Table of contents Introduction

Chapter 2. Composition of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Chaucer and Boccaccio The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of short stories written towards the end of the writer's life, written in Middle English. This collection of short stories is not completed. In literary criticism, The Canterbury Tales is called a cyclical collection of short stories. Any national literature begins its formation with examples of small prose - a story, an essay, a story and, of course, a short story [16]. Modern researchers of the literary process are not unanimous in defining the concept of a short story. Some confine themselves to an inductive description of short stories and a statement of brevity as its main genre feature, analyzing the number of words contained in a particular work. Others take as a basis not the volume of the work as a whole, but the volume of its plot. At the same time, the issue of the origin of the short story is of increased interest, since in the historical projection, as a rule, the dominant features of the genre are revealed. However, many researchers talk about a long and continuous tradition of the novelistic genre, which allows us to trace its features at all stages of its development [16].
It should be noted that English researchers of the phenomenon of short story and its varieties use in their monographic works a whole set of concepts and terminological designations - story, short story, long short story novella, novellette, tale, brief tale, fragment, abbreviated fiction - between which it is sometimes difficult to draw clear edge. The very concept of "short story" as a designation of a literary genre was established at the end of the 19th century in connection with the flourishing of short stories. Nevertheless, the question of the ambiguity and ambiguity of this term was raised already in the 30s of the 20th century. So, for example, Henry Seidel Canby points out the uncertainty of the concept of "short story" [7]. In Russian literary criticism, the question of the genre distinction between a short story and a short story is relevant: a short story is characterized by an attraction to unusual situations, a rapid development of the action, an unexpected denouement, the integrity of the impression, formal accuracy and conciseness. On the contrary, the story is distinguished by the simplicity of the plot, the slowness of the action, the greater descriptiveness and the variety of forms [48].
Medieval plots in the Decameron were not simply expounded, they were retold, while they lost the scenario schematism of religious “examples”, medieval “novellinos”, urban anecdotes. With all these forms of narration, a completely new narrative extension was acquired [76]. A.N. Veselovsky wrote about it this way: “The point is not in repeating ready-made narrative schemes, but in their combinations, if they meet aesthetic goals, in a new light, in analysis materials, in the initiative that makes us talk about Boccaccio as one of the founders of artistic realism” [21].
Boccaccio's collection, as well as Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, contains both a common anecdote, a knightly story, and episodes of a modern scandalous chronicle. However, unlike Chaucer, in the Decameron all these stories are retold in the same carefully calibrated language, distinguished by sweetness, harmony, although a certain artificiality [76]. Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . More The novel "Boccaccio" is based on the strict unity of the external structure. Boccaccio's short stories are characterized by a prosaic, neutral style, while typically tense, sharp action, plot drama is highlighted. The action of the short stories unfolds in everyday life, but the plot itself tends to be unusual, to a sharp violation of the regularity of everyday life. Goethe defined the short story as "one extraordinary incident" [84].
In general, the composition of The Decameron is similar to a collection of oriental tales like The Thousand and One Nights, where the framing collection, the “frame”, has an exclusively service character, often ornamental, where short stories are nested into each other and into frames like nesting dolls. But the framing of the Decameron has its own aesthetic necessity. By themselves, the short stories in the Decameron are not isolated, this work is quite integral. Framing involves the accumulation of short stories from the inside, acts as an organic part of the overall artistic structure [84].
It does "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer similar to "The Decameron". Boccaccio manages not only to collect stories with their rethinking, but also to show how this process took place. Compositionally, the “frame” appears in a completely new quality: within the frame, individualism develops into a historically new social phenomenon. At the same time, in the Decameron, the framing itself is complex, two-stage. The first stage is the author's "I" of Boccaccio himself, in the second stage the humanistic integrity of the vision of the world is aesthetically embodied. In addition, one can distinguish a fairly close connection between the narrators in the Decameron and the author's "I" of Boccaccio himself [76]. The narrators themselves are similar to each other in ways of presentation. Until now, among literary critics (studies by A.N. Veselovsky, A.K. Dzhivelegov, V.E. Krusman, M.P. Alekseev, A.A. Anikst, Yu.M. Saprykin, G.V. Anikin, N .P. Michalskaya, etc.) there is an established opinion that The Canterbury Tales were written under the influence of Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . Order a diploma "Decameron". We examined the features of Boccaccio's Decameron, now we turn to understanding the compositional correspondences of the works of Boccaccio and Chaucer. Opens the work of Chaucer's "General Prologue", where the appearances of the characters appear. It is in the Prologue that the author sets the main compositional principle, which will be used in what follows. Pilgrims are invited to tell entertaining stories, and it is these stories that serve as complete poetic short stories.
