Chaucer: Realism

Literature is the mirror of its age. Supreme literary artist is one who becomes a mouthpiece
and provides a real picture of his age with its minute details. Chaucer is a perfect
representative of his age. He is in true sense a social chronicler of England. His poetry
reflects the 14th century not in fragment but as a complete whole.
Realism of Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales not gives us the impression that whatever has
been described is real in the ordinary sense of the word. Realism is not reality; it is a
collective term for the devices that give the effect of reality.
Chaucer represented life in its nakedness.
What he has given is a direct transpiration of daily life.
Chaucer's principle object of writing poetry was to portray men and women truthfully
without any exaggeration and to present an exact picture of average humanity. He painted
life as he saw it, and he saw it with so observant eye that it seems that he was viewing all
the events as well as characters through a kaleidoscope. Because of his this quality his
epoch, The Prologue of the Canterbury Tales has become one of the vivid epoch of history.
Moreover he is a man of the world so he mixes with all types of mankind and he observes
the minute peculiarities of human nature. The Canterbury Tales is not only a long poetical
piece but a social history of England. He exposes almost all the aspects of his age as well as
of the people along with the detail of their appearance, sex profession, attire and conduct.
Chaucer shed off the influence of the French and Italian models based on fantasies and
dreams, upon which he had worked for so long and entered the abundance of his own real
self. He worked like a true interpreter or chronicler, relating in a most realistic manner, the
stories he had heard, without change of wording or tone.
The setting of The Canterbury Tales is highly realistic. A pilgrimage was one of the most
common sights in the fourteenth century England. To relate the stories of these pilgrims,
Chaucer gives the illusion, not of an imaginary world, but of real one. The more real the
world of his setting is, the more his tales by contrast seems like tales, even though some to
them deal with real everyday life. Unlike Boccaccio, who in his tales quickly slips back into
frank artificiality, Chaucer held consistently to realism throughout The Canterbury Tales.
Gifted with an acute power of observation Chaucer sees things as they are, and he
possesses the art of printing them as he sees them. He does not project the tint of his likes
and dislikes, views and prejudices on what he paints.
Chaucer sees what is and paints it as he sees it.
In the portrayal of characters in The Prologue he gives us his minute and delicate records
of details in dress, behaviour, which makes it a mime of observation as from the portrait of
Prioress:
She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle,
Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe,
Wel koude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe
That no drope no fille upon hir brest.
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer has blended laughter and tears, the comic and tragic as

is found in life with such case and grace, that his story-telling seems like a veracious picture
of real life. Though his pilgrimage is remote form our experience, yet we feel that this is
what we might see if we could turn the clock back few centuries.
Chaucer as a realist presents before us in The Canterbury Tales the pulsating life of the
common people. Chaucers pilgrims talk of their purse, their love affairs or their private
fends. Their vision is confirmed to the occurrences within their parish. This is the typical
vision of the common people which is realistically presented by Chaucer in the Canterbury
Tales.
Chaucers depiction of the Shipman represents the salient features of the trade. The
Merchant is another important figure who signifies the changed conditions of Chaucerian
society.
Chaucer has introduced a number of artificial elements, but he does it so skillfully and
artistically that the impression of realism he creates, makes us forget them. He is
devilishly sly, and deceives us as he should with the most innocent air in the world.
In the words of Hazlitt:
There is not artificial, pompous display, but a strict parsimony of the poets
material like the rude simplicity of the age in which he lived.
It would be quite justifiable to call Chaucer as a realist of high rank because his principle
object has been to portray men and women trustfully without an acute power of
observation. He sees things as they are and describes them as he really sees them.

NEXT

With Realism as a representation of details from contemporary life,

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is, indeed, realistic.

Chaucer's unprecedented use of the vernacular rather than Latin or

French, as was hitherto employed in literature, provides much realistic detail
and reflects the life of the pilgrims of the time.

Moreover, his presentation of an extensive view of society is a veritable

tableau of fourteenth-century England.

In the "General Prologue," Chaucer's very subject matter--a pilgrimage-is certainly realistic as religious pilgrimages were customary.

Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage,

And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,

Details appertaining to the historical setting of the time are present as,
for example, there is an allusion to the Black Plague and Thomas a Becket,
who was martyred at Canterbury:
...they to Canterburywend,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak

Finally, Chaucer promises to provide realistic descriptions of the

pilgrims.
To inform you of the state of every one....
And who they were, and what was their degree,
And also what array they all were in;

Survey of English Literature, Online

Lecture 5: Medieval Culture with some notes on Realism and Romance,

Introduction to Geoffrey Chaucer's General Prologue to theCanterbury Tales
Hello and welcome back to English Survey on line. Today we're going to begin
the literature of Medievalism in English, that is, literature written between about 1100
and 1400 CE in Britain. I'll begin by speaking about Medieval culture, and continue by
focusing one of the great works of Medieval literature, The General Prologue to the
Canterbury Tales by one of the greatest writers in the history of England, Geoffrey
Chaucer. The Norton Anthology of English Literature prints Chaucer's text in Middle

English and is therefore somewhat difficult. Thus you will be required to read only parts
(selected portraits) of The General Prologue. We will be reading The General
Prologue over two weeks and concentrate our readings in the following way:
First week (today) we will focus on our Introduction to the Literature and Culture
of the Middle Ages. We will also discuss the Prologue on ll. 1-42. You will also receive
some online links for further work on Medievalism, Chaucer and The Canterbury
Tales and some questions to answer in your online log.
Next week we will focus on some of the colorful and representative characters
in The General Prologue, choosing from the portraits of the following characters:
the Knight, ll. 43-78; the Squire, ll. 79-100; the Prioresse, ll. 118-162; the Monk, ll.
165-207; the Friar, ll. 208-271; the Clerk, ll. 287-310; theCook, ll. 381-389; the Wife of
Bath, ll. 446-478; the Parson, 479-530; the Plowman, ll. 531-543; the Summoner, ll.
625-670, and the Pardoner, ll. 671-716, and the ending (which includes a self-portrait of
the narrator, a portrait of the host, and the suggestion of the frame-tale scheme), ll. 717860.

English Medieval History

We'll begin with a historical fact, an event that is of singular importance in the
history of British culture. In 1066 William of Normandy ("William the Conqueror")
invaded England, defeating the Anglo-Saxons and taking over the kingship of the
conquered land. His people were French-speakingNormans who came from
"Normandy" a province in Northern France. (They were originally "Northmen" who
conquered part of France from Scandinavia hundreds of years earlier.) These were a
more sophisticated and elegant people than the Anglo-Saxons. The more isolated
Germanic culture was considerably less cultivated than the civilization of the continental
Normans.
Subsequently England became a somewhat divided land full of conflicts between
the generally lower-class Saxons and the generally upper-class Normans. (A Novel like
Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, sympathetic to the stout-hearted Saxons and derisive of the
overly-refined Normans, puts this struggle into the popular form by which most people
know it.)
In any case, the Norman invasion had an enormous influence on English
literature and language. It led to the creation of the richest vocabulary of any

