Chaucer, the character, is fictionalizing himself here. The host teases him, painting him as effeminate and delicate, saying he couldn't find a hare. In the tales, the hero is indeed delicate and even effeminate and childish, but he is valourized for this. Chaucer preempts any attacks on his romantich success or impropriety by saying that Thopas is too virtuous and chaste for everyday ladies. Hares come up again in the story; you can see Chaucer-the-character making it up as he goes along.
             However, Thopas prompts us to split Chaucer into three, rather than two, characters: Chaucer-the-author, Chaucer-the-character, and Chaucer-the-speaker (of the story). Since we hear Chaucer- the-speaker's words, not Chaucer-the-character's, we don't know whether Chaucer-the-character is playing the others, or whether Chaucer, as author, is disowning/self-depreciating in creating a character version Chaucer who is actually synonymous and interchangeable with Chaucer-the-speaker.
             Heskell postulates that there are actually five Chaucers at play here: the man (the real, public Chaucer), the poet (the observer of the world), the reader (Chaucer as he who conveys his reading to the audience), the narrator (the "I" who may be the same as the pilgrim), and the two-part pilgrim: the extroverted, roguish traveler and the shy, intimidated teller of topas. In my simplified breakdown for our purposes, the poet and reader are in Chaucer, as author, while the two pilgrim Chaucers are both Chaucer-as-character and Chaucer-as-speaker, respectively. The narrator, Chaucer, falls between the first and second, between the author and the character.
             Bailley calls Chaucer elfin, so he proposes to find and marry an elf-queen. Is he being snarky here and having fun with his hecklers (Chaucer 2) or genuinely struggling to legitimize himself and deliver a story (Chaucer 3)? Does Bailley then cut it short because he genuinely fin...