1) The General Prologue

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1) “The General Prologue”

* 1-18

ELEMENT: The long, elaborate first sentence

spanning 18 lines

metaphors of spring

EFFECT/THEME/SO WHAT?:

Lulls the reader into a sense of false security

Elicits the expectations that it will be about reproduction and bodily desires associated with spring time

This upset in expectations with the pilgrimage instead

serves to emphasize the theme of sublimating bodily desires with spiritual endeavors

* 19-27

ELEMENT: “Befill”/“yfill” / Language of fallenness

EFFECT/THEME/SO WHAT?:

Idea of chance/accident

Ppl falling after lofty introduction =

satyrical / undermines the prev. idealized description (classic Chaucer)

Chance

Moral descent

* 743-755

ELEMENT:

- Reiterating that social rank/order are important to narrator

- Order in which pilgrims are presented (starts w/ 2nd estate Knight instead of 1st clergy nun/monk)

Three Estates

EFFECT/THEME/SO WHAT?:

Narrator’s concern for social order & class hierarchy

By defying that order

Stature about England’s Three Estate system of pray(clergy)/fight (nobility)/work (laborers),

how in theory it’s stable

but in practice it’s chaotic and causes strife

—> GENRE OF “Estates Satire” / Popular in 14th century

Satirizes the failure of individuals to conform to their estates

/ nostalgic for a time of social order + hierarchy…

mixed up / disorganized in general

Tensions between order and disorder

Sense of belatedness/fallenness/disorder

“Degeneration into chaos” = metaphor for literary cannon

Competition for time + space in our culture by scholars (for scholar’s attention)

* 764-801

ELEMENT: Storytelling idea / competition / his judgement of who wins = dinner comped

EFFECT/THEME/SO WHAT?:

= Leading readers to believe spiritual journey expectations, switch

The competition and idea of repayment

undermines the aforementioned spiritual reward

for a literal reward

so the material/worldly economy

subverts the spiritual one

whereas “pay for sins” fit spiritual expectations

this is now subverted

Tensions between order and disorder

Sense of belatedness/fallenness/disorder

“Degeneration into chaos” = metaphor for literary cannon

Competition for time + space in our culture by scholars (for scholar’s attention)

2) "A Revelation of Love"