In general, it can be said that the Canterbury Tales belongs to the ancient genre tradition of a collection of short stories, short stories, which are united by a common plot “frame”. In this case, such a frame is the situation of the conversation, the alternation of narrators. However, it should be borne in mind that this rather widespread tradition, in which a large number of works of world literature were created, underwent important changes under the pen of Geoffrey Chaucer. The author strives to convey the main plot from a position of greater naturalness, greater significance, which allows for more natural framing of inserted short stories. In addition to the general prologue, the characteristics of the pilgrims are also contained in the prologues that immediately precede their stories [22]. The dynamic and graphic plot gives Chaucer the opportunity to use or parody almost all genres of medieval literature. So, one of the main genre components of this work is the short story we have already described. However, in addition to the short story, the work contains elements of many other medieval genres. The knight tells the story in the spirit of a chivalric novel. The abbess tells the legend of a tortured Christian boy - this is already a genre of life. The carpenter, on the other hand, tells a funny and obscene story in the spirit of modest urban folklore, reminiscent of the fablio genre. The stories of the monastery chaplain and the steward have a fable character. The story of the seller of indulgences contains elements of a folk tale and a parable. When considering the composition of the work, it should be noted that all the stories of the pilgrims appear as if by chance, follow from the circumstances of the conversations, while each of them complements or sets off the previous narrative, which closely connects them with the framing “frame”, the short story [17].
We can say that the compositional innovation of Geoffrey Chaucer is a synthesis of genres within the framework of one work. Almost every story has its own, unique genre specificity, which makes The Canterbury Tales a kind of "encyclopedia" of medieval genres [76]. In the work "Decameron" Boccaccio brings to high perfection only one genre - a small prose story-short story that existed before him in Italian literature [76].
Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . Diploma price Boccaccio in The Decameron relies on Latin medieval storybooks, on oriental fanciful parables; often they are told small French stories with humorous content, the so-called "fablios" or "fablios". However, Chaucer goes much further, as we see in his Canterbury Tales. Boccaccio's work "The Decameron" is not just a collection of one hundred short stories, it is an artistic and ideological whole, which is thought out and built in accordance with a certain plan. The short stories in the Decameron do not follow each other randomly, but in a certain order, which is quite strictly thought out. Fastens these short stories, as we have already noted, framing the story, the introduction to the book, a kind of compositional core. With such a construction, the narrators of various short stories act as participants in a framing, introductory story [84]. In general, it can be noted that it is possible that Geoffrey Chaucer, in creating The Canterbury Tales, borrowed the compositional technique used earlier by Boccaccio in creating "Decameron". And yet, Chaucer reveals closer links between the individual stories and their framing narrative. Geoffrey Chaucer strives for greater significance and naturalness of the main plot, which frames the "inserted" short stories, which is absent in the work of Boccaccio. poet character narrative short story Chaucer's work, despite the same composition as the Decameron and the presence of several random plot coincidences, can be called completely unique. It should be noted that in stories that are comparable in plot to Boccaccio, Chaucer always narrates in more detail, more expanded and detailed, in many moments it appears more saturated, begins to have more drama and significance. And if one can speak in relation to the Canterbury Tales of the relative genre diversity of this work, in comparison with it, the Decameron is a work where only the novelistic genre is represented, although brought to perfection [76].
But, of course, this does not mean that the work of Boccaccio is of much less value for world literature. Each writer has his own tasks, each work carries its own specific mission. Thus, Boccaccio, with his Decameron, destroys the religious and ascetic worldview, giving an unusually bright, complete, versatile reflection of contemporary Italian reality. Boccaccio manages to bring out a whole gallery of figures that he took from different sectors of society, and endow them with typical features. It was the Decameron by Boccaccio that made it possible to establish the short story as an independent full-fledged genre, and the Decameron, which was imbued with the spirit of modern national culture, began to act as a model for many generations of not only Italian but also European writers, which we see in the example of Chaucer. For a better understanding of the composition of The Canterbury Tales, you can compare it with Chaucer's The Legend of Exemplary Women. In The Legend and The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer gives two structurally different solutions to the problem of framed composition. In the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the motive is to entertain the pilgrims going to Canterbury. "Legend" combines a love vision (in the Prologue) with a collection of stories, while the General Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales" suggests a real situation. In addition, there is a difference in the mode of presentation: the stories of the "Legend" are told by the narrator, who is probably Chaucer himself. They are united by a thematic thread, but there are no "dramatic" connections between them based on action. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer appears as one of the storytelling pilgrims and at the same time as a storyteller-reporter. In Chaucer's collection there is a dramatic action, although it is characterized by fragmentary and incompleteness, which, nevertheless, connects each story with the next (such patterns can be traced in relation to a number of stories) [12].
