The Canterbury Tales

Characters

The Pilgrims

The Narrator
A character called Geoffrey Chaucer. We should be wary of accepting his words and opinions as Chaucer’s own. In the General Prologue, the narrator presents himself as a gregarious and naïve character. Later on, the Host accuses him of being silent and sullen. The narrator writes down his impressions of the pilgrims from memory. What he chooses to remember about the characters tells us as much about the narrator’s own prejudices as it does about the characters themselves.

The Knight
The first pilgrim Chaucer describes in the General Prologue and the teller of the first tale. The Knight represents the ideal of a medieval Christian man-at-arms. He has participated in no less than 15 of the great crusades of his era. Brave, experienced, and prudent, the narrator greatly admires him.

The Wife of Bath
A seamstress by occupation and an “expert on marriage.” The Wife of Bath has been married five times and had many other affairs in her youth, making her well practiced in the art of love. She presents herself as someone who loves marriage and sex, but, from what we see of her, she also takes pleasure in rich attire, talking, and arguing. She is deaf in one ear and has a gap between her front teeth, which was considered attractive in Chaucer’s time. She has traveled on pilgrimages to Jerusalem three times and elsewhere in Europe as well. Bath is an English town on the Avon River, not the name of this woman’s husband.

The Pardoner
A charlatan, who “officially” forgives people’s sins for a price. Pardoners granted papal indulgences—reprieves from penance in exchange for charitable donations to the Church. Many pardoners, including this one, collected profits for themselves. Chaucer’s Pardoner excels in fraud, carrying a bag full of fake relics. For example, he claims to have the veil of the Virgin Mary. The Pardoner has long, greasy, yellow hair and is beardless. These characteristics were associated with shiftiness and gender ambiguity in Chaucer’s time. The Pardoner also has a gift for singing and preaching whenever he finds himself inside a church.

The Miller
Stout and brawny, with a wart on his nose and a big mouth, both literally and figuratively. He threatens the Host’s notion of propriety when he drunkenly insists on telling the second tale. Indeed, the Miller seems to enjoy overturning all conventions: He ruins the Host’s carefully planned storytelling order, he rips doors off hinges, and he tells a tale that is somewhat blasphemous, ridiculing religious and scholarly clerks, carpenters, and women.

The Prioress
A nun who heads a convent. Described as modest and quiet, this Prioress aspires to have exquisite taste. Her table manners are dainty, she knows French (though not the French of the court), she dresses well, and she is charitable and compassionate.

The Monk
A monk given to corporeal pleasures. Most monks of the Middle Ages lived in monasteries according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, which demanded that they devote their lives to “work and prayer.” This Monk cares little for the Rule; his devotion is to hunting and eating. He is large, loud, and well clad in hunting boots and furs.

The Friar
An example of the unscrupulous friars of Chaucer’s time. Roaming priests with no ties to a monastery, friars were great objects of criticism in Chaucer’s time. Always ready to befriend young women or rich men who might need his services, the friar actively administers the sacraments in his town, especially those of marriage and confession. However, Chaucer’s worldly Friar has taken to accepting bribes.

The Summoner
An official who brings persons accused of violating Church law to ecclesiastical court. This Summoner is a lecherous man whose face is scarred by leprosy. He gets drunk frequently, is irritable, and is not particularly qualified for his position. He spouts the few words of Latin he knows in an attempt to sound educated.

The Host
The leader of the group. The Host is large, loud, and merry, though he possesses a quick temper. He mediates and facilitates the flow of the pilgrims’ tales. His title of “host” may be a pun, suggesting both an innkeeper and the Eucharist, or Holy Host.

The Parson
The only devout churchman in the company. The Parson lives in poverty but is rich in holy thoughts and deeds. The pastor of a sizable town, he preaches the Gospel and makes sure to practice what he preaches. He’s everything that the Monk, Friar, and Pardoner aren’t.

The Squire
The Knight’s son and apprentice. The Squire is curly-haired, youthfully handsome, and loves dancing and courting.

The Clerk
A poor student of philosophy. Having spent his money on books and learning rather than on fine clothes, the clerk is threadbare and wan. He speaks little, but when he does, his words are wise and full of moral virtue.

