Vladimir Sobolev
For D. Chaucer, the depiction of human character in The Canterbury Tales as an artistic history of human life in its present and past is one of the basic principles of genre formation. In turn, the variety of characters grows from the variety of genres included in the work. This specific relationship, as one of the characteristic features of Chaucer’s method of artistic comprehension of reality, can be traced, for example, in the aspect of how the genre determines the originality of the author’s “I” in the work. It is the genre that determines what is very important to identify when analyzing the artistic whole - the personality, the position of the writer, expressed in The Canterbury Tales.
It is no coincidence that it included all the genres known to the literature of the Middle Ages, “according to the type of collections of fairy tales, short stories and generally narratives of various types that were found in the East and West before this period.” But the violation of the accepted hierarchy of genres is immediately alarming and is regarded by some researchers as a “departure from the norm, which presupposes a system.” The example of a chivalric romance is followed by a fabliau, then a didactic legend, and again a fabliau. The Christian legend is interspersed with a parody of a chivalric romance and a moralizing allegory, a historical chronicle - with a folk tale, an eastern legend, lives, etc. All of them are cemented by the author’s irreconcilable attitude towards the traditional laws of artistic creativity, which level both the author’s individuality and the distinctive features of the works themselves. The author’s artistic thought is perceived through the genre - a cycle that acts as a mediator between the author’s work and the reader, whose task is not only to see the creative process, but also to understand the author’s artistic concept, where the main thing is the image, the character of a person, free from the template in any manifestation of himself myself. Here the author’s “I” arises on the basis of mastering the images, situations, themes of all previous literature and manifests itself in irony over its heroes, parodying the motives and plots of its works. The correlation of one’s own position with the literary tradition gives rise not to a conventional image of the “person” who leads the narrative, but to the character of a living person with a complex inner world and a unique way of life.
Another way of forming a genre, its enrichment and development is the process of interpenetration of genres. At the intersection of many genres, at the interweaving of the individual and the traditional, Chaucer creates a new genre. There is, as it were, an internal polemic between one genre and another, parody, an explosion of the genre from within, which in turn influences the further transformation of genres. Actually, The Canterbury Tales is structured in such a way that each story is a parody of either the previous one or the source. Using the example of Squire's story, we can examine in detail what properties of the new genre arise from the interaction of two genres of different literary movements, as well as how they affect the deepening of the meaning of the work and the character of the narrator. The originality of the story lies in the alternation of the ordinary and the extraordinary, the real and the fantastic in the lives, characters, and thoughts of the heroes.
This is achieved by the interpenetration of the properties of the genres of urban short stories, folk tales and knightly romances. From the story it can be judged that the Squire is not who he claims to be, or rather, tries to pass off. The son of a knight, outwardly he is faithful to the ideals of his father: from his lips we hear a book story about the “good” old times of knighthood, when noble lords, unearthly beauties and fantastic creatures personifying good or evil lived. But as we read into the meaning of the Squire's story, we find ourselves under the spell of a deliberately hidden irony. The fantastic form of the story is only a shell concealing realistic content.
Under Chaucer's pen, the fantastic plan takes on the outline of a mirage, which quickly dissipates when a trained eye touches it. Fantasy is an unfortunate cliche here. We are dealing with a parody of the fantastic in a chivalric novel: the translation of the fantastic into the realm of the real, which makes this fantastic come into being. The magical objects given by the knight to Princess Kanaka seem extraordinary only at first glance. As it later turns out, the source of their miraculous power lies in the natural properties of things. Gradually, the reader begins to associate that all these accessories are by no means new. The merits of a beautiful mirror were once told by the learned men Agalsen, Villion, and Stagirite; the healing sword once served as a weapon for Telemachus and Achilles, etc. You are becoming more and more convinced that the Squire’s story suffers from artistic eclecticism of motives, details, images, and plot lines. In the knight of the first part of the story, you can easily recognize the Black Knight from the anonymous novel about Gowain; conversations between the princess and the eagle have a folklore source. Thus, the Squire's story represents a typical example of a fragment of a chivalric romance in the last years of its existence, characterized by the decline of the artistic structure and philosophical concept of works of this genre of literature.
