Chaucer's aim, in the "Canterbury Tales," in which most readers begin to study him, though a great part of the book belongs to his late maturity, was to be universal: to paint all his world, to appeal to every taste, from that of the lovers of the broadest and coarsest humour (as in the Miller's and the Reeve's Tales), to that of devout students of saintly legends (the Man of Law's, the Second Nun's, and the Prioress's Tales). In the Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," and in the discourses of the Pilgrims, he is entirely English, the mirror of his own people. We are in a throng of Shakespearean variety, while their talk is dramatically appropriate; each speaks in character, though the "Wife of Bath's Tale," for example, is far more philosophic, being a reply in part to St. Jerome's praise of celibacy, than anything that we are to expect from Dame Quickly, or from Scott's Mrs. Saddletree.
The Prologue and the conversations of the pilgrims are the thoroughly English work of Chaucer, in the maturity of his genius. So are the humorous pieces, the Wife of Bath, the Reeve, and the Miller, and that striking contrast with all these, the Knight's Tale, a noble masterpiece of true chivalry, which was composed in another form, in stanzas, and was again refashioned in couplets of ten syllables, before the idea of the pilgrimage occurred to the poet.[1]
Several of the Tales had been first undertaken earlier, and were later fitted into the general scheme of Pilgrims to Canterbury telling their stories as they ride. Chaucer supplies his own criticisms, often in the rough banter of the Host, who cannot endure the sing-song romance of "Sir Thopas" (a parody of the form of many romances), or the dismal "tragedies" of the lusty Monk.
The Prologue and conversations and some tales are thus the work of the very Chaucer, in accomplished maturity of power, but he is giving examples of many tastes and fashions older in literature than his own free, humorous, and ironical view of life. He professes, in his art, to be all things to all men, he must rehearse
tales alle, be they bettre or werse,
and whosoever does not like the humour of the Reeve or the intoxicated Miller may "turn over the leaf and tell another tale".
The modern reader, for one good reason or another, may "turn over the leaf, and choose another tale," whether the Reeve, or the Monk, or the Parson, or Chaucer himself be narrating. Like all old poets he wrote for his own age, not for ours; but in him, as in all great poets, however old, much is universally human and is immortal.
The scansion, in the so-called "heroic couplet," practically Chaucer's own conquest and bequest to our literature, gives little trouble, especially if, as in the Globe edition, the final ès which are to be sounded, are marked by a dot over the letter. The spelling repels the very indolent, but no attempt hitherto made to modernize the spelling has been successful, though the task does not seem to pass the powers of man.
The device of setting stories in a kind of framework, so that the variety of each narrator, according to his kind, lends dramatic interest, is very old. Chaucer is especially happy in his idea of making thirty pilgrims, of all sorts and conditions, meet at the ancient Inn of the Tabard in Southwark and agree to journey together to the tomb of St. Thomas a Becket. This was a favourite shrine of pilgrims, the road led through a smiling landscape, the Saint had always been popular and a great worker of miracles; and the pilgrimage was dear to an England still merry. In less than a century and a half after Chaucer's death, Henry VIII seized the wealth of the Saint, the gold and jewels given by noble pilgrims, and destroyed this pleasant pilgrimage.
Chaucer's Prologue with his description of the Pilgrims, is the most kind, genial, and jocund of his works, a perfect picture of a mixed multitude of English folk of many classes, and with no awkwardness caused by a keen sense of distinction of class.