Chaucer’s Art of Characterization

It can be said without any doubt that the worth of every writer is judged from the declination of his characters whether he is a novelist, a playwright or a storywriter. Chaucer stands above head and shoulder of all other English writers in this respect. Because his characters breathe, walk and talk as we do and their wishes and aspirations, their likes and dislikes are quite akin to men of “flesh and blood”. They are so universal in nature that we meet these characters daily in every society; therefore, they do not look unreal to us at all.
Chaucer’s Prologue is a picture-gallery, and his pilgrims are like twenty-nine pictures hung on a wall. Although, these pilgrims are from different walks of life, yet they are so carefully chosen that they represent the whole of the English society and fully reveal social, moral, material, commercial, romantic and chivalric trends prevailing in the society. He presents each of them with minute details about their dresses, physical features, habits, peculiarities of manner, speech etc. An idea of the immense variety effect and vividness of Chaucer's picture-gallery can be formed, if we examine each of his portraits in some detail, as well as consider his methods of character-sketching.
In his character-drawing Chaucer follows the methods common to all painters, the only difference being that he paints with words and not with a brush. He had the seeing-eye, the retentive memory and the judgment to select rightly. Many of his characters are drawn from his own acquaintances. For example, the host Hairy Bailey is drawn from an actual host known to Chaucer. Similarly, the Wife of Bath, and the Oxford Clerk are also drawn from individuals with whom he came in contact in his life. That is way his characters are so life-like. They are neither saints nor devils but living and breathing human beings. They have the force of reality. His picture-gallery is thus made up real men and women.
In many respects, Chaucer, like a primitive painter, shows a marked preference for brilliant colours, both in dress and appearance. On entering his picture-gallery, one is at once impressed by the remarkable brightness of his portraits. For example, the gown of the Squire is embroidered,
as it were a meede
Al ful of fresshe floures, wyite and reede;
Similarly, the Forester is clad all in green and the hose of the Wife of Bath is of fine scarlet red. The face of the Summoner is fiery red and the Miller has a reddish beard. The atmosphere of Chaucer's portrait-gallery is sunlit, bright, brilliant and colourful.
In the illuminated and sunny portraits of the Prologue Chaucer excels the art of the painter, He has one advantage over the painter: he can make use of sounds which the artist with the brush cannot do, Thus he hears the jingling of the bells of the Monk’s palfrey, notes the nasal tones of the Prioress, and the lisping of the Friar.
He highlights one set of character by presenting it as foil to another. Thus, for example the refined and delicate Prioress is contrasted with the coarse and broad-speaking Wife of Bath. In this connection, Dryden has observed, “All his pilgrims are severally distinguished from each other”. His ecclesiastical characters represent the degeneration of the church and, the corruption that had overtaken the clergy of the times. His Monk, the Friar, the Pardoner and the Summoner have all forgotten their duties, have grown greedy and selfish and are given to all sorts of corrupt practices. They have been individualized by noting their personal peculiarities and oddities. For example, the Monk has been individualized by his eyes.
His eyen stepe and rollynge in his heed,
That seemed as a forneys of a leed;
In the same way we have the forked beard of the Merchant, the Miller’s famous wart surmounted by a tuft of hair, and the pimply face of the Summoner.
Chaucer uses apt similes and metaphors to present his characters. His similes are always drawn from common, familiar and homely aspects of life and nature. These are likely to be familiar to all readers. His pictorial imagination constantly uses such imagery as makes his characters gleam and glow as on a canvas. For example, the merry nature of the Squire is described in a single line by, saying that “he was as bright as is the month of May.” The brightness of the Friar’s eyes is his most peculiar feature and it is emphasized through an equally apt image:
His eyen twynkled in his heed aryght,
As doon the sterres in the frosty nyght.
Chaucer’s art of characterization is quite akin to Shakespeare and Fielding because he portrays his characters objectively and impartially. He is so broadminded that he shows his equal sympathy to all the characters, the just and the unjust, the pious and the sinner.
Chaucer’s characters are types as well as individuals: they are the symbols of some particular class, age group, or profession, but they also have their own peculiar traits, their own idiosyncrasies, their own ways of talking and doing things. Each of the twenty-nine pilgrims in the Prologue is morally and socially representative, but he is also an individual with marked peculiarities of his own. For example, his Knight is a typical Knight of his age representing the fast fading chivalry of the middle ages. But he is also an individual who, for his personal qualities, had been honoured in foreign lands above all other knights and who had been the guest of honour at many a feast. His son, the young Squire, represents the jollity of youth as well as the spirit of the rising chivalry of the times. He is not, like his father, interested so much in war and adventure as in singing and dancing and Jove-making. He is also an individual, who has a fondness for bright colours and fine apparel,
Embrouded was he,as it were a meede
Al ful of fresshe floures, wyite and reede;
Another worth mentioning about Chaucer's characterization is that he' has the gift of seeing the universal in the particular and he presents both these aspects of life in the picture of pilgrims. These pilgrims possess all those traits, humours and habits that characterize the men and women of all ages and nations in this world. They are not, of an age but of all ages, “They are timeless, creations on a time determined stage.” The Squire, the Monk, the Prioress, the Franklin, the Wife of Bath etc, may have changed their names, the title by which they are known, but they are all human beings having the same passions, desires and instincts as are common to humanity. All of us feel at home in their company, for we all recognize in them an element of our own selves. Actually, human nature remains the same in all civilized societies and the changes that we observe are formal that do not affect the appeal of their universality.
His characters are not static: they constantly grow and develop like real men and women. They talk to each other, narrate their own tales, and comment on the tales told by others. They reveal a hundred aspects of their natures. They are shown to us as moving, acting, talking and disputing just like men of flesh and blood.
To sum up in the words of Compton Rickett, it can be said that there is nothing of the dreamer about Chaucer-nothing of the stern moralist and social reformer. Like Shakespeare, he makes it his business in The Canterbury Tales, to paint life as he sees it, and leaves other to draw the moral.