In addition, everything that happens to the heroes is terribly frivolous. The king and his servants are so preoccupied with themselves that they do not even think about any adventures; the knight arrived at the feast not because of Kanaka (as this should have happened in a courtly novel), but for business reasons; the signs of attention he shows to the sovereign do not conceal anything ambiguous in relation to his daughter.
The prosaic nature of the heroes' actions is the source of the narrator's hidden irony.
Vision as a formative element of a chivalric romance is also completely excluded by the author: here the heroes’ sleep is not a reason for seeing “something” or moving away from the present in the “charm” of dreams, but a consequence of a person’s physical state. Kambuskan and Kanaka fall asleep... so that “the food is better digested” and “... so that their eyes do not swell from a sleepless night.”
The wounded bird begs the beauty for mercy, but she, having forgotten that freedom for every “living creature” is more valuable than anything in the world, “saves” the eagle from her: she locks the captive in a luxurious golden cage.
Life is perceived by the heroes as it is - from a practical point of view, and not as it should be. The reproduction of the outdated truths of the “golden age” of chivalry contains a new view of Chaucer’s contemporary younger generation, in the image of the Squire, on the traditional adventurous heroics of the genre, a witty look, infecting with the maximalism characteristic only of cheerful natures. This is how the character of the Squire emerges, receiving the final and seemingly unexpected touches in his story. The “sybaritizing” hulk in the portrait sketch of the Great Prologue - in the role of narrator, he evokes sincere sympathy. But in fact, we have before us a parody of the old type of knight in the new conditions of the time, exposing the always unsightly convention of the ideal hero, whose immersion in life, on the one hand, becomes shallow, on the other hand, transforms him in a human way. In this “inversion” there is a polemic with the genre of the chivalric novel, in which departure into another, unearthly life “humanizes” the hero.
By setting in motion the portrait gallery of the Great Prologue and thus making static faces characters, Chaucer gives dramatic features to The Canterbury Tales. For the first time, this feature of the genre was noticed by the American researcher of the writer's work G. Kittredge. Pilgrims reveal their essence not only in the stories and characteristics of the author. They show themselves best in dynamic disputes - dialogues, squabbles rich in dramatic content, entire discussions, observations of each other.
Hence the objectivity of the character characteristics offered by Chaucer. Self-characteristics and their feedback about each other most often correspond to the characters' personalities. The author makes fun of the Monk, revealing his moral buffoonery; The Miller attacks the Manager, and he attacks the Miller, and the most unpleasant traits in the characters of the companions are revealed; insulting the Cook in obscene terms, the Housekeeper does not portray himself in the best possible way. In this case, nothing contradicts psychological plausibility.
But there are cases that contradict it. Negative and positive heroes highly appreciate the virtues of those “whom they internally despise.” The bailiff of the church court with all passion protects and whom... The Bath weaver! from the slander of the Carmelite; the canon's servant initially speaks with respect of his master, a charlatan; out of “respect” for the company, in which thieves and scoundrels are held in the same esteem as pious people, the Squire yields to the Innkeeper’s requests.
Such a discrepancy with “human nature” - the basis of the characters’ character - is a conventional device, according to the American researcher G. Dempster, the comic role of a hero reacting to circumstances. The irony hidden in relations to the antipodes expresses the state of the individual when the situation turns to the hero according to his role, and he sees everything from the perspective of this role. This property of Chaucerian comedy can also explain the fact that some stories offered by the heroes do not correspond (in their internal meaning) to the characters of the narrators, highlighting their new qualities: the ambition of the Bailiff, the unscrupulousness of the servant Canon, the conformity of the Squire, etc.
The presence of different speech layers in “The Canterbury Tales” also reveals the genre features of the dramatic work. It intertwines and contrasts different linguistic styles: the style of life of a penitent sinner, the second Nun, with the patriarchal-epic style of the “pure to the point of holiness” Abbess; the bookish, impersonal speech of the Squire - with the figurative wisdom of Franklin; the emotionally sincere speech of the Knight - with the official-business ambitious story of the Priest; The juicy, frankly rude speech of the Bath weaver, always ready to confess her sins, sets off the cynicism of the truthful confessions of the true sinner, the Bailiff.
A characteristic feature of the genre of a dramatic work is manifested in the peculiar correlation of the characters’ stories with their speech (for example, the pathetic story of the Monk - a “truth-seeker” about the falls of great people and the humiliating tone of the same Monk - a jester - a world-eater who dreams of luring out wanderers who have become "disappointed" after the story the last half). The plot completeness of most stories makes it possible to hear not just the voices of the characters, but to perceive them as characters.
