1. Read the description and make notes in your notebook under the following headings.
• Name and social status. She was a prioress and she was known as Madame Eglatine.
• Physical appearance. She had a well-shaped nose, eyes blue-grey, a tender mouth, very small and red. She also had a fine forehead and an unaffected smile.
• Clothes\style of dressing. She wore a cloak very elegant, a coral rosary with green beads and a brooch of gold.
• Education and manners. She could speak French, she had good table manners, she imitated the manners of the court.
• Experience of life. She thought that Amor vincit omnia.

2. Consider the personality of this female figure.
• What do the following facts suggest about her?
- she keeps two dogs against church rules.
- she wears a golden brooch with a motto of love.
I think that the prioress did not want to take orders. She did all she wanted. Then she wass a prioress but she wanted riches.
• Describe other aspects of the prioress’ pesonality. You can use words from the text but you will also have to make inferences from what the poet says about her.
She is full of charity and pity, she is sensitive, she is charm, she is pleasant and warm.

3. Focus on the language.
• Look at the choice of words and details used in the portrait and decide if it is a realistic or idealised description. Support your answer with quotations.
I think that there is both an idealised and a realistic description. Idealised description: Her demeanour was so pleasant, and so warm; her sensibility; full of charity and pity. Realistic description: She kept some little dogs; a brooch of shining gold.
• The poet's tone in the description is gentily ironic. Which of the following devices does Chaucer use to convey his irony?
He points out some aspects which are different from what one world expect in reality.

4. Here is a list of frequent themes in The Canterbury Tales. Which of them can you recognise in this portrait?
• Religion.
• Class pride.

5. Compete the following passage about The Canterbury Tales. Choose from the words below.
The Canterbury Tales is a collaction of tales told by pilgrims going to the shrine of Thomas ŕ Becket in Canterbury. The poet meets twenty-nine pilgrims at the Tabard Inn near London.
The host suggests that they travel all together and each one tells two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales on the way back to entertain their travelling pilgrims.
There are only twenty-four tales in the book because the work is incomplete. The General Prologue describes the pilgrims one by one. They are vivid companions and represents different social classes and social groups: for example, the military, the clergy, the middle class and tradesmen.

6. Write a description of the Prioress. Use the following notes. You may also add other information.
She was a prioress. She was known as Madame Eglatine. She had an unaffected smile with a well-sheped nose, blue-green eyes, a small red mouth and a fine forehead.
She wore a veil pleated in an attractive way, an elegant cloak, a coral rosary and a golden brooch with an inscription: “ Amor vincit omnia”.
She could speak French, she had good table manners and she imitated the manners of the court.
She was a very charm person with a pleasant and warm behaviour. She was full of charity and pity, she was sensitive and she had a tender hearth.
At the end she loves animals, expecialy dogs.