language on earth. The reason is that the very rich Germanic vocabulary of the AngloSaxons was now increased by the addition of the French vocabulary brought by the
Normans. What this means is that a good deal of the basic vocabulary units of the two
great language groups of Europe, theGerman (including German, Dutch, and the
Scandinavian languages), and the Latin (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and
others) united in the one enormously rich English language.
This is why writing English is both very challenging and very exciting, there are
usually many ways to say the same thing. Often one can distinguish between a
German (plainer, more down to earth) and French register (fancier, more elegant or,
perhaps, pretentious) of speech. We may say, bluntly, "I want to go home," (this is
Germanic), or, more elaborately, "I desire to return to my residence" (French). There
are, indeed, many ways to say just about anything in English.
The Normans also brought the more elaborate literatures of Europe, the
Romances of Italy and France, with them. They introduced into England, for example,
the device of rhyme (unknown to the Anglo-Saxons who preferred, as you may
remember from The Seafarer, alliteration and a steady four-beat rhythm).
Medieval Religion and Culture
The Medieval culture was deeply religious, following the Catholic, or as it was
sometimes called "High Catholic" view of life (I say High Catholic by the way because
this is the period before the great split or schism opened in Christianity between
Catholics and Protestants) . Medieval literature written before that split, takes the
point-of-view of a society united in its religious beliefs.
Let us begin by pointing to the most fundamental and organizing point in all
Catholic thinking; I am suggesting that we would focus on aphilosophical division,
a split or dichotomy, that is at the basis of the Medieval-Catholic value-system. I am
referring to the distinction between thisworld and the next, the mortal and immortal
realms, between the body and soul. We may understand this difference as the
distinction between the natural and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal.
The deeply-held conviction in the existence of two different levels of being is at the
basis of Catholic thought. Nor are the two world equivalent at all: the world of the spirit
or the soul, where one will eventually join God in the spiritual afterlife, is far higher, purer
and more worthy than the temporal (time-bound) world of the body, of society, of the
everyday (sometimes called in Medieval thought, "the world, the flesh, and the devil").
The belief in such a dichotomy creates a binary or dualistic life that takes place
on two planes of reality simultaneously. The binary divisions may be understood in

many ways, in many areas of life. For example, in terms of Religious and Moral Values,
we may divide
Charity (Latin Caritas, Hebrew Chessed :( love of God (living by the soul,
the spiritual self being the part of the human that can transcend the world) is
distinguished from
Cupidity (Latin Cupiditas, Hebrew Chemdah :( love of the world (living by
the body, the body being the part of the human that lives within the world).
In a philosophical sense we could say that Charity from a religious view is
connected to Idealism from a Philosophical view.
Idealism is the system of belief, that begins with the great Greek philosopher,
Plato, that finds a world of spiritual reality (a reality based on an idea or vision in the
mind) that exists beyond and above the world of physical reality.
The invisible world, the "idea" world, the Eidos, in Greek, is higher, purer, more
perfected than the physical world. In the tradition of the Western, Judeo-Christian
culture, belief in one God in religion goes together with idealism in philosophy. A strict
moral system usually goes together with a strict religious belief.
From a socioeconomic point of view Catholicism was Feudal, it believed in the old
Aristocratic system where there were only 3 legitimate classes,the Clergy, the
Aristocracy, and the Peasantry. It was an austere, narrow way of looking at the
world.
At the same time Cupiditas, the love of this world, the placing of value on the
pleasures and profits of this world, is connected to Realism orMaterialism in
philosophy. The worldly philosophy, the belief in the primacy of the surrounding physical
world goes together with a less religious world-view. Morality tends to be less strict and
rigid, more individual and liberal if not downright dishonest, when religious belief is less
present.
Protestantism was more open to newer economic and social trends partly
because it believed less in the officers of the church as mediators between man and
God. (Martin Luther the originator of Protestantism found much corruption among the
leaders of the Catholic church.) So Protestantism went together with a more realistic
world view, with the rise of the Middle Class, and with a more open
view.
The strict Christian interpretation of the two worlds, of the higher world of charity
and the lower world of cupidity, sees God's world as infinitely superior to man's
world. The strict believer, the devoted worshipper, shows disdain and even contempt

for the actual physical world of man. This is sometimes called the Pauline view,
named after St. Paul, one of the earliest fathers or the Christian church, who was very
devoted to Christian ideals and beliefs. Strict Catholicism was idealistic and believed in
Charity. Protestantism, which could also be very strict, still seemed to leave more room
for an open view of life.
The Ideal and the Actual Worlds Reflected in Literature, Realism and
Romance in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
So we can say that Medievalism examines two different groups of values. We
have the ideal world, the world of love and sacrifice, which we callCaritas,
Charity, love of God, and we have the actual world, the world of appetites and
desires, Cupiditas, Cupidity, where love of pleasure and profit, what we might
call love of self, dominates.
Indeed we can now design or dichotomy or dualistic way of organizing the world in
the following way:
The world (that is, the experience of human beings in the world) may be divided
into:
Charity
Cupidity
Ideal
Actual
Love of God Love of Self
Sacrifice
Profit
We also said recognizing that this is only a scheme and reality is more
complicated than this, that Catholicism is more oriented toward the Ideal and
Protestantism more oriented toward the actual. Hence we can also say that the old
Agrarian Feudalism is associated more, on the whole, with Catholicism, while the newer
Mercantile Capitalism is more connected to Protestantism.
If we turn to Chaucer we find that there are traditions of Realism and Romance in
literature that reflect the two worlds of the Ideal and the Actual.
Romance // Ideal
Realism // Actual
Medieval Romance is a genre that emphasizes the faith of the Christian as he
undertakes a quest in search of the Ideal. The hero, a young knight like Sir Gawain
in Gawain and the Green Knight is one who has to prove his love of God, by proving
himself superior to the temptations of the flesh, as Gawain does, in a threatening

