In most cases, when someone has an idea or an opinion to share, they do so clearly, and without fabrication. The definition of satire is to simply to use humor or sarcasm to expose political or social challenges. There are two main types of satire used, Horatian, and Juvenalian. Horatian satire is a playful way to criticize them, usually with humor and no feelings are discarded. On the other hand, Juvenalian satire is more harsh, the receiving party is typically offended. In his poems, Chaucer exhibits the use of satire while critiquing the sanctity of three controversial operations. In this time, one of the most sacred elements to the people, was the church; in his poem, Chaucer uses satire to critique the hypocrisy of the church. To the dismay of many, Chaucer did not, by any means, disagree with the church, only the hypocrisy. A tremendous representation of hypocrisy in the church, is the Pardoner. For the people, the pardoner is one of the uttermost sacred and pure installments of the church. In line ten of the pardoner's prologue, the pardoner states, “ I stand,and when the yokels have sat down, I preach, as you have heard me say before, and tell a hundred lying mockeries more.” Precedent his speech, the …show more content…
To expose the unjust doings of the patriarchy, Chaucer invents the character of the Wife of Bath’s. Disharmonious to most women in her era, The Wife of Bath’s won’t settle for any less than equality in her marriages. Through her, Chaucer is able to safely maneuver in the idea that women should be equal to their men. On line 183 of The Wife of Bath’s Tale, the knight says what every women wants is, “My liegle and lady, in general, A women wants the self-same sovereignty over her husband as over her lover, and master him; he must not be above her.” The knight informs the king and queen that the thing every women wants, is to be able to tell her partner what to
In the Horatian satire, The Wife of Bath, Chaucer is trying to teach the reader that if you respect others, you will get respect back. When the knight disrespected the maiden in the beginning, he was almost put to death. When he respected his wife as she was in the end, she respected him back. The reader also learns that “the most important thing is doing good deeds.” (Chaucer) Overall, the purpose of The Wife of Bath is to tell the reader how important it is to be a good
...nations of his thought processes, it is clear that the Pardoner does not practice what he preaches. It is ambiguous, however, as to whether the Pardoner believes what he preaches, but just doesn’t follow his preaches or whether he doesn’t believe what he preaches at all. It is evident, though, that the Pardoner has an astute mind. He is highly effective in what he does. Although he exploits the church for his own personal designs, he succeeds at obtaining that which he pursues. The efficacy of his strategy is confirmed by Chaucer’s description of the Pardoner as being a “noble ecclesiastic” and as being unmatched in his trade . Thus amidst all of his flatteries, there exists a spark of genius that complements his minimal level of ethics. This intellectual finesse is the riverbed from which all of the products of his mind flow.
In the words of the Broadview Anthology’s introduction to the Wife of Bath, she is “a sexually experienced cynic who teaches young people the tricks of love…. The Wife’s history and the literary shape of her prologue conform to many of the traditional misogynistic stereotypes found in her husband’s book” (Broadview 298). Why would Chaucer write such a clever portrayal of personal pleasure through the eyes of a woman, and yet design her to possess every quality so despised and abhorred within her so-called lifetime? Because the audience of this poem would probably include wives, and because everything the Wife describes is almost laughably vulgar, it can be understood that this poem would not be interpreted literally and women would instead be forced to listen to an account about female power, desire, and pleasure written, unfortunately, as cruel satire of their
However, after hearing his tale it is quite shocking about his frankness about his own hypocrisy. We know that he bluntly accuses himself of fraud, avarice, and gluttony, all things that he preaches against throughout this tale. It is in lines, 432-433 that the Pardoner states, “But that is not my principal intent; I preach nothing but for convenience.” It is here that we truly begin to learn that The Pardoner’s Tale is merely an example of a story that is often used by preachers to emphasize a moral point to their audience. That is why, this tale in particular helps to comprehend Chaucer’s own opinions, and how he used satire to display them.
Satire can take on many different forms, but still convey the same meaning. Techniques such as grotesque humor, irony, inflation/diminution, and parody’s are all satirical devices ("Satire", para. 1). Grotesque humor creates a tension between laughter and horror; usually called black or dark humor. Its purpose is to shock the audience, and hopefully enlighten their eyes to the subject matter. Irony can often be confused as a synonym for satire. Irony though, is a literary device where there is an incongruity between what one says and does, and what one means. Irony is a form of satire. Inflation and diminution are techniques used to exaggeration the point made by the author. Diminution is taking a real-life situation and reducing it to make it ridiculous and showcase its faults. On the other hand, inflation is shown by taking a real-life situation and blow...
In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a reader is introduced to a rather bizarre and heterogeneous group of people leaving for a pilgrimage. The Wife of Bath is the most interesting and lively character of the group. Her "Prologue" and "Tale" provide readers with a moral lesson as well as comic relief. The Wife's "Prologue" serves as an overture to her "Tale", in which she states a very important point regarding the nature of women and their most sacred desires. According to this character, women desire sovereignty, or power, over their men most in the world. This wish seems to be most appropriate for women of the time period in which Chaucer lived. However, women today no longer wish to dominate their men - sovereignty of women over men is not relevant in the twenty-first century. The reason is that women are no longer deprived of power and freedom.