Summarizing the above, we can talk about Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” as a polyphonic work, breaking out of the medieval framework of normative thinking and in this sense approaching the works of the Renaissance literary style. The polyphonism of the work is supported by lyrical digressions with their diversity of judgments, opinions, and the clearly expressed voice of the author, compared with the voices of other characters, and the compositional freedom from the strict form of short story collections, and the principle of connecting various life semantic spheres, stylistic layers, entailing the transformation of genres , violation of their boundaries, creation of new genre varieties. All this allows us to conclude that Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” against the general background of medieval literature looks like a work that undoubtedly deserves closer attention from researchers who until recently considered it only a product of medieval artistic consciousness.
Keywords: Geoffrey Chaucer, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Canterbury Tales”, criticism of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, criticism of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, download criticism, download for free, English literature of the 14th century.
Among literary scholars (A.N. Veselovsky, A.K. Dzhivelegov, V.E. Krusman, M.P. Alekseev, A.A. Anikst, Yu.M. Saprykin, G.V. Anikin, N.P. Mikhalskaya etc.) there is an established opinion that the work of J. Chaucer (1340-1400) “The Canterbury Tales” (1387-1400) was written under the influence of “The Decameron” (1352-1354) - the work of the largest representative of the Italian Renaissance J. Boccaccio (1313-1375).
Chaucer's book opens with a "General Prologue", in which the appearance of each of the characters is outlined. It sets the leading compositional principle used by the author. The owner of the tavern, Harry Bailey, invites pilgrims to tell entertaining stories to while away the journey to Canterbury and back. Chaucer's book consists of these stories, each of which is a complete poetic novella. “The Canterbury Tales” adjoins the ancient genre tradition of a collection of short stories and tales, united by a common plot “frame”: the situation of a conversation, the alternation of narrators. This tradition, in line with which in the XIII-XIV centuries. many works of world literature were created, under the pen of Chaucer it undergoes significant changes. He strives for greater naturalness and significance of the main plot framing the inserted short stories. Along with the “general prologue,” the characteristics of the pilgrims also contain prologues that immediately precede their stories.
A dynamic and graphically structured plot gives Chaucer the opportunity to use or parody almost all genres of medieval literature. Thus, one of the main genre components of this work is the short story. 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 romance. The abbess tells the legend of a tortured Christian boy. The carpenter tells a funny and obscene story in the spirit of humble urban folklore. The stories of the monastery chaplain and housekeeper have a fable-like character. The indulgence seller's story contains elements of a folk tale and parable.
It should be noted that each of the pilgrims’ stories arises as if by chance, from the circumstances of the conversation, complements or shades the previous one, and this closely connects them with the framing story.
J. Chaucer's innovation lies in the synthesis of genres within one work. Thus, almost every story, having a unique genre specificity, makes The Canterbury Tales a kind of “encyclopedia” of medieval genres.
G. Boccaccio in his work “The Decameron” brings to high perfection one genre - a short prose story-short story, which existed in Italian literature even before him.
In his Decameron, Boccaccio relies on medieval Latin collections of stories, bizarre oriental parables; sometimes he retells small French stories of humorous content, the so-called “fabliaux”.
“The Decameron” is not just a collection of a hundred short stories, but an ideological and artistic whole, thought out and built according to a specific plan. The short stories of The Decameron follow one another not arbitrarily, but in a certain, strictly thought-out order. They are held together by a framing story, which is an introduction to the book and gives it a compositional core. With this construction, the narrators of individual short stories are participants in the introductory, framing story. In this story, which gives the entire collection internal integrity and completeness, the author tells how the short stories of The Decameron arose.
Thus, we can conclude that, perhaps, when creating his work, J. Chaucer borrowed a compositional technique that Boccaccio had previously used when creating the Decameron. However, in Chaucer one can note a closer connection between individual stories and the narrative that frames them. He strives for greater naturalness and significance of the main plot framing the “inserted” stories, which cannot be noted in the work of Boccaccio.
