ABSTRACT
According to T. S. Eliot's well-known formulation, any literary work is a product of the author's individual talent and an underlying tradition. Although the scope of the individual talent evident in the Canterbury Tales has received ample attention, critics trying to define the precise organizing principle behind the work have given insufficient weight to the framenarrative tradition in which Chaucer was writing. To be sure, scholars have adequately examined other traditions. For instance, George L. Kittredge (155–56) and R. M. Lumiansky (3–12), among others, have invoked the tradition of the drama, asserting that the General Prologue forms the first act of a dramatic structure and that a dramatic focus gives coherence to the whole. Ralph Baldwin (98–99) and Paul G. Ruggiers (3–8) explain the form of the Canterbury Tales by relating Chaucer's pilgrimage to the tradition of the celestial journey. Recently, Donald R. Howard, invoking elements of Gothic architectural tradition, has argued that the General Prologue and the Parson's Tale function together as organizing focuses, analogous to the rose window and the maze in Chartres Cathedral. Because the General Prologue portrays everyday life and ordinary persons and the Parson's Tale mirrors society's values and morality, Howard says, “From either end we see the whole reflected from the viewpoint of the individual or the society and then see it reflected again in reverse” (217). Robert M. Jordan refers to the Gothic tradition in another way, calling Chaucer's organization “inorganic,” in accord with “the Gothic principle of juxtaposition,” and suggesting that seams similar to “exposed beams” of a Gothic cathedral join apparently unconnected tales and portions of tales (130, 237–38). 1
