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Chaucer humor and satire
Chaucer humor and satire
Note on Chaucer's humour
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In “The Miller’s Tale”, the poet Chaucer depicts the tale of a “hende” man and his attempt to tempt the “primerole” Alisoun to commit adultery and therefore render her husband, John a “cokewold”. The Miller’s Tale is just one story amongst a collection of greater works known collectively as “The Canterbury Tales”. The placing of this tale is significant becomes it comes directly after the Knight’s Tale revolving around nobility and chivalry and forms a direct contrast due to the fact it is bawdy, lewd and highly inappropriate. The tale is a fabliau, a versified short story designed to make you laugh; concerned usually with sexual or excretory functions. The plot often involves members of the clergy, and is usually in the form of a practical joke carried out for love or revenge and fabliaux are often viewed as a lower class genre. One of the central characters in the poem is that of Alison, a woman who is married to an older man called John the carpenter, “this carpenter hadde wedded newe a wyf”. Alison's attractions are suggested primarily by animal similes and she is described as radiant “ful brighter was the shining of hir hewe”. Alison’s beauty cannot be separated from her animation and vitality. This, with a hint of naivety, is suggested by the comparisons to "kide or calf" and (twice) to a colt. Alison is soft as a “wether's wolle” and her voice is like the swallow's. A supple, sinuous quality of her figure is suggested in the sim...
In The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer introduces a romantic drama between a carpenter, his wife, her lover, and her suitor. This chaotic narrative belongs to the fabliau genre, as it depicts a fantastical and crude story that seems to deal satirically with the concept of love. However, Chaucer complicates the satirical narrative with the character of Alisoun. Instead of creating a traditional adulteress in the carpenter’s wife, Chaucer allows Alisoun to exist in multiple forms and produces a multidimensional character. Through the use of the male perspective, comparisons to animals, and Alisoun’s defiance of social boundaries, Chaucer frees Alisoun from becoming a stock character, as her many contradictory characteristics transform her into a complex
In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Geoffrey Chaucer masterfully frames an informal homily. Through the use of verbal and situational irony, Chaucer is able to accentuate the moral characteristics of the Pardoner. The essence of the story is exemplified by the blatant discrepancy between the character of the storyteller and the message of his story. By analyzing this contrast, the reader can place himself in the mind of the Pardoner in order to account for his psychology.
Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" should be tragic, because a lot of horrible things happen to the characters. The carpenter's wife is disloyal to him, sleeping with others and making fun of him with Nicholas. Also, he is depicted as a fool. However, readers get a humorous feeling from the story, rather than feeling sorry for the carpenter's unfair life. Chaucer makes the whole story come across as comic rather than tragic. This humor is created by the Miller's narration, the use of irony, the cartoon-like characters, and the twists of plot. These elements combine to produce an emotional distance which enhances the comic effect.
Cornelius, Michael G. "Sex and Punishment in Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Miller's Tale.'" Human Sexuality. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009. 95-104. [ILL]
In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer fully explicates the cultural standard known as curteisye through satire. In the fourteenth century curteisye embodied sophistication and an education in French international culture. The legends of chilvalric knights, conversing in the language of courtly love, matured during this later medieval period. Chaucer himself matured in the King's Court, and he reveled in his cultural status, but he also retained an anecdotal humor about curteisye. One must only peruse his Tales to discern these sentiments. In the General Prologue, he meticulously describes the Prioress, satirically examining her impeccable table manners. In the Miller's Tale Chaucer juxtaposes courtly love with animalistic lust, and in various other instances he mentions curteisye, or at least alludes to it, with characteristic Chaucerian irony. These numerous references provide the reader with a remarkably rich image of the culture and class structure of late fourteenth century England.
Back in the late 1300’s, Geoffrey Chaucer, a famous English poet, wrote a book called The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury was about a man named Chaucer and a group of his close friends that were traveling to the city Canterbury and had time to kill so each person started multiple short stories and made a competition out of it. As a result as to who won the story telling competition, the rest of the people in the trip had to pay for one of their meals. Boring rides to the destination might be boring but not when Chaucer is around. The Canterbury Tales shows crime, punishment and justice medieval style. Through Chaucer’s various tales he demonstrates corruption, deception, and karma.
Analyzing the Description of Alison The story of Alison is a typical set piece of courtly romance. This classic example of courtly romance is represented in the description of her appearance and her relationships with John, Nicholas and Absalon. The male attitude to marriage in the time that Chaucer was writing 'The Miller's Tale' was very selfish.
One of the criteria for the story’s told in this contest for a free dinner at The Host’s hall was to be entertaining. This was the easiest out of the two rules to follow. Both tales told by The Wife of Bath and The Pardoner were entertaining. The Wife of Bath had an amusing story of a Knight who rapes a woman. When the Knight gets trialed, the King wishes to behead him, however he is weaselled out of the punishment if he is to marry and elderly lady. Long story short, the Knight tries to talk the elderly lady to let him free but she convinces him to stay. The Knight kisses the lady and, low an behold, a miracle happens. “Lo, she was young and lovely, rich in charms”(427).So in the end, the Knight had to battle an awful experience of trying to avoid marriage with this elder, and ends up living happily with a young, beautiful woman. The Pardoner’s Tale is an intense and ironic tale with a justice serving message. The tale is of three l...
