The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer (1400)
“A drunken, bawdy, razor-sharp portrait of every social class in 14th-century England — told by the classes themselves.”
Character Analysis
Chaucer casts himself as a pilgrim — but a deliberately diminished version of himself. The narrator-Chaucer is plump, quiet, bookish, and apparently naive. He praises the Monk's rejection of monastic rules, admires the Pardoner's preaching, and seems incapable of detecting irony. This bumbling persona is the greatest literary trick in the work: the author hides behind a version of himself who can describe corruption with surgical precision while appearing too innocent to recognize it. The gap between what the narrator says he sees and what the reader sees through his words is where Chaucer's satire lives.