The Arguments of Hoffman and Knight about the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales - Essay Example

Compare the arguments of Hoffman and Knight about the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales and discuss how their arguments and/or your comparisonmight help us understand something about “pilgrimage.” Chaucer’s General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales has been critically analyzed for a number of reasons. The portrait gallery of medieval times presents the vividly the social set up in which characters from all walks of life have been portrayed. Hoffman in Chaucer’s Prologue to Pilgrimage: The Two Voices and Knight (1986) have analyzed the Canterbury Tales, throwing light on the importance of pilgrimages in medieval times. According to Hoffman, critics of the Canterbury tales agree that portraits in the General Prologue are like “figures in a tapestry”. Commonplace about these portraits is the design of unity which has come out due to the outer body structure of the pilgrimage to Canterbury, as described by Chaucer, “Of sondry folk…In felaweshipe, and pilgrims were they alle”. According to Hoffman, the very fact that it is a pilgrimage is defined in the starting of the verse, here life is growing and flourishing where the pilgrims come together at the Tabard inn of Southwalk to visit the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Pilgrimage starts at the spring time, a time of procreation and this pilgrimage is just one of the many roles of life. A pilgrimage, thus, is the solemnizing of marriage between the months of March and April and pilgrims are just events in the calendar of nature but in the calendar of piety, there is a journey from nature to beyond nature, to the pure hug with the ‘hooly blisful martir’. Stephen Knight (1986) finds the craving to go on pilgrimage in the opening lines of the general prologue: And specially from every shires ende Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blissful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. (15-18) Knight finds the opening lines of the general prologue appearing vivid, showing a craving to go on a pilgrimage; the same as described by Hoffman but there is a marked difference from thereon. Knight finds the lines ‘eliding’ because it changes course towards natural and secular characterization of the pilgrims. The social and historical complexity of the ‘sondry folk’ gathering in ‘felawshipe’ (25-26) follows on. Knight finds no such double meaning of pilgrimage as stated by Hoffman. To him, it is just the mention of the pilgrimage, the desire of which is found in all people of that times and that’s all. Hoffman finds a symbolical pilgrimage from nature to supernatural also going on, showing a contrast between health and vitality in the opening lines and sickness in line 18. This sickness is symbolic of winter season or it could be related to inclement weather. Thus, the Prologue presents a double view of the Canterbury pilgrimage; it is a pilgrimage of the tide of life, its ebbs and flows contrasting with the power of pilgrimage, the ‘hooly blissful martir’. The double definition of pilgrimage is taken further by the portraiture of the Knight and the Squire by Hoffman. The portrait of the Prioress presents the double definition of the pilgrimage in a different way. It travels from ambiguity in the Prioress portrait to emphatic discrepancy in the pasteurization of the Monk and the Friar to complete the sequence. The double view of pilgrimage in the portrait of the Prioress appears in the ambiguity of surfaces and also in the motivation within. She is ‘simple and coy’ from within but on the surface, the very name ‘Eglentyne’ is full of romance. The motivation from within has been identified in the motto—Amor vincit omnia’—on the Prioress golden brooch. This motto’s double pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Venus and other shrines has been progressing from the gross to the sacred. We find the double definition of pilgrimage revealed in a different way through the portraits of the Summoner and the Pardoner who are the last pair of pilgrims. The portrayal of the Summoner and the Pardoner with all their personal deficiencies point towards the Christian thought on man’s pilgrimage that comes to the completion like the one completed by Chaucer’s pilgrims. Knight analyzes the portraits of Chaucer as ‘imaginative dramatization of the dynamic forces of his period’. Unlike Hoffman, he finds no symbolical pilgrimage from the natural to the supernatural, no contrasting of health and vitality with sickness, solemnizing of the marriage between the months of March and April. Knight gets no philosophical meaning such as a double view of the Canterbury pilgrimage where life itself becomes a pilgrimage through the ebbs and flows of the tides of life. On the other hand, Knight has analyzed the social hierarchy of the medieval times where pilgrims are not individuals but archetypal. The order of the general prologue finds more space in his analysis of the Canterbury tales. He has divided the pilgrims into four socially functional groups and dwelt on the vocabulary chosen by Chaucer to describe the characters, which are portraits more to Hoffman of the social gallery portrayed by Chaucer. There is no comparison between the analysis of both, Hoffman and Knight; the definition of pilgrimage finds new meaning in the analysis of Hoffman but it is totally absent in the analysis of Knight, thus presenting a contrast of description. Knight has analyzed the spring time in the context of its rich rhyme, diction, syntax, word-order, metrical features, rhetoric, style, and imagery through the themes of beauty and man’s craving towards purity. The mobility and individuation of Chaucer’s characters are deeply entrenched in historical imagination. Thus we find a contrast in the analysis of Hoffman of Chaucer’s portraits, which are just socially representative characters for Knight and no portraits. Knight finds no dualism of life as a pilgrimage, the double meaning of pilgrimage is missing there, which starts in the analysis of Hoffman from the portraits of the Knight and the Squire, continues in the portrait of the Prioress, gets completion of the sequential journey with the portraits of the Monk and the Friar. Read More