The Man of Law
A successful lawyer commissioned by the king. He upholds justice in matters large and small and knows every statute of England’s law by heart.

The Manciple
A clever fellow. A manciple was in charge of getting provisions for a college or court. Despite his lack of education, the Manciple is smarter than the 30 lawyers he feeds.

The Merchant
A trader in furs and cloth, mostly from Flanders. The merchant is part of a powerful and wealthy class in Chaucer’s society.

The Shipman
A well-traveled and well-tanned veteran sailor. The Shipman has seen every bay and river in England, as well as exotic ports in Spain and Carthage. He is a bit of a rascal, known for stealing wine while the ship’s captain sleeps.

The Physician
A talented doctor with expertise in diagnosing the causes and finding cures for most maladies. Though the Physician keeps himself in perfect physical health, the narrator calls into question the Physician’s spiritual health: He rarely consults the Bible and has an unhealthy love of financial gain.

The Franklin
A man of leisure. The word franklin means “free man.” In Chaucer’s society, a franklin was neither a vassal serving a lord nor a member of the nobility. This particular franklin is a connoisseur of food and wine—so much so that his table remains laid and ready for food all day.

The Reeve
A shrewd steward of a manor. This reeve’s lord never loses so much as a ram to the other employees, and the vassals under his command are kept in line. However, he steals from his master.

The Plowman
The Parson’s brother and an equally good-hearted man. A member of the peasant class, he pays his tithes to the Church and leads a good Christian life.

The Guildsmen
A hatmaker, carpenter, weaver, clothing dyer, and a tapestry maker. The Guildsmen appear as a unit. English guilds were a combination of labor unions and social fraternities: Craftsmen of similar occupations joined together to increase their bargaining power and live communally. All five Guildsmen are clad in the livery of their brotherhood.

The Cook
The Guildsmen’s cook. The Narrator gives little detail about him, but he does mention a crusty sore on the Cook’s leg.

The Yeoman
The servant who accompanies the Knight and the Squire. The Narrator mentions that the Yoeman’s dress and weapons suggest he may be a forester.

The Second Nun
Not described in the General Prologue. She tells a saint’s life for her tale.

The Nun’s Priest
Also not described in the General Prologue. His story of Chanticleer, however, is well crafted and suggests that he is a witty, self-effacing preacher.

Characters in the Knight’s Tale

Theseus
A great conqueror and the duke of Athens in the Knight’s Tale. The most powerful ruler in the story, he is often called upon to make the final judgment, but he listens to others’ pleas for help.

Palamon
One of the two imprisoned Theban soldier heroes in the Knight’s Tale. Brave, strong, and sworn to everlasting friendship with his cousin Arcite, Palamon falls in love with the fair maiden Emily, which brings him into conflict with Arcite. Though he loses the tournament against Arcite, he gets Emily in the end.

Arcite
The sworn brother to Palamon. Arcite, imprisoned with Palamon in the tower in the Knight’s Tale, falls equally head-over-heels in love with Emily. Arcite gets released from the tower early and wins Emily’s hand in a tournament, but he then dies when a divinely fated earthquake causes his horse to throw him.

Emily
The sister to Hippolyta, Theseus’s domesticated Amazon queen in the Knight’s Tale. Fair-haired and glowing, we first see Emily as Palamon does, through a window. Though she is the object of both Palamon’s and Arcite’s desire, she would rather spend her life unmarried and childless. Nevertheless, when Arcite wins the tournament, she readily pledges herself to him.

Aegeus
Theseus’s father. Egeus gives Theseus the advice that helps him convince Palamon and Emily to end their mourning of Arcite and get married.

Nicholas
A poor astronomy student in the Miller’s Tale. Nicholas boards with an elderly carpenter, John, and the carpenter’s too-young wife, Alison. Nicholas dupes John and sleeps with Alison right under John’s nose, but Absalom, the foppish parish clerk, gets Nicholas in the end.

Alison
The sexy young woman married to the carpenter in the Miller’s Tale. She is bright and sweet like a small bird. She also dresses in a tantalizing style: her clothes are embroidered inside and outside, and she laces her boots high. She willingly goes to bed with Nicholas, but she has only harsh words and obscenities for Absalom.

