The Estate Satire

The Estate Satire

An Introduction to a Genre of

The Canterbury Tales:

“The General Prologue”

The General Prologue:

• Although the General Prologue was

probably written fairly early in the course of
Chaucer’s work on the Tales, it was not
necessarily the first item to be
composed, nor need it have been
written all at once.

•There is at least a

possibility that some
parts were written or
adapted when the
writing of the tales
was well-advanced.

– The Wife of Bath’s

deafness is only
significant later on…

• Many story-

collections open
with prologues that
announce the
nature of the
tales to follow

• …or, for those with

more developed
fictional frames,
the
circumstances
under which the
tales are told.

• The General Prologue does not reveal

such a purpose until the end; the bulk of it
is designed, not simply as an introduction
to the real business of the work, but on
the model of an independent genre –
the Estates Satire.

• Estates satires, which aim to give an analysis

of society in terms of hierarchy, social
functions, and morality, were widespread
throughout Medieval Europe.

• They work by enumerating the various

“estates”, in other words, the classes
or professions of society, with the
object of showing how far each falls
short of the ideal to which it
should conform.

Medieval

Social Hierarchy

Peasant Class

Trade Class

Middle Class

Clergy Class

Ruling Class

(“Aristocracy”)

• The simplest division of society

was into three estates:

– 1) those who fight
– 2) those who pray
– 3) those who labor

• These estates are represented by

– 1) knight
– 2) parson
– 3) ploughman

• Estate satires generally give more

elaborate classification in terms of
hierarchy and specialization: they often
start at the top and work their way
down – from kings to peasants.

•

Women were often treated as an estate to
themselves - a fact that goes a long way
towards accounting for the Wife of Bath,
who is quite capable single-handedly
counterbalancing some 27 men!

• The General Prologue differs from the

standard pattern of estates satire in a
number of significant ways.

• 1) Pilgrims are single individuals not

plural groups – the friar, not “friars” in
general

• 2) All of the pilgrims are the best of

their kind: they are defined by what
Chaucer does not say about them.

• 3) Medieval allegories consistently spell

out what they mean to do: Chaucer does
not. Judgment depends on the reader’s
picking up cues in the text, and some of
them are deeply ambiguous.

•The General Prologue

fulfills two functions:

– 1) tells the story of

how the tales came
to be told

– 2) introduces the

tellers

• Lastly…the portraits are satiric, and are

designed to raise questions about
certain kinds of …

• pursuits

– knighthood
– chivalry

• institutional practices

– putting women in convents
– selling relics and pardons

• human qualities

– love between men and women
– the desire for monetary gain