Despite the identical composition and several random plot coincidences, Chaucer's work is completely unique. It should be noted that in stories comparable in plot, Chaucer's narration is almost always more detailed, more extensive and detailed, in many moments it becomes more intense, more dramatic and significant. And if in relation to “The Canterbury Tales” we can talk about the genre diversity of this work, then “The Decameron” is a work in which only the short story genre is presented to perfection. However, this does not mean that Boccaccio’s work is of less value for world literature. With his work, Boccaccio deals a crushing blow to the religious-ascetic worldview and gives an unusually complete, vivid and versatile reflection of modern Italian reality. In his short stories, Boccaccio depicts a huge variety of events, images, motives, and situations. He displays a whole gallery of figures taken from various strata of modern society and endowed with features typical of them. It is thanks to Boccaccio that the short story is established as a full-fledged independent genre, and the Decameron itself, imbued with the spirit of advanced national culture, has become a model for many generations of not only Italian, but also European writers.
Literature
1.Anikin G.V. History of English literature: Textbook. for students ped. Institute / G. V. Anikin, N. P. Michalskaya. 2nd ed., revised. and additional M.: Higher. school, 1985. 431 p.
2. History of Western European literature. Middle Ages and Renaissance: Textbook. for philol. specialist. universities / Alekseev M.P. [and etc.]. 5th ed., rev. and additional M.: Higher. school, 1999. 462 pp.: ill.
3. Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: textbook. manual for universities / T.V. Kovaleva [etc.]; Ed. Ya.N. Zasursky. Mn.: Universitetsky Publishing House, 1988. 238 p.: ill.
The greatest English writer of the 14th century was Chaucer(1340-1400), author of famous "The Canterbury Tales". Chaucer simultaneously ends the Anglo-Norman era and opens the history of new English literature.
He gave expression in English to all the richness and variety of thoughts and feelings, the subtlety and complexity of mental experiences that characterized the previous era, completing the experience of the past and capturing the aspirations of the future. Among English dialects, he established the dominance of the London dialect, the language spoken in this large commercial center, where the residence of the king and both universities were located.
The next century saw great interest in living folk poetry, which already existed in the 13th and 14th centuries. But in the 15th century this poetry showed a particularly active life, and the most ancient examples of it, surviving to our time, belong to this century. Ballads about Robin Hood were very popular.
"The Canterbury Tales"(eng. The Canterbury Tales) - a work by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, written in late XIV century in Middle English; not completed. Represents a collection of 22 poetic and two prose short stories, united by a common frame: the stories are told by pilgrims on their way to venerate the relics of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury and are described in the author's prologue to the work. According to Chaucer, each of them had to tell four stories (two on the way to Canterbury and two on the way back). The Canterbury Tales, which are predominantly poetic, do not use a uniform division of verse; the poet freely varies stanzas and sizes. The predominant meter is iambic 5-foot with paired rhyme (“heroic couplet”).
The narrators come from all levels of medieval English society a: among them there is a knight, a monk, a priest, a doctor, a sailor, a merchant, a weaver, a cook, a yeoman, etc. Their stories partly go back to traditional novelistic plots (used, in particular, in “The Book of Good Love” by Juan Ruiz and “The Decameron "Boccaccio), are partly original in nature. The stories of pilgrims are very diverse in topic, often associated with the theme of love and betrayal; some of them satirically depict the abuses of the Catholic Church. Chaucer's literary skill is also manifested in the fact that the short stories reflect the individual traits and manner of speech of the narrators.
Innovation and the originality of the “Canterbury Tales” was appreciated only in the era of romanticism, although successors to Chaucer’s traditions appeared during his lifetime (John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleave, etc.), and the work itself was published by William Caxton in the earliest days of English printing. Researchers note the role of Chaucer's work in the formation of the English literary language and in increasing its cultural significance (as opposed to Old French and Latin, which were considered more prestigious).
Under the Comstock Act, The Canterbury Tales were banned from distribution in the United States, and even now are printed with abbreviations due to obscenity.