Absalom
The local parish clerk in the Miller’s Tale. Absalom is a little bit foolish and more than a little bit vain. He wears red stockings underneath his floor-length church gown, and his leather shoes are decorated like the fanciful stained-glass windows in a cathedral. He curls his hair, uses breath fresheners, and fancies Alison.

John
The dim-witted carpenter to whom Alison is married and with whom Nicholas boards. John is jealous and possessive of his wife. He constantly berates Nicholas for looking into God’s “pryvetee” (“private parts”), but when Nicholas offers John the chance to share his knowledge, John quickly accepts. He gullibly believes Nicholas’s pronouncement that a second flood is coming, which allows Nicholas to sleep with John’s wife.

Characters in the Wife of Bath’s Tale

The First Three Husbands
“Good” husbands, according to the Wife of Bath, because they were rich and old. She could order them around, use sex to get what she wanted, and trick them into believing lies.

The Fourth Husband
A reveler who had a mistress. The Wife of Bath says comparatively little about him. She loved him and had fun singing and dancing with him, but she tried her best to make him jealous. She fell in love with her fifth husband, Jankyn, while she was still married to her fourth.

Jankyn
The Wife of Bath’s fifth husband. Jankyn was a twenty-year-old former student, with whom the Wife was madly in love. His stories of wicked wives frustrated her so much that one night she ripped a page out of his book, only to receive a deafening smack on her ear in return.

The Knight
Arthur’s young knight who rapes a maiden, and, to avoid the punishment of death, is sent by the queen on a quest to learn about submission to women. Once he does so, and shows that he has learned his lesson by letting his old ugly wife make a decision, she rewards him by becoming beautiful and submissive.

Characters in the Pardoner’s Tale

The Three Rioters
The three protagonists of the Pardoner’s Tale. All three indulge in and represent the vices against which the Pardoner has railed in his Prologue: Gluttony, Drunkeness, Gambling, and Swearing. These traits define the three and eventually lead to their downfall. The Rioters at first appear like personified vices, but it is their belief that a personified concept—in this case, Death—is a real person that becomes the root cause of their undoing.

The Old Man
A very old man whom the Three Rioters encounter. The old man’s body is completely covered except for his face. Before the old man tells the Rioters where they can find Death, one of the Rioters rashly demands to know why the old man is still alive. The old man answers that he is doomed to walk the earth for eternity. He has been interpreted as Death itself; as Cain, punished for fratricide by walking the earth forever; and as the Wandering Jew, a man doomed to roam the world, through the ages, without rest because he refused to let Jesus rest at his house when Jesus proceeded to his crucifixion.

Characters in the Tale of Sir Thopas

Sir Thopas
A frivolous young knight who sets off in search of an elf-queen. Driven by adolescent sexual urges and dreams of an elf-queen, Thopas seeks out a magical land where he might find such a queen. When he finally finds a faerie country, a huge man named Sir Elephant thwarts his quest. Sir Thopas returns the next day to battle for the elf-queen, but before the listeners hear the outcome, the Host interrupts the meandering story.

Sir Elephant
Sir Thopas’s foe. Sir Elephant refuses Sir Thopas access to the elf-queen, the object of Thopas’s dreams. He dismisses Thopas as a “pissant.”

Characters in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Chanticleer
The heroic rooster of the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Chanticleer has seven hen-wives and is the most handsome cock in the barnyard. One day, he has a prophetic dream of a fox that will carry him away. Chanticleer is also a bit vain about his clear and accurate crowing voice, and he unwittingly allows a fox to flatter him out of his liberty.

Pertelote
Chanticleer’s favorite wife in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale. She is his equal in looks, manners, and talent. When Chanticleer dreams of the fox, he awakens Pertelote in the middle of the night, begging for an interpretation, but she will have none of it, calling him foolish. When the fox takes Chanticleer away, she mourns him in classical Greek fashion, burning herself and wailing.

The Fox
An orange fox, interpreted by some as an allegorical figure for the devil. The Fox catches Chanticleer the rooster through flattery. Eventually, Chanticleer outwits the Fox by encouraging him to boast of his deceit to his pursuers. When the fox opens his mouth, Chanticleer escapes.