EXPLORING SOCIAL HIERARCHY IN THE CANTERBURY TALES: A STUDY OF SELECTED CHARACTERS

Abstract

The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387-1400) by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the most sophisticated literary portrayals of medieval English society, providing an unmatched panoramic of social types by way of the popular literary convention of the pilgrimage. This paper conducts a close textual and social-literary reading of a number of characters from the General Prologue and the Tales themselves, exploring how Chaucer employs characterisation, irony, satire and narrative point of view to expose, entrench and destabilise the social hierarchy of fourteenth-century England. Through an analysis grounded in the Estates tradition, Bakhtinian carnival theory, and Marxist literary analysis, the paper concludes that Chaucer does not uncritically endorse or reject the tripartite structure of the Estates, but instead positions himself in an in-between critical position, highlighting tensions of late medieval social organisation. Five exemplars-the Knight, the Prioress, the Miller, the Wife of Bath, and the Pardoner-are considered here to exemplify the estates of nobility, clergy and commons, with attention being paid to issues of gender and transgressive subjectivity. The paper argues that Chaucer's social world is doubly understood as naturalised and inverted, allowing the text to be a double reflection and critique of the world it represents.