Satire is customarily discussed as humor critiquing current political or social issues. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary defines satire as they type of derisive humor or irony; mocking wit; sarcasm especially employed against something perceived as foolish or immoral. While the Oxford English Dictionary’s emphasis humor calls attention to the mockery of these issues, it does not present the consequences of certain actions. In the Onion article titled “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense From Language Programs”, The Simpsons episode “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish, and The Colbert Report, satire also addresses the effects certain decisions placed on society. Attending to consequences of the actions or decisions that are being satirized allows us to see how satire can help us come to reasonable solutions that will impact society in a positive way,
Chaucer believes that it is in men's best interest to give women dominance over them. "When she saw her time, upon a day: 'Thou standest yet,' she said, 'in such condition, That of thy life yet thou hast no assurance I grant thee life, if thou canst tell me What thing it is that women most desire" (Chaucer, lines 901-905). This illustrates how the queen exerts her dominance when the power shifts from the king to the queen. Through satire and foreshadowing, Chaucer exemplifies the motif of power. When the king grants the queen power to determine the knight's fate, it proves one of Chaucer's messages that giving women power over men is indeed in the best interest of men. The queen exerts her power by determining the knight's fate and allowing him a second chance. It is apparent that the wife of bath is more of an anti-feminist. This provides the readers a chance to connect how the second chance was given and how it relates back to Chaucer's overall message.
Mad Magazine, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live. In our society, satire is among the most prevalent of comedic forms. This was not always true, for before the 18th century, satire was not a fully developed form. Satire, however, rose out of necessity; writers and artists needed a way to ambiguously criticize their governments, their churches, and their aristocrats. By the 18th century, satire was hugely popular. Satire as an art form has its roots in the classics, especially in the Roman Horace's Satires. Satire as it was originally proposed was a form of literature using sarcasm, irony, and wit, to bring about a change in society, but in the eighteenth century Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and William Hogarth expanded satire to include politics, as well as art. The political climate of the time was one of tension. Any criticism of government would bring harsh punishments, sometimes exile or death. In order to voice opinions without fear of punishment, malcontented writers turned to Satire. Voltaire's Candide and Swift's Modest Proposal are two examples of this new genre. By creating a fictional world modeled after the world he hated, Voltaire was able to attack scientists, and theologians with impunity. Jonathan Swift created many fictional worlds in his great work, Gulliver's Travels, where he constantly drew parallels to the English government.
The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300’s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer’s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church’s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer’s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.
Chaucer first begins his sly jab at the Church’s motives through the description of the Pardoner’s physical appearance and attitude in his “Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a representation of the Church as a whole, and by describing the Pardoner and his defects, is able to show what he thinks of the Roman Catholic Church. All people present in the “Canterbury Tales” must tell a tale as a part of story-telling contest, and the pilgrim Chaucer, the character in the story Chaucer uses to portray himself, writes down the tales as they are told, as well as the story teller. The description of the Pardoner hints at the relationship and similarity between the Pardoner and the Church as a whole, as well as marks the beginning of the irony to be observed throughout the “Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.” The narrator describes the Pardoner as an extremely over confident, arrogant, and unattractive man, noting that his hair is “as yellow as wex,” lying thin and fl...
It’d come to no surprise to infer that everyone wishes they had a little sovereignty over someone else at one point in their lives. It is sovereignty that I believe originated this piece named, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer’s poem, the last stanza particularly, includes many literary elements such as, rhyme, repetition, and more. The usage of rhyme and repetition and their presence in the piece are what led me to believe that Chaucer’s purpose of writing this poem was for the purpose of his displaying of the undeniable need to discuss women’s sovereignty through the use of his narrator in his poem.
Women have the ability to get what they want, when they want it. Chaucer portrays the Wife of bath as the dominant person in her marriages. She looks at men as her trinkets to be used and played with. She moves from one man to another, always looking for more. The Wife of Bath is a control freak, wanting to have sex when she desires it and with whom she desires.
During the 18th century and the Restoration, a new form of literature became very popular, satire. Satire, according to www.dictionary.com, is the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice or folly. Commonly, satire is used to give one’s opinions or commentary about public issues. As a writer it is important to be well educated on current events, politics and the interests of the general public. Writers, such a Jonathan Swift, have commonly used satire to discuss important issues about the follies of governments, persons and social issues. It has been said that “although it (satire) is usually subtle in nature, it is used to bring light to contemporary societal problems and provoke change within a culture” (Friedman). One of the world’s best known pieces of satire is Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. This piece of work aimed to expose the flaws regarding poverty in Ireland and the overwhelming and suffocating influence of the British government and Irish land owners. Swift uses satire to explain his “modest proposal”; in other words, he aims to prevent the people of Ireland from viewing children as a burden. In his use of satire, Swift places the blame of the abundant poor Irish population upon the English and the landowners. He also exposes the misuse of Ireland and forced trade, as well as satirizes those who made suggestions to resolve the problem without regard for the human cost involved.
The Church is the first institution that Chaucer attacks using satire in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer wants to attack the church’s hypocrisy. Chaucer decides to create the character of the pardoner to prove his point. Cawthorne conveys, “His Canterbury Tales collects together 24 narratives with a General Prologue and an epilogue or Retraction.” Chaucer describes the character before telling their tale. The Pardoner is a man who steals from the poor. Chaucer says on page 127 line 77, “For though I am a wholly vicious man don’t think I can’t tell moral tales.” The pardoner knows what he does is wrong, but he continues to do it anyway.