Chaucer's merits in the history of English literature and language are very great. He was the first among the English to give examples of truly artistic poetry, where taste, a sense of proportion, elegance of form and verse dominate everywhere, the hand of the artist is visible everywhere, controlling his images, and not obeying them, as was often the case with medieval poets; A critical attitude towards plots and characters is visible everywhere. Chaucer's works already contain all the main features of English national poetry: a wealth of imagination combined with common sense, humor, observation, the ability to vivid characterization, a penchant for detailed descriptions, a love of contrasts, in a word, everything that we later encounter in an even more perfect form in Shakespeare, Fielding, Dickens and other great writers of Great Britain. He gave completeness to English verse and brought literary language to a high degree of grace. He always showed special care regarding the purity of speech and, not trusting copyists, always personally looked through the lists of his works. In the matter of creating a literary language, he showed great moderation and common sense, rarely used neologisms and, without trying to resurrect obsolete expressions, used only those words that came into general use. The brilliance and beauty that he imparted to the English language gave the latter a place of honor among other literary languages of Europe; after Chaucer, adverbs have already lost all meaning in literature. Chaucer was the first to write in his own language and prose rather than in Latin (for example, The astrolab, a treatise he wrote in 1391 for his son). He uses the national language here consciously in order to better and more accurately express his thoughts, as well as out of patriotic feeling. Chaucer's worldview is completely imbued with the pagan spirit and cheerfulness of the Renaissance; only some medieval features and expressions like “St. Venus,” found, however, in Chaucer’s earlier works, indicate that he had not yet completely freed himself from medieval views and confusion of concepts. On the other hand, some of his thoughts about nobility, about raising children, about war, the nature of his patriotism, alien to any national exclusivity, would have done honor even to a man of the 19th century.
The culture of the Renaissance with its ideological basis - the philosophy and aesthetics of humanism - arises primarily on Italian soil. It is not surprising that the influence of Italy can be seen in all English writers of the Renaissance. But much more noticeable than the influence of the Italian model is the original character of English culture of this time. The tragic fate of the free peasantry in the era of primitive accumulation, the rapid breakdown of medieval orders under the pressure of the power of money, the development of the national state with its contradictions - all this gives social issues in England a special urgency. The broad folk background of the English Renaissance is its main advantage, the source of such achievements of the 16th century as Thomas More's Utopia and Shakespeare's theater.
English humanism.Early English Renaissance dates back to the 14th century; its most prominent representatives were Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. Feudal feuds of the 15th century. delayed the development of English humanism for a long time. At the beginning of the 16th century, humanistic literature came to life again. Oxford University was a breeding ground for new humanistic ideas. True, these ideas often had a theological shell; in this respect England was like Germany. The English humanists Grosin, Linecr and John Colet, who traveled to Italy, were carried away there mainly by philological research, showing no interest in natural-philosophical and aesthetic problems. They most often use their philological learning to study issues of religion and morality. But the main figure among the Oxford humanists was Thomas More.
"Utopia" by Thomas More
Henry VIII's Chancellor Thomas More witnessed with his own eyes the beginning of a profound change in the position of the working classes of England, a picture of national disasters caused primarily by the system of enclosures. In his novel-treatise “The Golden Book, as useful as it is amusing, about the best structure of the state and about the new island of Utopia” (Latin text - 1516, first English translation - 1551), More portrays England in the 16th century in a mercilessly harsh light . with the parasitism of its upper classes and bloody legislation against the expropriated, England, where “sheep eat people.” From his description of English reality, More concluded: “Where there is private property, where everything is measured by money, the correct and successful course of public affairs is hardly ever possible.” The genius of his main idea is quite clearly expressed in the principle of compulsory labor for all, in the anticipation of the destruction of the opposition between city and countryside, between mental and physical labor, in the denial of the exploitation of man by man. More's book was a living response to the development of capitalist relations in England and expressed the deepest aspirations of the English masses. More's communist ideal was, as it were, a fantastic anticipation of the future.
