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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