![]() The offending passage in the Troilus must be justified, if at all, on other grounds. It was Chaucer's artistic duty, in the Canterbury Tales, - as it has clearly been his purpose, - not only to select stories appropriate to the several pilgrims, but to make the method of delivery correspond to the character of the teller. The doctor is a very formal person, from whom a degree of prosiness is to be expected. But there is a further consideration, the character of the doctor. ![]() The device may be granted absurd, and it certainly interferes with the flow of the narrative. In The Doctor's Tale, Nature is produced in person, exhibiting her artistic masterpiece Virginia, and boasting of her in a showmanlike address to the public. ![]() The most flagrant offense under the second head is commonly supposed to be the harangue of the Pardoner. As instances of the first of these sins are usually cited the self-satisfied speech of Nature in the Doctor's Tale, and the long soliloquizing excursus on free will and predestination in the Troilus. Chaucer's Pardoner ( Atlantic Monthly, 1893)ĬHAUCER, the critics tell us, possessed a genius eminently dramatic, and a matchless talent for story-telling, but frequently allowed his mediaeval love of moralizing to defeat, for the moment, his narrative powers, and now and then grossly violated dramatic propriety, whether carelessly or from the exigencies of satire. ![]()
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