Rhetorical Perspectives in the 'General Prologue' to the 'Canterbury Tales'

Author / Editor
Morgan, Gerald.

Title
Rhetorical Perspectives in the 'General Prologue' to the 'Canterbury Tales'

Published
English Studies 62 (1981): 411-22.

Description
The portraits of GP, which depict types, belong to the tradition of rhetorical description, not of satire. Epideictic rhetoric provides for representation of virtue and vice alike and aims at the unity of perspective that we find in the descriptions of the pilgrims. It still accommodates irony, as in the presentation of the Prioress.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General.