The One and the Many in "The Canterbury Tales"

Description: The relations between diversity and unity, and between particular and general, are a major issue in CT, and emerge especially in the emphasis on profession, the sexes, and the relation of individual experience to normative authority. Emphasis on profession, strong in GP, re-emerges in the fabliaux, and is exploited most richly in the "professional" confessions of the Wife, Pardoner, and Canon's Yeoman; the entire CT is a "metafabliau."; Male and female stereotypes are established in the contrasting portraits of Wife and Parson in GP, and are reinfored by the notion of "auctoritee." Despite the value clearly granted to diversity, there is thus a certain "thrust toward unity" in the poem, which is seen also in a strong closural drive in CTY and ParsT--and in Ret.