In the Middle Ages, criticism of private property usually came out in religious garb. More cleared this criticism from its mystical shell and connected it with political, economic, moral and philosophical issues. For some time it might seem that More's ideas, such as establishing peaceful relations between states, reducing government spending, etc., had an influence on the policy of the court. Nevertheless, the difference in goals was bound to lead to a sharp conflict between the king and his chancellor. More acted as a determined opponent of the English Reformation. At the request of the king, the Lord Chancellor was convicted. In the second half of the century, secular culture was finally established. Humanistic tendencies in the work of D. Chaucer, the innovative nature of the poem “The Canterbury Tales”. Innovations of Chaucer (1343 - 1400): Abandoning alliterative verse, he develops the foundations of English syllabic-tonic versification. Using the experience of contemporary Italian and French writers, he enriches English literature with new genres, introducing into their development a lot of independent and original things (a psychological novel in verse, a poetic short story, an ode). Chaucer lays the foundations of the satirical tradition in English literature. With all its roots, Chaucer's work was connected with the national life of England. This explains the fact that he wrote only in English, although he knew Latin, French and Italian excellently. Chaucer made a major contribution to the development of the English literary language. Chaucer turned to the work of Boccaccio more than once. From the works of Boccaccio (The Decameron, the poem Theseides), he borrows plots and images for his Canterbury Tales. However, when comparing Chaucer with Boccaccio, a significant difference is revealed: in Boccaccio's short stories the main thing is the plot, the action, while in Chaucer the main thing is the characterization of the character. Boccaccio lays the foundations for the narrative art of the Renaissance; Chaucer's work contains the beginnings of dramatic art. Chaucer introduced the ring composition, which was later used by other authors. The main work of Chaucer, which constituted an entire era in the history of English literature and marked a turning point in its development, was The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer created a broad and vibrant picture of contemporary England, presenting it in a gallery of living and full-blooded images. The book opens with a “General Prologue”, in which the appearance of each of the characters is outlined. The General Prologue reveals the compositional principle used by Chaucer. The owner of the tavern, Harry Bailey, invites pilgrims to tell entertaining stories to while away the journey to Canterbury and back. Chaucer's book consists of these stories, each of which is a complete poetic novella. In this case, Chaucer uses the compositional principle of Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” which established the method of plot framing a book of short stories in European literature. However, one cannot help but notice that The Canterbury Tales is characterized by a more organic interaction of the “frame narrative” with the content of the stories told by the pilgrims. With a few strokes, Chaucer outlines the appearance of each of the pilgrims, his costume and habits. Already from these laconic remarks one can imagine people of a very certain era, a certain social stratum of society. "The Canterbury Tales" conveys the atmosphere of a turning point, of which Chaucer was a contemporary. The feudal system was becoming obsolete. The definition of Chaucer as the “father of realism” in new European literature refers, of course, primarily to his portrait art. We have the right to talk specifically about the early form of Renaissance realism as a creative method, which implies not only a truthful generalized image of a person, typifying certain social phenomena, but also a reflection of changes occurring in society and in man. English society, as it is depicted in the portrait gallery created by Chaucer, is a society in motion and development. This is no longer old England, as it entered the Hundred Years' War, this is a society in transition, where feudal orders are strong, but outdated, where people of new professions associated with the developing life of the city make up a noticeable majority. Chaucer critically portrays not only the old, outgoing classes, but also the predatory, profit-hungry merchant, miller, skipper, and majordomo. On the other hand, he sympathetically depicted the peasant, the artisan, the student - working England, which, however, knows how to have fun and enjoy life.
1.1. Elements of novelistic narration in The Canterbury Tales
J. Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales” brought him worldwide fame. The idea for stories was given to Chaucer by reading Boccaccio's Decameron.
Modern poetry begins with Gerry Chaucer (1340 - 1400), diplomat, soldier, scientist. He was a bourgeois who knew the court, had an inquisitive eye, read widely and traveled to France and Italy to study classical works in Latin. He wrote because he was aware of his genius, but his readership was small: courtiers, and some workers and merchants. He served in the London Customs House. This post gave him the opportunity to become more familiar with the business life of the capital, and to see with his own eyes the social types that would appear in his main book, The Canterbury Tales.
The Canterbury Tales came out from his pen in 1387. They grew up on the basis of a narrative tradition, the origins of which are lost in ancient times, which made itself known in the literature of the 13th-14th centuries. in Italian short stories, cycles of satirical tales, “Roman Deeds” and other collections of instructive stories. In the XIV century. The plots, selected from different authors and from different sources, are combined in a deeply individual design. The chosen form - stories of traveling pilgrims - makes it possible to present a vivid picture of the Middle Ages. Chaucer's idea of the world includes Christian miracles, which are narrated in the "Abbess's Tale" and in "The Lawyer's Tale", and the fantasy of Breton lays, which manifests itself in the "Weaver's Tale of Bath", and the idea of Christian long-suffering - in "Ras - the tale of an Oxford student." All these ideas were organic to the medieval consciousness. Chaucer does not question their value, as evidenced by the inclusion of similar motifs in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer creates role images. They are created on the basis of professional class characteristics and the inconsistency of the heroes with it. Typification is achieved by duplication, multiplication of similar images. Absolon from The Miller's Tale, for example, plays the role of a minister of religion - a lover. He is a church clerk, a semi-spiritual person, but his thoughts are directed “not to God, but to the pretty parishioners. The prevalence of this image in literature is evidenced, in addition to numerous French fabliaux, by one of the folk ballads included in the collection “Secular lyrics of the XlVth and XVth centuries”. The behavior of the hero of this short poem is very similar to the actions of Absolon. The repetition of the image makes it typical.
