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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
The General Prologue is often called a picture of its age and, frequently inthe next breath, a satire. In English Lit. this usually draws a stern lectureabout confusing the distinction between literature and history, but in thisessay, unobserved by my sophomores, I propose to talk about the General Prologue as a picture of its age and then, tentatively, about some uses suchhistory might be put to by historians and literary students.
1 Interesting comment on the structure of the General Prologue is provided by Reidy, John, ‘Grouping of Pilgrims in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales', Papers of the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Art and Letters, XLVII (1962), 595–603;Google Scholar and by Nevo, Ruth, ‘Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the “General Prologue”’, Modern Language Review, LVIII (1963), 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar They are more concerned, however, with literary coherence than with social classification, though Ruth Nevo has remarked a number of classifications I shall want to consider (pp. 4–6). Brewer, D. S., ‘Class Distinction in Chaucer’, Speculum, LXIII (1968), 290–305, is directly concerned with social classification but from a different perspective than mine.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Morton Bloomfield has a convenient review of some of the premises behind this statement in his ‘Authenticating Realism and the Realism of Chaucer’, Thought, XXXIX (1964), 335–58.Google Scholar
3 Citations are by line number in Fred Robinson, N., ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1957).Google Scholar
4 purchasour, purchasyng: Skeat glosses these words ‘conveyancer’ and ‘conveyancing’. Two citations confirming the sense of agency occur in translations of Higden's Polychronicon, Rumby, J. L., ed., Rolls Series, no. 41 (London, 1865-1886).Google ScholarTrevisa, : ‘Thanne he purchasede of the pope that Englisshe men schulde nevere after that tyme, oute of here owne countray, do penaunce in bondes’ (vol. VI, p. 317). The later translator: ‘This pope Leo faste an other tyme xlth dayes, prayeng St. Peter to puchas to hym forgiffenes of his synnes’ (Vol. V, p. 241).Google Scholar
5 Thrupp, Sylvia, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Chicago, 1948), p. 242.Google Scholar
6 Donaldson, E. Talbot, ‘Chaucer the Pilgrim’, PMLA, LXIX (1954), 928–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Bloomfield, Morton, ‘Authenticating Realism’ Thought, XXXIX (1964), 338, 355.Google Scholar
