Literature Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 8

Literature - Essay Example However, reader’s expectations are not confirmed. Chaucer merely uses the features of the genres to communicate the messages of his own, to establish the themes and motives he is going to elaborate in his tales. The general prologue introduces the range of the thematic and stylistic elements developed in the collection. The reader can misunderstand the author’s message, misled by the generic forms represented in the prologue. At first, a reader is likely to concentrate on the gallery of portraits, perceiving them as a satirical representation of different social classes contemporary to Chaucer. Ian Johnston (1998) suggests that it is necessary to distinguish between character and thematic analysis. As a rule, critics focused on the character analysis of the prologue, ignoring the thematic approach, which is the consideration of ideas and leitmotivs and the way how they are ‘presented, modified, challenged and resolved by the end of the work’. From thematic perspective characterization plays a primary role in the presentation of coordinating ideas. However, one is to bear in mind, that, unlike philosophical works, works of fiction do not offer rational arguments (though may contain them to some degree). Thus, it is not right to reduce a work of fiction to some simple ‘moral ’. By this Johnston must mean that interpreting the general prologue as purely a work of satire we are likely to miss an opportunity to understand the real message of the author. First of all, it is necessary to focus on the famous opening lines (1-18). These lines imitate the opening of the thirteenth-century French Romance of the Rose, an allegorical dream vision and love romance which was the ‘best-seller’ of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. All the educated readers were familiar with that work, partially translated into English by Chaucer himself. Imitating the opening of the Romance, Chaucer plays with the reader’s expectations, suggests Debora B. Schwartz