Elements of Drama and Novel in the Prologue

Chaucer had in him distinct characteristics of a novelist and a dramatist. His consummate art of story-telling in The Canterbury Tales does indicate that if he chose he could be one of the immortal novelists of the world. Chaucer proves himself a master of the art of characterization, skilful in his handling of dialogue, delighting in action, and keenly alive to the value of effective situations and climaxes. Above all, he is a master of constructive art. He is able to weld different tales into harmonious groups.

 

The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales is the prologue of modern fiction. Its characterization, realistic portrayal of life and a sort of structural unity give it the semblance of a novel in miniature. If we could take thirty per cent of Goldsmith, fifty of Fielding, and twenty of Walter Scott, and vitalize this compound with the spirit of the fourteenth century, we should get perhaps fairly near to another Chaucer. But it would be a Chaucer whose right hand wrote in prose and only his left in verse, and our formula, though it may be useful in suggesting the writers to whom Chaucer is most akin, and how modern he really is, would still be defective, for the charm of his poetry remains personal and individual. Chaucer like any other modern novelist was gifted with the ability to reveal the human heart and unravel the complexities of sentiments.

 

Like a novelist, Chaucer has a masterly art of description and narration. His portraits in the Prologue are no less vivid than the characters in any human comedy. The narrative style in the Prologue speaks of an inimitable precision and enviable literary style. The central incident is the pilgrimage which unifies the whole band of travellers to the shrine of St. Thomas into the inter-related people of a novel or the actors of a drama. Above all, it is Chaucer's stark realism and nearly complete objectivity which are the hallmarks of a modern novelist or a real dramatist of any age. The point is that Chaucer as it is evident to us in the Prologue does seem to be possessing the talents of a novelist and a dramatist. The prologues to the Tales are the counterparts of the soliloquies of Shakespeare or the monologues of Browning or the interior monologues of modern fiction writers. His negative capability matches the aesthetics of a true artist who presents his viewpoint not as a lyrical poet but as a passionate at the same time detached storyteller or playwright.

 

 

Chaucer's works contain the seeds of drama and novels. Had Chaucer been a contemporary of Shakespeare, he might well have written plays. Had he been a contemporary of Fielding, he might well have written novels. The power for both is implicit in the Canterbury Tales and adds richness to that incomparable work. Throughout the Tales, there is not only creation but interplay and clash of characters. The pilgrims, brilliantly pointed for us in the Prologue, are developed, and elaborated, some more, some less, as the poem proceeds, and always with a beautiful consistency. There is the mutual disparagement between the Miller and the Reeve, between the Summoner and the Friar; the attempt of the pardoner to make capital out of his story and his vigorous repulse by the landlord. The Wife of Bath in the immensely garrulous and entertaining dissertation upon marriage, which precedes her story, reveals herself as a full-length comedy character, and satisfies, incidentally, the curiosity of the reader as to why he was casually told, in the Prologue, that she was deaf in one ear. The Knight (perfect and gentle) finds the Monk's catalogue of historical disasters unspeakably tedious. By means of these passages of narrative and comment between the tales Chaucer keeps his characters alive, each one being aware of the rest, so that the tales themselves, though they are in fact the main body of the work, are yet but an incident in the whole.

 

 

Chaucer is indeed properly to be called a poet, but he bears a closer relation to the great English novelists than to Spenser. The scholarship which is preoccupied with exposing the derivativeness of Chaucer's poetry tends also to obscure the remarkable newness of what Chaucer has done. How new Chaucer's poetry is difficult for us to apprehend because so many of the remarkable developments in English literature since each original author has been a new development have been developments from what Chaucer did for the first time. The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde are, if one thinks back to what there was before them which they are developments from, surprisingly new works of art.

 

 

With the Canterbury Tales Chaucer inaugurates the English novel; and, moreover, the Great Tradition of it. In this dramatic-poetic novel, we see the English novel actually in being, with the characteristics of our eighteenth and nineteenth-century masterpieces. Chaucer's preoccupations here are those of the great novelists. He explores the theme of the individual's relation to the society in which he lives; launches the comedy of the clash of characters and the conflict of interest and motives; and shows the comic and ironic effects obtainable from the class distinctions felt by the newly emerged bourgeoisie associated with the growth of town life and of the trades and commerce (the Wife of Bath is the new bourgeois wife asserting her independence). He observes, as do Jane Austen and George Eliot, the changes in manners and outlook between the older generation and the new between the Knight and his son, and Franklin and his and, like them, he develops to the highest artistic level what is only in an elementary form elsewhere in his contemporaries the kind of character which distinguishes the English novel from Bunyan to Henry James characters which, while exquisitely realistic in detail, are morally and socially typical.

 

 

Chaucer's tolerant observation and relish of humanity gave him the power of representing it, which has been rarely surpassed in any respect save depth. It has been disputed whether this power is rather that of the dramatist or that of the novelist, a dispute perhaps arguing a lack of the historic sense. In the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, Chaucer would certainly have been the one, and in the mid-nineteenth the other. It would be most satisfactory if could we have his work. The author has, in fact, set himself a high task by adopting the double system above specified, and by giving elaborate descriptions of his personages before he sets them to act and speak up to these descriptions. It is a plan which, in the actual drama and the actual novel, has been found rather a dangerous one. But Chaucer discharges himself victoriously of his liabilities. And the picture of life which he has left us has captivated all good judges who have given themselves the very slight trouble necessary to attain the right point of view, from his own day to this.

 

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