Hybridity and Mimicry in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

This study of Geoffrey Chaucer¿s The Canterbury Tales reads his pilgrims as the hybrids and/or mimics of medieval borderline community, created by social mobility. Thus, drawing on Homi K. Bhabhäs postcolonial concepts of hybridity, in¿betweenness, third space and mimicry, this study argues that Chaucer¿s The Canterbury Tales depicts a variety of medieval hybrid identities. Chapter I discusses the Knight as a medieval hybrid owing to the changes within his own estate, the nobility, and his consequent downward mobility putting him in-between the realms and values of his old and new status. In Chapter II, similar to the Knight, yet moving from the nobility to the clergy, the Monk and the Prioress are examined as noble hybrids due to downward mobility. Finally, Chapter III analyses the Franklin and the Miller as the hybrids and mimics of upward mobility, who challenge the social order and ask for their own order by claiming gentility.