The Miller's physical stature fits his story, which is uncouth and, for many, obscene.

He is a heavyset man, "a stout Carl (fellow) full big" of muscle and bone, and he is always the winner at wrestling. He is a fearful sight and vulgar. Most noticeable is a large wart with hairs growing out as long and as red as a thistle at the tip of his nose. If most of the pilgrims are going to Canterbury for religious reasons, the Miller is probably going to benefit from the curative powers which were heralded. He is an awesome fellow, and, like the Summoner, a person one would not want to meet in the dark. His tale is one of the best constructed and the best comic situations of the all the tales. As evidenced in his tale, the Miller also has an obvious grudge against carpenters and perhaps towards the Reeve himself, who was once a member of a carpenter's guild.

Socially, the Knight is by far the most prestigious person on the pilgrimage. He has fought in many battles and served his king nobly. (Readers should note that the Knight has not fought in secular battles; all his battles have been religious battles of some nature.) He is the very essence of chivalry, honor, and courage. Similarly, he is the epitome of gentility, a man who loves truth, freedom, and honor. Everyone in the pilgrimage looks up to and respects him. Despite his elevated position, the knight is also filled with humility. He does not participate in the quarreling or complaining, nor does he condemn it. Although he has distinguished himself several times in battle, he never talks about his brave and valorous deeds. He is completely satisfied with his station in life and is courteous to the other pilgrims without becoming friendly with them. The Knight's Tale perfectly fits the Knight himself. He chooses a story filled with knights, love, honor, chivalry, and adventure. The main emphasis in the story is upon rules of honor, decorum, and proper conduct. For his hero, he chooses the Greek hero of legend, Theseus, who was the most highly thought of man in Ancient Greek culture; indeed, Theseus was the King of Athens, and Sophocles, in the Oedipus Trilogy, presents him as the ideal king. Thus Theseus, like the Knight himself, is an embodiment of all the ideal human virtues.

The Wife of Bath is intriguing to almost anyone who has ever read her prologue, filled with magnificent, but for some, preposterous statements. First of all, the Wife is the forerunner of the modern liberated woman, and she is the prototype of a certain female figure that often appears in later literature. Above all, she is, for the unprejudiced reader, Chaucer's most delightful creature, even if some find her also his most outrageous. Her doctrine on marriage is shocking to her companions, evoking such responses that the single man never wants to marry. For the Clerk and the Parson, her views are not only scandalous but heretical; they contradict the teachings of the church. In fact, her views prompt the Clerk to tell a tale of a character completely opposite from the Wife of Bath's tale.

Her prologue presents a view of marriage that no pilgrim had ever conceived of and is followed by a tale that proves her to be correct. She expresses her views with infinite zest and conviction, with such determined assurance in the correctness that no pilgrim can argue with her logic; they can be shocked by it, but they cannot refute it. As she unfolds her life history in her prologue, she reveals that the head of the house should always be the woman, that a man is no match for a woman, and that as soon as they learn to yield to the sovereignty of women, men will find a happy marriage. In her prologue, the Wife admirably supports her position by reference to all sort of scholarly learning, and when some source of authority disagrees with her point of view, she dismisses it and relies instead on her own experience. Because she has had the experience of having had five husbands and is receptive to a sixth there is no better proof of her views than her own experience, which is better than a scholarly diatribe.

In his descriptions of the pilgrims in The Prologue, Chaucer begins with a description of the most noble, the Knight, and then includes those who have pretensions to the nobility, such as the Squire, and those whose manner and behavior suggest some aspects of nobility, such as the Prioress. Then he covers the middle class (the Merchant, the Clerk, and the Man of Law, for example) and ultimately descends to the most vulgar (the Miller and the Reeve). The reader must ask why the Pardoner is placed at the very end of the descending order. From his prologue and tale, the reader discovers that the Pardoner is well read, that he is psychologically astute, and that he has profited significantly from his profession. Yet Chaucer places him at the very bottom of humanity because he uses the church and holy, religious objects as tools to profit personally. In the other great classic of the Middle Ages, Dante's Divine Comedy, Dante arranges hell into nine concentric circles. The first circle is reserved for the least offensive sinner, with each subsequent circle holding ever more evil sinners, finally ending in the most pernicious and vicious sinners, including betrayers such as Judas Iscariot and Brutus. In the ninth circle of Dante's Inferno, the circle just above the betrayers, are the simonists, those sinners who make a practice of selling holy items, sacraments, or ecclesiastical offices for personal profit. The punishment for such perversion of holy objects was very severe. Consequently, in the hierarchy of the medieval church, the Pardoner and his sin are especially heinous. The other pilgrims recognize the sins of the Pardoner, and their antagonism toward him is expressed by the Host at the end of the Pardoner's tale when the Pardoner has the effrontery and hypocrisy to try to sell one of his "pardons" to the Host. Thus, while the Pardoner is the most evil of the pilgrims, he is nevertheless the most intriguing. The most provocative thing about the Pardoner is his open revelation about his own hypocrisy and avarice. Some critics have called him the most thoroughly modern character in The Canterbury Tales, especially in his use of modern psychology to dupe his victims. Likewise, his self-evaluation makes his character noteworthy: He

maintains that, although he is not moral himself, he can tell a very moral tale. This concept alone makes him a character worth noting.

The Host proves himself to be a very good tour guide, a position that is very hard to fulfill since he has to please such a wide variety of pilgrims. He proves himself capable of handling most of the arguments and keeping everyone in line. Even when the Cook gets drunk and falls off his horse, the Host is able to get him safely back astride. The Host also calms differences such as the arguments between the Miller and the Reeve or between the Friar and the Summoner. He kids the Parson about being too much a prude. He is tolerant of the Wife of Bath in her long and, to some pilgrims, offensive prologue. When time grows short, he gently nudges the storytellers to get on with their narrations. He himself takes kidding easily. In general, he is a good leader, a good arbitrator of arguments, a peacemaker, and a man of the world who knows how to treat a diverse number of people.