The Doctor In The Canterbury Tales

In the book The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer includes a varied group of people that go on the journey to Canterbury. He includes, in Nevill Coghill’s words, “a concise portrait of an entire nation, high and low, old and young, learned and ignorant, rogue and righteous. . .” Many of the characters in Chaucer’s book can be described exactly by these words, as there are many different personalities, ages, and classes on the journey to Canterbury. To begin, an example of a nation of high and low class would be the Doctor compared to the Plowman. In the book, the doctor is described as being intelligent, as “no one alive could talk as well as he did” (Chaucer 155). What this means is that he had the opportunity to receive the education that not many people were able to have, meaning he was probably born in a higher class to begin with. In addition, he knows exactly what a patient has wrong with him or her, as well as exactly how to treat the malady. The doctor cares for his patients, however he is also fond of the large payment he receives from his ailed patients. On the contrary, the Plowman is also a hard …show more content…
The Oxford Cleric, for example, is a young scholar who collects books and would rather study and learn than worry about other meaningless tasks. In addition, the Doctor knows whatever ails his patients, for “the cause of every malady you’d got He knew, and whether dry, cold, moist or hot; He knew . . . their condition” (Chaucer 155). Furthermore, the Doctor had enough intelligence to cure the maladies of his patients, no matter how horrid they were. He is also a man of astronomy and science, proving that the Doctor is very educated. Meanwhile, the Summoner can be described as ignorant by his drunken actions. Chaucer states that “he would shout and jabber as if crazy, And wouldn’t speak a word except in Latin When he was drunk” (161). Drunkenness can be correlated to ignorance and