The Knight and The Squire

Comparative Critical Details

Speaking of Chaucer's time and work, in order to understand the exact extent of his achievement in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, it is necessary to stress the fact that the Middle Ages were not a time of portraits. It was a time of patterns, of allegories, of reducing the specific to the general and then drawing a moral from it. What Chaucer was doing was entirely different.

Before taking into account and analizing the two caracters we have chosen ( the knight and the squire), we have to accept that in the Middle Ages ( and not only, unfortunately), each person was classified according to his or her "estate" or place on the social scale depending on birth, profession, and other factors. Also, Chaucer reminds us that behind all the jokes are the serious truths that he...