The Portrayal of the Class Structure in the Pilgrims’ Portraits of the Ellesmere Manuscript Nivedita Nimmagadda College

The poems in the Ellesmere manuscript facsimile of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are accompanied by a portrait of the storyteller. Based on the miniatures’ attire, accessories, and horse trappings, the pilgrims can be classified into four distinct groups: the upper class, the clergy, the middle class, and the lower class. The miniatures tether the tales to the initial characterization of the pilgrims in the General Prologue, thereby prompting the readers to be cognizant of the nature of the narrators. As a result, the relationship between the text and the illustrations creates a microcosm of archetypes that exist within each of the classes. The upper class consists of pilgrims such as the Knight and the Squire are distinguished by heavily decorated attire and horses. The lower class includes the Miller, the Cook, and the Shipman who are characterized by drab clothing, conventionally unattractive facial features, and bare horses. The clear distinction between the physical features of the upper and lower classes sheds light on the hybrid middle-class pilgrims such as the Merchant and the Franklin. Both pilgrims are illustrated with relatively more decorated dresses than the lower class, but their horses are devoid of...