All literary scholars who have studied the problem of the genres of The Canterbury Tales agree that one of the main literary genres of this work is the short story.
“A short story (Italian novella, lit. - news), - we read in the literary encyclopedic dictionary, - a small prose genre comparable in volume to a story, but differing from it in its sharp centripetal plot, often paradoxical, lack of descriptiveness and compositional rigor . By poeticizing the incident, the short story extremely exposes the core of the plot - the center, the peripeteia, and brings life material into the focus of one event."
In contrast to the short story - a genre of new literature at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, which highlights the visual and verbal texture of the narrative and gravitates towards detailed characteristics - the short story is the art of plot in its purest form, which developed in ancient times in close connection with ritual magic and myths, addressed primarily to the active, rather than contemplative, side of human existence. The novelistic plot, built on sharp antitheses and metamorphoses, on the sudden transformation of one situation into its exact opposite, is common in many folklore genres (fairy tale, fable, medieval anecdote, fabliau, schwank).
“The literary novel appears in the Renaissance in Italy (the brightest example is “The Decameron” by G. Boccaccio), then in England, France, Spain (G. Chaucer, Margaret of Navarre, M. Cervantes). In the form of a comic and edifying short story, the formation of Renaissance realism takes place, revealing the spontaneously free self-determination of the individual in a world fraught with vicissitudes. Subsequently, the short story in its evolution builds on related genres (short story, novella, etc.), depicting extraordinary, sometimes paradoxical and supernatural incidents, breaks in the chain of socio-historical and psychological determinism.”
Chaucer as a poet, even before creating The Canterbury Tales, was influenced by French and Italian literature. As is known, some pre-Renaissance features already appear in Chaucer’s work, and it is usually attributed to the Proto-Renaissance. The influence of the classic Renaissance novella's creator, Giovanni Boccaccio, on Chaucer is controversial. Only his acquaintance with the early works of Boccaccio and the use as sources of Boccaccio’s “Filocolo” (in Franklin’s story), “History of Famous Men and Women” (in the monk’s story), “Theseid” (in the knight’s story) and only one of short stories “The Decameron”, namely the story of the faithful wife Griselda, according to the Latin translation of Petrarch (in the student’s story). True, some overlap with the motives and plots developed by Boccaccio in The Decameron can also be found in the stories of the skipper, merchant and Franklin. Of course, this overlap can be explained by an appeal to the general short story tradition. Among other sources of the “Canterbury Tales” are “The Golden Legend” by Jacob Voraginsky, fables (in particular, Mary of France) and “The Romance of the Fox”, “The Romance of the Rose”, knightly novels of the Arthurian cycle, French fabliaux, and other works medieval, partly ancient literature (for example, Ovid). Meletinsky also says that: “Legendary sources and motives are found in the stories of the second nun (taken from the “Golden Legend” life of St. Cecilia), the lawyer (going back to the Anglo-Norman chronicle of Nicola Trivet, the story of the vicissitudes and sufferings of the virtuous Christian Constanza - the daughter of the Roman Emperor) and a doctor (the story of chaste Virginia, a victim of lust and the villainy of Judge Claudius, goes back to Titus Livius and the Romance of the Rose). In the second of these stories, legendary motifs are intertwined with fabulous ones, partly in the spirit of a Greek novel, and in the third - with the legend of Roman “valor”. The flavor of legend and a fairy-tale basis are felt in the student’s story about Griselda, although the plot is taken from Boccaccio.”
Representatives from various walks of life went on the pilgrimage. According to their social status, pilgrims can be divided into certain groups:
High society (Knight, Squire, church ministers);
Scientists (Doctor, Lawyer);
Landowners (Franklin);
Owners (Melnik, Majordomo);
Merchant class (Skipper, Merchant);
Craftsmen (Dyer, Carpenter, Weaver, and so on);
Lower class (Plowman).