The Legend of Good Women consists of a Prologue and nine legends. In the Prologue to The Legend, Chaucer tried to suggest a structural motivation for framing the collection of stories. The figure of Alceste was meant to provide the motivation for telling the legends. It was a bold attempt on the part of the poet to combine a vision with a collection of stories. Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . More The plot frame of The Canterbury Tales is somewhat different. Host Harry Bailey invents a challenge game to keep pilgrims entertained on their long journey to and from Canterbury: Each one has two stories to tell, but that's not all. At the end of the journey, the one who told the most instructive and interesting story will be rewarded with a dinner that promises to be luxurious. In other words, this is a kind of "travel" literary competition based on oral storytelling, with the prospect of a gastronomic award. But events do not unfold according to plan: the pilgrims do not reach Canterbury, let alone return; and the prize lunch will also not take place. At the end of the twenty-fourth story, the host announces that only one story is missing to complete his plan. And it is told, or rather, preached, by the Pastor, and under the influence of his sermon, the author introduces a renunciation, in which the author of the book is implicitly presented, trying to confess for those sinful stories that were told. He thanks God for the religious works he wrote, for the translation The Consolations of Philosophy by Boethius. And finally, he himself prepares himself for repentance and rebirth, which, he hopes, will grant him salvation on the Day of Judgment [58].
Thus, the Canterbury Tales, although not finished, still has an ending somewhat different from what Harry Bailey intended, organizing the action of the entire narrative. And yet the stories do not have a perfect architectural sequence: they are unconnected fragments of various sizes, preceded by a "General Prologue". One can find explanations for such contradictions. First of all, of course, this is the hasty approach of the death of the author. In addition, some literary scholars explained this by the fact that the author was organically unable to complete his own work. In the very structure of the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrimage lies the hidden allegorical meaning in which the pilgrimage to Canterbury appears as the pilgrimage of human life to Jerusalem, the Heavenly City [39]
Novels, quite diverse in nature, in "Canterbury Tales" merge into a single poetic whole; as a result, Chaucer's skill is manifested in creating a vivid, realistically truthful picture of English reality [18]. He manages to reveal the era through the appearance of the people representing it, to show many details, a large number of details of a domestic nature, especially the writer succeeds in fluent, but accurate portrait characteristics of the characters in the work. Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free.
More Chaucer manages to create images-role. He periodically creates such images on the basis of professional-class characteristics with a mismatch between the characters. Its typification is achieved through duplication, based on the multiplication of similar images. For example, Absolon from The Miller's Tale can be imagined in the role of a minister of religion - a lover. Absolon is a church clerk, a semi-spiritual person, but he turns his thoughts "not to God, but to pretty parishioners." The prevalence of such an image in literature is shown, in addition to the material of a large number of French fablios, by one of the folk ballads from the collection “Secular lyrics of the XlVth and XVth centuries”. In this ballad, the behavior is sufficiently similar to the actions of Absolon [17].
As a result, the repetition of the image makes such an image of the character really typical for that time. On the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales, representatives of different walks of life go. Let's "sort" them according to their social status, which can be represented by the following groups: High society (representatives - Knight, Squire, church ministers); Scientists (representatives - Doctor, Lawyer); Landowners (rep. Franklin); Owners (representatives - Melnik, Majordom); Merchant class (representatives - Skipper, Merchant); Artisans (representatives - Dyer, Carpenter, Weaver, and so on); Lower class (representative Plowman). As we have already noted, practically every pilgrim is introduced to the reader in the General Prologue, somewhere simply mentioning his presence, or the pilgrim is introduced in the details of his character: And so, while my modest story has not yet tired ears and eyes, I think it would be appropriate To tell you all that I know About my companions: what is their appearance, And the title, and what who is famous for Or why remains in oblivion; Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . More Let the Knight open my list. That knight was a worthy man. Since the first raid he went, He did not disgrace the knightly family;
He loved honor, courtesy and freedom; He was diligent and zealous vassal. And rarely has anyone been to so many places. The baptized and even the infidels Recognized his valor in battle. For example, the abbess is described by the author as follows: Among them was also the Abbess - Guardian of noble novices and headmistress. Mother Eglantina softened the chill of the monastic rank With a timid smile. In her mouth the most terrible blasphemy It sounded like this: "I swear by the holy Elua." And, listening to the neighbor's conversation, she kept humming Mass in her nose; And she spoke French fluently, as they teach in Stratford, and not in a funny Parisian hurried accent. She kept herself dignified at the table: Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities).
Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . Diploma price He will not choke on strong liquor, Dipping his fingers a little in the gravy, He will not wipe them on his sleeve or collar. Not a speck around her device. She wiped her lips so often That there was no trace of fat on the goblet. With dignity she waited her turn, Without greed she chose a piece [79]. It is in the General Prologue that the reader gets an idea of ​​what stories will be told, a description of the inner world of each pilgrim. The behavior of the characters presented by Chaucer reveals the essence of their personalities, personal lives, their habits, mood, good and bad sides. For example, when describing a merchant, Chaucer immediately characterizes him as a “brave young man”: he rode with his hips akimbo, wearing a lot of colorful goodness. In general, the details of the description of clothing are one of the important portrait characteristics for the author. About the same merchant, he writes that he wore a Flanders beaver hat and stacked boots. And he describes the main speeches of the merchant: about receiving and saving income, about the exchange rate of the ecu, about the fact that the merchant gave money on interest, etc. And one detail in the description of the merchant immediately fills everything with new meaning.
Chaucer, in certain cases, shows the influence that social circumstances have on the character of his hero. In this regard, the image of the miller Simkin in the Majordomo's Tale can be called interesting. While the dishonesty of the millers was a generally accepted fact, there was even such a riddle: "Who in the world is the most courageous?" "The miller's shirt, because every day she hugs a crook." The writer, portraying his character as a thief, follows medieval traditions in his ideas about the people of his profession. But he offers the reader not only such a class-professional characteristic. Simkin is a representative of the wealthy strata in the third estate, in connection with which Chaucer describes his image as filled with a large number of features directly related to this particular circumstance. Chaucer portrays him as a man with a pronounced sense of dignity, which turns comically into swagger. However, he lacks traditional reasons for pride: he is not of noble birth, he did not accomplish great feats of chivalry.
The basis of the miller's independence is his wealth, which he managed to create with the help of only deceit and theft. One of the most important features in Chaucer's skill in creating images of characters is the ability to reveal the typical in the individual and through the individual. Since this technique was unknown to medieval literature, as a rule, in the Middle Ages, writers limited themselves to only brief typical characteristics, for example, this is characteristic of the fable. Geoffrey Chaucer, unlike them, gives his heroes certain individualized features. In The Canterbury Tales, the individualization of images is associated with a series of specific processes that took place in the society and ideology of the 16th century. So, D.S. Likhachev believes that the early Middle Ages "does not know someone else's consciousness, someone else's psychology, someone else's ideas as an object of an objective image," since at that time there was no separation of the individual from the collective (the collective is called an estate, caste, corporation, workshop). But in the time of Geoffrey Chaucer there is an active growth of entrepreneurship, private initiative increases, as a result of which the role of individuals in the life of society begins to grow, which acts as the basis for the emergence of individualistic trends and ideas in the field of ideology. Need help writing your thesis? We are an exchange of professional authors (teachers and associate professors of universities). Handing over chapter by chapter. Uniqueness over 70%. We make edits for free . Diploma price Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales uses different ways of individualization. They emphasize the features of the behavior and appearance of the participants in the pilgrimage. Numerous examples can be cited from the text. This is the wart on the nose of the miller, and the forked beard of the merchant, and the motto on the brooch of the abbess. The writer tends to often resort to characterization through actions, which emphasizes his skill in creating images of characters. Indicative in this respect can be called the image of the carpenter John. There is no author's description of this hero in The Miller's Tale, the manifestation of all the traits of his character occurs in accordance with the development of the action. So, a certain episode reveals the kindness of a carpenter - he goes to visit Nicholas, who feigns despair in connection with the expected flood. Chaucer describes John as not very smart and rather gullible, which becomes apparent when the carpenter takes Nicholas' prediction at face value. Chaucer's hero cannot be called selfish, he is capable of caring for other heroes. First of all, when he receives news of an impending disaster, he worries about his young wife: How? well, what about the wife? Should Alison die? [79] For the first time in the history of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer individualizes the speech of his characters. He uses this technique in the characterization in the "Majordomo's Tale" of students Alan and John. The speeches of the schoolchildren are markedly replete with manifestations of the northern dialect. Some Western literary scholars believe that in Chaucer's time northerners were defined as uncouth and rude people. This fact, the insult that Alan and John inflict on their own master, is only aggravated. His wife and daughter are seduced by northerners, although it is their "nobility of origin" that the miller is very proud of. Thus, we have considered Chaucer's skill in creating images of characters.