Basing you answer on two portraits from The General Prologue, discuss Chaucer's presentation of characters associated with the church.

Authors Avatar

Basing you answer on two portraits from The General Prologue, discuss Chaucer’s presentation of characters associated with the church.

C. Culpan

You should:

  • Explain your own views of the characters you have chosen
  • Look closely at the effects of language and imagery
  • Comment on what the portraits suggest about attitudes towards the church in Chaucer’s time.

The ‘Parson’ is again almost another ideal, like the Knight, as there were so few Priests of his genre. The first line is positive, ‘A good man was ther of religioun’. At this point in The General Prologue many words such as ‘good’ and ‘worthy’ are being used ironically showing Chaucer the Pilgrims naïveté, this however is not the case.  He was ‘povre’ indicating he does not live in wealth or extract monies from folk too readily. ‘But riche he was of hooly thought and werk’, which is obviously for the better. The contrast between ‘povre’ and ‘riche’ and what they are associated with, show what a good Christian he is. If I was living at the time of Chaucer I would like to have him as my priest! All this positive language, ‘good’, ‘riche’, ‘devoutly’, ‘benigne’, ‘wonder’ ‘ful pacient’, etc. are all piled together to bring about a cumulative impression of goodness. This technique was used earlier with the Knight.

Join now!

Excommunication was exceptionally bad, meaning you had to leave your home and were then not to be buried properly or reach Heaven. ‘Ful looth were him to cursen for his tithes’. The Priest knows the enormity of an excommunication, as others did, but does not choose to use it as a punishment, unlike others. Instead he helps those who cannot pay the tithes with his own money, ‘but rather wolde he yeven…/ Of his offring and eek of his substaunce’.

Many of his excellent qualities are used with negatives implying he atypical, unlike his colleagues; he does ...

This is a preview of the whole essay