Internal relationships between the portraits exist. By exploring the juxtaposition of opposite traits in the tapestry, between characters and within the characters themselves, we discover Chaucer's central purpose:
through the power of the poetic imagination, an aspect of the divine spirit is revealed:

• From the outset the poem explores the dual nature of our earthly pilgrimage.
• The pilgrimage is made in response to the up-thrust and burgeoning of life in Springtime.
• This pilgrimage is also a particular outpouring of individuals in a particular time and place. 
• Yet the pilgrims (and the season) also respond to the call of the supernatural: the saint whose shrine is the final destination of the journey.

• the impregnating of March by April
• a marriage of holt and heath, of air and earth
  the focus moves from the general to the specific, from a universal celebration of Spring to the particular celebration of that event in England
• it moves from nature and amor (secular life) to the embrace of the holy blissful martyr and amor dei
• the season brings the restoration of the sick, the watering of the dry earth, and the restoration of the human heart
• reading the poem imaginatively can accomplish the same religious purpose.

• there is a range of motivation for joining the pilgrimage from sacred to profane
• Knight and Parson vs. Summoner and Pardoner
• The Prioress vs. the Wife of Bath
• a fundamental and inescapable ambiguity exists as part of the human condition, yet these opposites are joined:

• Knight vs Squire:
  Age vs. youth
  Amor dei vs. amor

• Delicately poised ambiguity which will open into emphatic discrepancy in the Monk and the Friar: a designed sequence in the portraits
• What kind of woman is the Prioress? What kind of prioress is the woman?
• The Prioress should be obligated to cloistered piety and has been enjoined against going on pilgrimages, yet she goes.
• The portrait emphasizes the physical attributes of woman: the individual set against the sacred purpose of her office: Blue eyes, red mouth, finely shaped nose, width of forehead, 
• Eglentyne- a name from Romance tradition, 'simple and coy' can be read any number of ways
• The coral beads and green gauds of her rosary
• Her gold brooch is a religious emblem
• She wears a fashionable nun's habit
• Her speech possesses a Stratford accent but she also has a beautiful singing voice.
• She possesses vanity for talent, but it serves God's glory.
• "Amor vincit omnia." Saint Venus yet a religious symbol
• Earthly love vs.Heavenly Love
• Amor is meant to be taken as both earthly and divine love.
• How does God's love make the Prioress' religious devotion valid despite all her vanities, shallowness and limitations? 
• The Secular impulse is overcome by a sacred redemptive will.

• The Parson is brother to the Ploughman
• The sacred and the secular linked
• The conflicts of the sacred and secular resolved.

• The illumination of the links between sacred and secular are intensified and refracted by dark surfaces.
• Love is made sinister and distorted
• The lecherous Summoner harmonizes in song with the impotent Pardoner, the eunuch: "Come hider, love, to me!"
• Love's dual aspects- denied both- but which each desperately needs
• The Summoner

• The Pardoner

• The poem explores how the opposites which exist simultaneously in human nature can be miraculously resolved by the restorative power of Love.
• The poem explores how even in the most debased characters the existence of God's love still persists if only in perverse forms.