Chaucer’s Use of Clothing: an Effective Rhetorical Device

Chaucer’s Use of Clothing: an Effective Rhetorical Device

In Literature, as in real life, characters are sometimes judged by their appearance. The description of clothing provides detail and comment on those wearing them. Chaucer’s uses of artifice in The Canterbury Tales function as gauges of the social status and economic wealth, and emotional condition of each pilgrim. Artifice effectively provides a badge of humanity, symbolic of each character’s fallibility. Yet clothing simultaneously imposes upon the characters literary stereotypes, which they consequentially adopt. Unable to transcend these ascribed roles, the pilgrims sometimes find themselves bound by literary stereotypes and narrative function, which they tend to fulfill rather than reject. Although Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales transcend a Romantic stereotype, his characters often do not. They find themselves bound to the conventions of Romance, as they are bound by the clothes that define them. Chaucer’s materialistic focus enhances this metaphor and deconstructs the purism of Christianity throughout their physical journey. This aspect of characterization functions to illuminate the meanings inherent in the costumes of the secular pilgrims, revealing the extent of their conformity, through their dress, to 14th century social, political, and religious norms.

The General Prologue provides a great deal of information regarding the Knight’s appearance. The Knight entitled by rank to wear the finest of garments and clothes, is dressed in armor that is shabby, rusty, and possibly useless. The fact that he humbly adorns the uncomfortable suit, and even carries his bloodstained sword, indicates the knight’s sense of honor and tradition, but also shows the means by which...

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...ce his own disapproval. His criticism is apparent, yet he doesn’t make harsh or subjective judgments. Instead, Chaucer simply describes what each character looks like physically and what they’re doing; and then leaves the reader to question what the character should be, compared to what they are. Chaucer explicitly chose to describe the pilgrims and make them the focal point of the entire pilgrimage, as opposed to the journey itself. Further, the minimal presence of beneficial divine intervention emphasizes the significance of each characters’ decisions (as they apply to their own ascribed roles). Materialistic metaphor functions to convey these roles, and ultimately evaluates each pilgrim. Consequentially, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales provides clarification of his sociological perspective on Romanticism, through the observation of humanity’s adherence to moral norms.