Chaucer's plan is not exhausted here, but it is further extended .He brings those pilgrims together and makes them talk and argue and even quarrel among themselves in their own way. He further assigns each of them a story to relate. Their stories are as diverting as they themselves are, and indicate their own nature . The knight relates the tale of war and love and chivalry. The friar speaks of religion , while the wife of Bath narrates the tale of domesticity. The Canterbury Tales, as already indicated , could not be finished by Chaucer . His original project was to assign two tales to each pilgrim enroute to Canterbury and two more to each of them during the homeward journey . Thus he ought to have included a hundred and twenty tales, but Chaucer could complete actually a few more than a score of them. Some of these tales were even left out in fragments . These tales include The Knight's Tale , The Miller's Tale ,The Reeve's Tale, The Cock's Tale , The Man of Law's Tale , The Wife of Bath's Tale,The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale, The Clerk's Tale , The Merchant's Tale , The Squire Tale, The Franklin's Tale , The Physician's Tale, The Pardoner's Tale, The Shipman's Tale , The Prioress's Tale, The Tale of Sir Thopac , The Second Nun's Tale, The Yeoman's Tale, The Manciple's Tale, The Parson's Tale, and so on.The Canterbury Tales, though it is an unfinished work is, perhaps, the greatest English work before the mighty Elizabethans.But what particularly marks the merit of this work is the social value which is tremendous here. Chaucer , with a rare skill, presents here accurately the English society of the fourteen century , with its different classes and profession . He makes The Canterbury Tales a great human document, containing a clear and comprehensive picture of the age, the spirit of which is adequately expressed through literary and artistic channels. He succeeds wonderfully in making the poem a living picture of his own country of his own time.
In fact, Chaucer's pilgrims belong to different social ranks and positions, secular as well as religious. These pilgrims represent the important strands of the English society in Chaucer's age and elevate the poem to the level of a national portrait gallery. They cover the entire range of the society of the time, except the barons, the bishops and the serf, who could hardly be imagined . In Chaucer's period, as participating in a collective pilgrimage to Canterbury, The Knight and the squire belong to the respectable gentry. The sergeant at law and the Physician represent two learned professions. The Franklin typifies the common people, growing prosperous in riches and rank. The Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Shipman, etc., come from the world of trade and commerce . The Miller and the Plowman are from the simple innocent, rural life . The prioress ,with her three attendant priests, the village Person, the Friar and the Monk are the representatives of the ecclesiastical order. The Oxford Clerk stands for the educated youth of the university. The Manciple's, the Reeve, the cannon's Yeoman and the Cook form a fairly large body of servants, both high and low, urban and rural. The Summoner and the Pardoner finely exemplify the corrupt wing of the Church , engaged in exploiting common men and women in the name of religion.
Chaucer's masterpiece contains a comprehensive and comprehensive picture of the English poetry society of the fourteen century. The pilgrims, whom he describes, are the living character in the great drama of the social life of the period. A critic rightly sums up the greatness of Chaucer's social portraiture :
In all our literature, there is not such another picture of a whole society, which Chaucer contrived in some two and thirty character and in 860 lines.
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