“The Miller’s Tale” perfectly incorporates all of the necessary components that make up a winning tale. In Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, “The Miller’s Tale” fully satisfies every rule required by the Host, in a humorous and intriguing way. He uses the misfortune of the characters to grasp the reader’s attention, and keep him or her interested throughout the story. In the tale, Chaucer includes the idea of religious corruption happening in England during the fourteenth-century. He takes this negative idea and manipulates it into comedic relief by making both Nicholas and Absalom clerks. The actions of those characters, who were supposed to be revered due to their religious position, proves Chaucer’s negative view of the Catholic Church in England at that time. Through Chaucer’s incorporation of fourteenth-century religious corruption,
A number of those in Canterbury Tales are bound to each other through a sense of community, however, this bond does not stop them from actively pursuing their own interests – often at the expense of their community. “The Reeve's Tale” tells of a miller, a sly, thieving villain that was “as proud as any peacock and as gay”. The miller steals “outrageously” from a college manciple who laid “sick in bed” and from “all the and land about”. This land includes a college called “Solar Hall” (Chaucer 125-127). The miller feels no guilt when he steals for his own personal gain as can be told from the fact that he stole things in great number from the various members in his community including the sick. Two young men of the college felt significantly slighted and craved revenge. All of this resulted in the the miller having his wife and his daughter “plumped”, the two men having half of their flour initially stolen and the miller being viciously beaten. It was not only the miller in the Canterbury Tales that disregarded his communal obligations, though. In “The Miller's Tale” the carpenter had allowed a student, “Nicholas the Gallant”, to lodge in his home. This student of the star...
In a significant number of his tales Chaucer uses the comic genre of fabliaux, which are short, typically anti-intellectual, indecent tales of bourgeois or low life. The plot usually involves an older husband who is cuckholded by a younger man whom (often) the older man has himself brought into the house, and his often younger wife. The Miller, the Reve, the Merchant and the Wife of Bath all tell tales which are essentially amoral - in fitting with the genre; tales which would not have been acceptable had they been written in an aristocratic setting, but which were accepted as suitable depictions of lower class life. Furthermore, the women in these tales (with except to the Wife of Bath) are portrayed as goals to be attained or as sexual territories to be conquered, rather than equal and respected partners in marriage. Fabliau tales were once viewed as a lower class genre, but it is now accepted that they are aristocratic burlesques, contemptuously holding the lower classes up to amusement and coarse mockery through their demeaning portrayal of peasant life and peasant women.
Sauntering through The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Summoner, a blatantly immoral and perverted pilgrim, is a complex character who invokes the reader’s ire and astonishment in equal measure. The avaricious Summoner is described by Pilgrim Chaucer in less than flattering terms, accentuating the criminal activity he commits in the Church’s name, such as blackmail, bribery, and theft. Despite the mention of the Summoner’s immoral sexual relations with married women, there remains an air of mystery surrounding his sexuality. From his ambiguous association with a man who appears to be gay, to his preoccupation with all things anal, the enigma of his sexuality
When comparing the style and theme of The Knight’s Tale to The Miller’s Tale it is crucial to start by examining the different genres of both tales. The Knights Tale is a Romance which tends to focus on love, adventure, disguise, and flight. Also, the Romance genre was popular within aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe; so they were meant to be read seriously. The Miller’s Tale, on the other hand, is a Fabliau which is a comic characterized by an excessiveness of sexual innuendos. Chaucer gets the style of the Fabliau from the French Tradition. By examining the differences in genre alone, it is already clear that there will be a present shift in meaning from one tale to the other. By examining the style and theme between the two stories, it is evident that genre influences the shift in meaning between the two stories. That is, a shift from a tragic idealized courtly love among nobility in The Knight’s Tale, to The Miller’s Tale which is a comic affair among the middle class.
In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, an eclectic mix of people gathers together at Tabard Inn to begin a pilgrimage to Canterbury. In the General Prologue, the readers are introduced to each of these characters. Among the pilgrims are the provocative Wife of Bath and the meek Pardoner. These two characters both demonstrate sexuality, in very different ways. Chaucer uses the Wife and the Pardoner to examine sexuality in the medieval period.
In the Middle Ages, when The Canterbury Tales was written, society became captivated by love and the thought of courtly and debonair love was the governing part of all relationships and commanded how love should be conducted. These principles changed literature completely and created a new genre dedicated to brave, valorous knights embarking on noble quests with the intention of some reward, whether that be their life, lover, or any other want. The Canterbury Tales, written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer, accurately portrays and depicts this type of genre. Containing a collection of stories within the main novel, only one of those stories, entitled “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, truly outlines the 14th century community beliefs on courtly love.