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Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, Pardoner's
and Miller's Tales "General Prologue" 1. What is the general purpose of such a prologue? 2. What or who are we presented with, and in what order? 3. Who presents the tale? Is the relation between ‘poet' and ‘narrator' the same or different from that in Beowulf? 4. What does the setting do for the rest [of the tales]? (a) What is the putative purpose or motive for the journey? (b) How does the season amplify or ironize that motive? 5. What is the relationship between fertility and religion? 6. With respect to the narrator, what is he like? (lines 19-42; 717-48) (a) How does he tend to see the other pilgrims? (b) How is each description ordered? What details does the narrator tend to notice? (c) What tends to happen to the quality of a given description while it is under way? 7. What is the relationship of the Host to the journey; to the pilgrims? "The Pardoner's Tale" 1. Look at the General Prologue, 671-716. (a) How is the Pardoner described? (b) Whose companion is he, and what implications? (c) What does the Pardoner sing? How does that performance affect our view of him? (d) What color is the Pardoner? (e) What is the Pardoner's attitude to clothing? (f) What is suggested by the coupling of lines 687-88? (g) 709-16: What does the description end up emphasizing? 2. What does the Host's response tell us? (a) How is the Pardoner like/unlike the physician? (b) Is anything ironically predictive about lines 9-10? (c) Why does Chaucer show the host trying to adopt a technical vocabulary? What does this tell us about the Host's general motive? And what does the nature of the Pardoner's response imply about his character? 3. Why is there a Prologue to the Tale? (a) What is the content of the Prologue? (b) What is it that the Pardoner is trying to express or to emphasize about his expertise? Look at 41-44; 64; 72; 100ff. (c) What attitude towards his fellow travelers does the Pardoner seem to have? (d) Does the Prologue constitute a well-shaped speech? Can you divide it into sections or stages? 4. Do we get the Tale immediately at 175ff.? Why or why not? What is the function of what occurs here? 5. The Tale: Does it in fact exemplify anything? 6. What does the Pardoner do immediately after the Tale? (a) What attitudes does the Pardoner assume? see esp. 620ff. 7. The Epilogue: (a) 631: Do we believe that he forgot "oo word" in his tale? (b) What happens in the interchange between the Pardoner and Host? (c) What is the Host's response? (d) Why does the Pardoner fall silent? (e) Why does the Host call the Pardoner an "angry man"? (671) 8. How is order restored? "The Miller's Tale" 1. Think about where the tale occurs in the order, just as the General Prologue organizes the characters themselves. 2. The Knight's Tale: (a) What kind of tale is the Knight's Tale? (b) What is the value of the term "noble" by the end of The Gen. Prologue? (c) What are the audience's assumptions about the Knight/Knight's Tale/ nobility, etc.? 3. The Host's Response: (a) Why does the Host swear? (b) What is the monetary metaphor doing here? (c) What order does the Host want to enforce, and how does the Miller deal with that? 4. The Miller: (a) When he intervenes, how is he depicted? What allusions to the New Testament are made, and to what effect? What attitude is taken toward nobility? How does the Miller speak of his relationship to the Knight? 5. The Miller in The General Prologue (547ff.): (a) How do we read the Miller? How does he read himself? 6. What is the main point of contention between the Reeve and the Miller at 36-58? 7. What is the narrator's motive in apologizing at 59-78? (a) What questions about the nature of the tales does it raise? (b) How does it mock the question of secrecy? (Also, what tales are moral, genteel, holy, and why? 8. The Tale: (a) How is Nocolas described? (What is the force of "hende" [91]?) (b) The wife: why is she unnamed? How is she described (125ff.)? In what order are things presented, and what happens to the nature of the description as it proceeds? (c) In what terms does hende Nicolas woo the wife? (d) How does the wife swear to fulfill Nicolas' desire? (e) What ironies do you see in 198ff.? (f) How is Absalon described? (g) Why are Alison and John only named at 256-61? 9. The Trick: (a) What is the Carpenter's explanation for Nicolas' curious state? (341f.) (b) Is there any irony in the advice given to John at 422? (c) Where and how do secrets keep coming into the language and action? (d) What is the moral of the tale's end? Or is it just a sophomoric
joke?
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