For Wednesday: Chaucer, "The General Prologue" from The Canterbury Tales

Note: The "Anonymous" group will answer these questions

Answer TWO of the following: 

Q1: What apologies does the narrator make for his poem? What is his stated goal in writing the work--and why might this represent some of the new, humanistic trends in the 14th century (which we talked about in class on Friday)?

 
Q2: Which pilgrim(s) seem to come in for the most pointed satire? Why is this? What aspect of their character, class, or language does the narrator find most amusing? How can we ‘see’ this through his description in the Prologue?
 

Q3: What qualities of theme or language does Chaucer have in common with the Exeter Riddles we discussed on Friday? How do we know that Chaucer might have admired these poems (if he ever read them), or that he comes from the same tradition as these ancient poems?

Q4: Conversely, what makes Chaucer’s poetry so different than most of the other Anglo-Saxon poems, especially works like “The Battle of Maldon” or “The Wanderer”? What clues tell us that Chaucer was writing in a very different age, with very different ideas and beliefs? You might consider what aspects of the Prologue could never have been written in the Anglo-Saxon period.