispositions of the pilgrims

This is a very logical and analytical point considering how detailed Chaucer described the pilgrim's physical features and personalities in the general prologue and the prologue of each tale. A quote in which Kittredge described Chaucer’s attention to detail is “He had the genius to create the pilgrims, endowing each of them with an individuality that goes much beyond the typical” (Kittredge 421). In this quote Kittredge described how Chaucer’s superior characterizations of the pilgrims sets him apart from the average author. Kittredge argued that since Chaucer’s description of the characters of the story were so detailed and since the characters were most likely based off of real people, then describing the character to be true to life must have been the reason for Chaucer writing The Canterbury Tales. A quote in which Kittredge clearly described what Chaucer bases The Canterbury Tales on is “the pilgrims do not exist for the sake of the stories, but vice versa” (Kittredge 421). In this quote Kittredge described what he believed to be Chaucer’s key motivation for writing the tales. One would agree with Kittredge that a reason why Chaucer wrote the Canterbury tales was to enliven the characters who were based upon likely real people with whom Chaucer interacted with in his life, but it is

An example of Chaucer’s use of character description in the general prologue about the Miller is “broad, knotty, and short-shouldered, he would boast...His Nostrils were as black as they were wide...His mighty mouth was like a furnace door” (Chaucer 18). In this quote, Chaucer is personifying the Miller through his detailed description of him and this description of him strongly correlates with his personality and the tale that he told. This is because the Miller was described as boastful which would explain why he told his tale without care as to whether it would offend anyone in the room. Kittredge believed that Chaucer’s detailed use of character description, as seen above, to personify the pilgrims and make them seem real is what drove Chaucer in creating The Canterbury Tales; however, as stated above Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales for a multitude of reasons and not solely to enliven the characters of the story. Another example of Chaucer's use of character description in the general prologue about the Pardoner is “There was no pardoner of equal grace, For in his trunk he had a pillow-case.Which he asserted was Our Lady’s veil” (Chaucer 22). In this quote Chaucer describes the Pardoner as fraudulent through his detailed character descriptions. The Pardoner’s trait of being fraudulent is reflected upon ironically in the tale he tells,