Read the excerpt from The Canterbury Tales. But, sirs, there’s one thing I forgot to add: I’ve got relics and pardons in my bag As good as anybody in England, All given to me by the Pope’s own hand. If any here should wish, out of devotion, To make an offering, and have absolution, Let them come forward now, and kneeling down Humbly receive my blessing and pardon. What feature of medieval life is reflected in the passage?

All of Chaucer’s characters come alive through dialogue, especially the coarse miller with his licentious tale of a rich old carpenter married to a voluptuous 18-year-old girl. Nowhere is Chaucer’s talent for rendering comic incongruity more apparent than in that telling.

Since they persistently interrupt and insult each other, it is surprising that more than 20 pilgrims succeed in telling a tale. The fragile bond holding the group together is constantly threatened by quarrels and class enmity. Chaucer excels at portraying the dynamic interactions between the assorted travelers, particularly when he has one character tell a tale designed to show another in a bad light. An example of this is the elderly and irritable reeve’s vicious tale about a dishonest miller. He told it in retaliation for the miller’s tale about a stupid carpenter, and the reeve had once worked as a carpenter.

Despite the dissimilarity of the stories, there is a seamless quality to the work as a whole. The storytellers’ common destination, of course, binds the tales together. (Progress in the journey is mentioned at intervals by reference to place-names.) More important, the tales are also bound together by a cleverly woven central theme: the role of chance in human affairs. Chaucer challenges both the notion that a person controls his/her own destiny and the notion that a divine ruler dispenses happiness in proportion to a human’s merits.

Although his theme is harsh, Chaucer the poet is undeniably a celebrator of life and a lover of mankind. He gave England something that had been lacking since Anglo-Saxon times — creative writing in the vernacular that could bear comparison to anything produced on the Continent.

Even today, some 700 years after its publication, The Canterbury Tales endears itself to readers through its sparkling dialogue, acute rendering of character, sympathetic understanding of humanity and warm humor.

amosc- tgi.nyx

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