Ambiguous Icons: Chaucer's Knight, Parson and Plowman

Author / Editor
Oliver, Paul.

Title
Ambiguous Icons: Chaucer's Knight, Parson and Plowman

Published
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 82-92.

Description
Comments on several stylistic device of characterization in GP and the effects they produce: the Knight is earnest by obsolete, and spiritually ambiguous; the Parson, an exaggerated stereotype, cut off from people by lack of realistic details; the Plowman, hard to visualize because of abstraction.

Alternative Title
Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer Subjects
General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Style and Versification
Knight and His Tale
Parson and His Tale