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History of English Literature

Notes Chaucer’s kinship as a satirist is however not with Dryden or Pope or Swift but with Fielding. They
are alike in a certain air of rollicking good-fellowship, a certain virility, a determination to paint men
and women as they know them. Neither is particularly squeamish, both enjoy a rough jest, and
have little patience with over-refinement. Both give the readers a sense of studies honesty and
kindliness, and know how to combine tenderness with strength. Both with all their tolerance, have
a keen eye for hypocrisy or affectation and a sharp tongue wherewith to chastise and expose it.
Chaucer hates no one, not even the Pardoner, as whole-heartedly as Fielding hates Master Blifil ‘but
the Pardoner’s Tale affords the best instance of the satiric bent of the poet’s humour when he is
brought face to face with a scheming rogue.
In Chaucer we have no sustained satire of the Popean or the Swiftean type. His genius is like that of
Shakespeare, having a high degree of negative capability. Hence, Chaucer gives us no impression of
being a great satirist, although in his writings especially in the portraits of the Prologue we have
sharp little sallies of satire. It would be rather more suitable to call Chaucer a comic satirist in relation
to his General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Brewer remarks: For all the variety of attitude in
this extraordinarily rich Prologue, comic satire predominates. There are, therefore, certain limitations
of scope. The higher aristocracies are excluded, for the Knight is comparatively low ranking, and is
in any case an ideal figure. The painfulness and rough comedy of the life of the great mass of the
really poor find no place, and again their two representatives are idealized portraits. The characters
of highest and lowest ranks were not suitable for comic treatment, while in any case Chaucer seems
to have had relatively little intimate knowledge of the poor, as we at once realize when we compare
him with Langland. In the Prologue we mainly see the middling people, and we see them through
Chaucer’s eyes from a slightly superior moral and social station. We can afford to laugh at them. We
look through the eye of a poet masculine, self-assured, delighted, who knows there is “joy after
woe, and after joy, sadness ‘but is not at the moment concerned to point it out. He sees abuses but
is neither surprised nor stung by them after all what else can we expect from the world? And is there
not a providential order? As several characters in his stories say, God makes nothing in vain. Men
are not angels, but neither are they devils. Chaucer gives us a vision of men and women in the
world, and most of them have some relish of absurdity when looked at carefully especially when
they require neither our loyalty nor our fear.
Winny contends that Chaucer does not see his company of pilgrims simply as an incongruous
assortment of pantomime figures, to be enjoyed for their grotesquely comic oddity. The pervasive
element of social satire in the General Prologue - most prominent in his account of the ecclesiastical
figures - suggests Chaucer’s serious concern at the debasing of moral standards, and at the
materialistic outlook which had taken hold of society. There are moments, as when he records the
Friar’s sneering contempt for the poor, which seem to show Chaucer’s habitual good temper
revolting against the cynical opportunism which had become widespread in ecclesiastical life.
Such moments are rare and uncharacteristic of Chaucer. His usual attitude towards the moral
weakness which he discloses is one of mocking; not so much at men’s often ludicrous shortcomings
as at their incompatability with the picture of himself which he presents to the world. The Shipman
is a thievish pirate; the Reeve a cunning embezzler, the Physician has a dishonest private
understanding with his druggist, and the Man of Law ‘semed bisier than he was’. The efforts of the
Prioress to mimic courtly manners are detected and set down with the same intuitive sense of false
appearance as allows Chaucer to penetrate the Merchant’s imposing disguise. The mask of
respectability is not roughly torn off, for while he is describing his pilgrims Chaucer is maintaining
an outward manner that is awed and deferential; telling us that the Prioress was ‘of greet desport’,
that the Monk was a manly man, ‘to been an abbot able’, or that the murderous Shipman was an
incomparable navigator and pilot.
Because he does not insist upon their moral failings or hypocritical nature, revealing them with an
ironic innocence of manner and leaving them to speak for themselves, Chaucer’s approach to his
pilgrims suggests a psychologist rather than a moralist’ He presents vices and shortcomings within
the context of human individuality, as a product of the curious pressures which stamp a unique

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