ABSTRACT
The poet himself is soon one of their fellowship and thanks to his busy polite curiosity can give us a succession o f separate sketches unrivalled for their crisp laconic vividness. The Knight he puts first, characterising him by love of chivalry, of
Travelling with his son, the fashionable young Squire, and the yeo man, his servant and archer clad in green, the Knight must have been for all his modest appearance a great lord. Then the overrefined Prioress, imitating courtly manners, speaking the French of Stratford-le-Bow; and a couple o f sturdy, prosperous worldly clerics, Monk, Friar; a well-dressed Merchant less prosperous than he looks; an Oxford scholar who has spent his scanty means on books rather than clothes; a jovial hospitable Franklin; a group o f wealthy trades men; a ruthless master mariner; a learned and expensive doctor; the bold-faced Wife of Bath, expert in cloth-making; followed by the admirably conscientious Parson and the Ploughman his equally ideal ised brother, both low down in the social scale; and sharply changing again, the Reeve, Miller, Summoner, Pardoner and Manciple, all superior workmen, all rascals and churls, and grouped with them, as another self-deprecatory joke, the poet himself.