In the General Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer introduces virtually each pilgrim to the reader (by simply mentioning his presence, or presenting in detail his character). The "General Prologue" in some way forms the reader's expectations - the expectation of the main mood and theme of the story, the subsequent behavior of the pilgrim. It is from the “General Prologue” that the reader gets an idea of what stories will be told, as well as the essence, the inner world of each pilgrim. The behavior of the characters presented by Chaucer reveals the essence of their personalities, their habits, personal lives, moods, good and bad sides. The character of a particular character is presented in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales and is further revealed in the story itself, prefaces and afterwords to the stories. “Based on Chaucer’s attitude towards each character, the pilgrims participating in the journey can be organized into certain groups:
Ideal images (Knight, Squire, Student, Plowman, Priest);
“Neutral” images, descriptions of which are not presented in the “Prologue” - Chaucer only mentions their presence (clergymen from the Abbess’s entourage);
Images with some negative character traits (Skipper, Economy);
Inveterate Sinners (Carmelite, Indulgence Seller, Bailiff of the Church Court - all of them are church employees)."
Chaucer finds an individual approach to each character, presenting him in the “General Prologue”.
“In the poetic Canterbury Tales, the national compositional frame was the setting of the scene: a tavern on the road leading to Canterbury, a crowd of pilgrims, in which essentially the entire English society is represented - from feudal lords to a cheerful crowd of artisans and peasants. In total, 29 people are recruited into the company of pilgrims. Almost each of them is a living and quite complex image of a person of his time; Chaucer masterfully describes in excellent verse the habits and clothing, demeanor, and speech characteristics of the characters.”
Just as the heroes are different, so are Chaucer’s artistic means. He speaks of the pious and brave knight with friendly irony, because the knight with his courtliness looks too anachronistic in the rude, noisy crowd of common people. The author speaks with tenderness about the knight's son, a boy full of enthusiasm; about the thieving majordomo, the miser and the deceiver - with disgust; with mockery - about brave merchants and artisans; with respect - about a peasant and a righteous priest, about an Oxford student in love with books. Chaucer speaks of the peasant uprising with condemnation, almost even with horror.
The brilliant genre of literary portraiture is perhaps Chaucer's main creation. Here, as an example, is a portrait of a weaver from Bath.
And the Bath weaver was chatting with him, sitting dashingly on a pacer; But if one of the ladies squeezed into the temple in front of her, she instantly forgot, in furious pride, about complacency and goodness. The face is pretty and rosy. She was an enviable wife. And she survived five husbands, not counting the crowd of girls’ friends.
What has changed in six and a half centuries? Unless the horse gave way to a limousine.
But gentle humor gives way to harsh satire when the author describes the seller of indulgences he hates.
His eyes sparkled like a hare's. There was no vegetation on the body, and the cheeks were smooth - yellow, like soap. It seemed that he was a gelding or a mare, And, even though there was nothing to brag about, He himself bleated about it like a sheep...
Throughout the work, the pilgrims tell various stories. Knight - an old courtly plot in the spirit of a chivalric romance; carpenter - a funny and obscene story in the spirit of humble urban folklore, etc. Each story reveals the interests and sympathies of a particular pilgrim, thereby achieving the individualization of the character and solving the problem of portraying him from the inside.
Chaucer is called the "father of realism." The reason for this is his art of literary portraiture, which, it turns out, appeared in Europe earlier than pictorial portraiture. And indeed, reading “The Canterbury Tales”, one can safely talk about realism as a creative method, implying not only a truthful generalized image of a person, typifying a certain social phenomenon, but also a reflection of changes occurring in society and man.
So, English society in Chaucer’s portrait gallery is a society in motion, in development, a society in transition, where feudal orders are strong but outdated, where a new man of a developing city is revealed. From The Canterbury Tales it is clear: the future does not belong to preachers of the Christian ideal, but to business people, full of strength and passions, although they are less respectable and virtuous than the same peasant and rural priest.
The Canterbury Tales lays the foundation for new English poetry, drawing on the entire experience of advanced European poetry and national song traditions.
Based on the analysis of this work, we came to the conclusion that the genre nature of The Canterbury Tales was strongly influenced by the short story genre. This is manifested in the features of the plot, the construction of images, the speech characteristics of the characters, humor and edification.