world. The romance is altogether stylized, with special formulas showing the proper
behavior of the hero, and showing he different kinds of dragons, monsters, witches, and
giants he will encounter. The romance also involves the convention known as Courtly
or Chivalric Love. According to this view of love, inspired by early romances from
Provence, an area of Southern France, and developed by the great Italian sonneteer,
Francisco Petrarch, the woman is an idealized figure, infinitely above the man, who
abases (lowers) himself, feels he is infinitely beneath the woman.
In the Christian Courtly love tradition, the man transfers his love of God to love of
woman. But his love for her is pure and spiritual (this is the love known as Agap) not
physical and worldly (the love known as Eros).
The romantic quest for the ideal may be interpreted as the motive behind
the Pilgrimage (Aliyah b'Regel ( which provides the plot and story of many
Medieval works.
Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales tells the story of a Pilgrimage
and it that sense it has a romance element and is part of the world of Charitas. All of
these people are seeking out the tomb of Sir Thomas A Becket, a man of the Church
who died a martyr having put God above his king. So we have an element of Christian
romance in the way Chaucer builds his poem.
At the same time, the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales introduces a whole series of
other narratives, a great many stories. There are 29 pilgrims and Chaucer tells us that
each of them was meant to tell two going and two returning:
That eech of you, to shorte with our waye
In this viage, shal tellen tales twaye*
*two
To Canterburyward, I mene it so,
And hoomward he shal tellen othere two
So there should have been (how good are you at math?) 116 tales altogether. Well,
actually Chaucer wrote 29 (it's interesting how many great works are unfinished
Shubert's famous symphony is only one of many cases). And those 29 covered many
of the genres know to Medieval literature, from romance to sermon to fable to satirical
and ribald works. But the frame tale itself gathers a whole bunch of Medieval people,
from the good to the bad, the well-bred to the rowdy, the devoted clergyman to the
deliberate swindler, the drunkard and the the thief. In that way the Medieval frame-tale
structure is in the genre of Realism, it is about the actual world and seems to be leaving
the highly stylized, formal world of High Catholic Idealism.

Chaucer, an incredible genius of letters if there ever was one (personally I would
place him as the second greatest of English writers, greater than Milton or Wordsworth
or Dickens, although of course, no one can quite match Shakespeare) creates a
gigantic Medieval literary structure, The Canterbury Tales, which has everything,
realism, romance, satire, lyricism, Catholic motifs and pre-Protestant themes, an
amazing work.
Perhaps that's enough for today. What I want you to do in your online-log as you
prepare for next week's lecture is answer a few study questions:
1. What are the different reasons the narrator gives for the decision, by the various
people he meets, to go on a "Pilgrimage." Do the pilgrims live more according to
the values of the ideal world or the actual world? How do we know this?
2. Choose 5 from among the pilgrims we will focus on (check list above, p. 46). For
each pilgrim choose one detail about them their clothes, their speech, their
horses, their possessions reproduce it and say what you about its
significance. Is this a positive or a negative figure for Chaucer?
3. Which Pilgrim do you like the best? Which do you like the least? Why
4. Are these real people or some sort of stylized types of people. How do these two
categories go together with the notion that there are two different worlds in
Chaucer, the ideal and the actual.