Social structure

Ideas of medieval social organization have much to contribute to the study of Chaucer. Socially and politically inflected topics are manifest within his writings, and socially grounded issues of literary taste and reception are thematically important as well. But, looking beyond particular matters of content, generally held notions about the structure of society also exert a tacit but persistent influence on the structure of his literary works.

Medieval social descriptions are very conscious of degree, and tend to emphasize the relatively small number of people at the top of the social hierarchy. The thirteenth-century legal commentator Bracton is representative when he divides society into those high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy (the pope, archbishops, bishops, and lesser prelates), those high in the civil hierarchy (emperors, kings, dukes, counts, barons, magnates, and knights), and those remaining (a general category of 'freepersons and bondpersons' or liberi et villani).