Comparison Analysis – The Merchant & The Knight

The following text is written in order to analyse the common points and the contrasting traits between The Merchant and The Knight.

The first common element the reader recognizes is the origin of the texts. Indeed, both poems are part of the majestic opus by Geoffrey Chaucer, named the Canterbury Tales. The knight and the merchant are two of the twenty-four pilgrims who are going to the Monastery of Canterbury in order to visit Thomas Beckett, an archbishop who was murdered in his own cathedral. In particular, these poems are two character’s presentations of the proem.

Considering the characterizations, they are actually simile because they have the proper to represent a social class of Middle Ages, the brave knights and the rising merchant class. On the whole, the two-character presentation don’t have much in common but both The Merchant and The Knight are presented by the narrator with a telling technique, thus in an undirect way.

The characterizations are very different each other, in the text are used distinct strategies which convey the idea of two different characters.

In particular, the merchant is introduced as a person who wants to be noticed by the public eye. In order to obtain the result of someone full of himself, the speaking voice depicts the merchant from his appearance and his behaviour. The first ten lines are indeed dedicated to the characterization of the merchant from his action and way to wear and appear, however the intelligent reader may feel there is something strange because he or she probably expects a prologue about a merchant to be about his earnings. The text introduces the vendor not starting from the economical aspect but from the social one. The narrator says few about the job of the character only in last lines, moreover depicting him as a disastrous merchant and a criminal, with a lot of taxes and a hidden identity.

The merchant is a failure and is characterized with the strategy of irony, which consists in saying something to mean the exact opposite. The narrator relies on this literary device because he says that the merchant appears as a motley dressed person who enjoys being in the centre of attention, but he wants to convey the idea of a person who is a plague for society and enriches himself through illegal actions.

Instead, in knight’s prologue irony is totally absent, the speaking voice employs the reputation of the character to communicate the shape of an ideal warrior. The knight is depicted by his moral values and battle skills. He is a strong combatant that won several battles around the world, moreover the religious values are added to his characterization, to perfectionate most the shape of the character. Indeed, his characterization is complete and positive also thanks to the religious theme that was the most important one during Middle Ages since everyone lived in order to obtain salvation after death.

The two characterizations present two opposite characters: the Knight is a brave hero with a positive connotation and modest, while the Merchant is a criminal, a person who lives only to feel himself the king of the hill.