The Summoner

I found the description of the Summoner very interesting. Chaucer seems to do very well with showing the characteristics of characters introduced in the poem. Summoner is described as "[a guy with] black and scabby brows and [a] scanty beard, He had a face that all the children feared." This shows how scary this man looked and how people feared him because of the way he looked. This reminded me of the detail description of the Knights son and how he was very "vain." It's very ironic that he is described as this ugly, scary man but later in the text it says that "and knew hir counseil, and was al hir reed." This showed how he knew the secrets of the girls and provided counsel for them. The footnote defines a summoner as a officer who appeared before the court. He was portrayed as a helper and counselor to these girl, but was introduced as being someone who children feared and that wasn't the case.