The scheme of the _Canterbury Tales_ is at once more flexible and larger in scope. The fiction of a traveling company offers more opportunity than that of a confession, a trial, or even a house-party. But further the interludes, instead of being pauses, whether pleasant as Boccaccio’s or tedious as Gower’s, act upon the tales. They add an individualized teller in action and interaction. The parody romance of _Sir Thopas_ gains in point by the rude interruption of the host. Revenge for this may be meant as excuse for the dulness of the following prose morality. At any rate, the host’s rueful comparison between the wife of Melibeus and his own, and the domestic comedy of Chantecler and Pertelote, suggest cues for the marvelous prologue of the Wife of Bath; and her tale opens the way for other _maistrye_ of women in marriage.[42] Though the grouping remains conjectural because the scheme remained incomplete and the manuscripts do not agree in the order, there is no doubt that Chaucer projected a larger technic of dramatic setting. The general prologue describes each teller by summary indications of make-up, costume, and personal style, not in order to review medieval social classes, but to prepare for the various interaction of the interludes. Far from exemplifying Chaucer’s descriptive habit, it is specifically adjusted to a list of _dramatis personæ_. Medieval verse narrative was recited or read aloud. Chaucer had learned early that setting need not interrupt its oral course. Making description run instead in that course, he had learned further that inanimate background is both less tractable orally and less significant narratively than the environment of men and women. Dialogue, the most oral means of liveliness, he pointed by gesture, and from mood and emotion advanced it to interaction. Finally he staged his tales by characterizing the tellers and suggesting their interplay with an audience. Though this is not often carried out so dramatically as with the Pardoner, it is evident as a narrative scheme. For the “framework” of the _Canterbury Tales_ is human. FOOTNOTES: [1] For Anglo-Saxon epic see above, Chapter V. E. [2] For the Prose Edda as “a textbook for apprentice poets” see A. G. Brodeur’s introduction to his translation (New York, 1916), which includes the _Skáldskaparmál_ entire, and Gustav Necker’s introduction to his German translation (Jena, 1925, vol. 20 of the series _Thule_). Parts of the _Skáldskaparmál_ are included in R. B. Anderson’s translation, _The Younger Edda_, Chicago, 1880. [3] “Nulle intention littéraire, nul souci de l’effet ne gâtent l’absolue simplicité du récit. Le style, tel quel, purement déclaratif, ne s’interpose pas entre l’action et les vers.” Lanson, _Histoire de la littérature française_, 25. [4] For this see Faral, _Les arts poétiques du xiie et du xiiie siècle_, 93-97.