The Doctour of Physik

Among the pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales we find a "Doctour of Physik" (line 413). This doctor is the twenty first character mentioned in the General Prologue. He comes after a pirate and before a woman of dubious conduct, thereby making his good qualities appear considerably more honorable than they would if he, for instance, followed the knight or parson. The narrator speaks highly of the doctor's scientific abilities and learned knowledge while also emphasizing his aptitude at his trade. There are, in addition, references to the doctor's religious competence, or lack thereof. By emphasizing the doctor's strengths and showing where his weaknesses lay, Chaucer uses him as the knight's equal on an opposite pole.

The doctor is placed opposite the knight on the organizational pole by labeling him as physical rather than spiritual. In this case physical doesn't refer strictly to the doctor's appearance or physical habits, but rather to his line of interest and study. As the narrator states:

"he was grounded in astronomye, / He kepte his pacient a ful greet deel / In houres by his magik naturel. / Wel coulde he fortunen the ascendent / Of his images for his pacient. / He knew the cause of every maladye, / Were it of hoot or cold or moiste or drye, / And where engendred and of what humour," (416-423).

Chaucer tells us that he knows astrology, which is respectable, and tends closely to his patients. He doesn't use black magic and he has great knowledge of the stars positions and the ramifications of those positions. He also has a strong understanding of the bodily humors. These elements all mentioned together give the very clear impression of a competent and self assured doctor.

By establish...

... middle of paper ...

...rs balance the pole that the other characters hang on. By having two characters who are moral, or in the case of the doctor, moral in comparison with the other pilgrims, we can have an even keel of standards without a polar bias. In this manner Geoffrey Chaucer allows us to rate his "religious" pilgrims not in terms of good and bad by spiritual or not, but in terms of good or bad by moral distinction. Just because a character is physically well off, does not mean he is an all around perfect character and the reverse is also true. Clearly the physical anchoring of the "Doctour of Physik" is distinctive because of how the other characters relate to him.

Work Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." The Norton Anthology of English Literature Seventh Edition Volume 1. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. New York: Norton & Company, 2000. 215-312.