Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Culture and social condition in Canterbury tales
People in the canterbury tales
Critical appreciation of chaucer's prologue to the canterbury tales
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Culture and social condition in Canterbury tales
Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is a collection of several tales that are all told by different characters and all convey different messages. The story presented in the general prologue is that a group of pilgrims is traveling to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, and during their journey they take turns telling tales and talking about themselves. Chaucer uses the pilgrims to express his beliefs, about religion, marriage, social class, and many other topics. One of the pilgrims is the Manciple, who is a commoner and has the job of providing supplies for an institution and in this case, he is the caterer for a group of lawyers. Through the character of the Manciple, his prologue, and his tale, Chaucer showcases the importance of silence and discretion of speech, or by what some assume as to reveal the instability of the Manciple’s character.
In the “General Prologue” of the Canterbury Tales, the Manciple is described as being quiet, wise, and somewhat of a role model, but as the general prologue progresses, it can be assumed that he is sneaky and dishonest. For instance, “All caters might follow his example/ In buying victuals; he was never rash/ Whether he bought on credit or paid cash” (Chaucer, “General Prologue” 586-588). Chancer starts to say that people can resort to the Manciple for help in buying supplies and that he is careful with his money, always paying attention to what he has. He is said to work for the Inn of Courts, a law school, where he assists lawyers by preparing their meals. Chaucer describes his as being so sharp-witted that he can even swindle those who he works for, “That swich a lewed mannes wit shal pace/ The wisdom of an heep of lerned men?” (Chaucer, “General Prologue”. It can be inferr...
... middle of paper ...
...he conversation in his Prologue and the tale he shares. Though in the end Chaucer used the character of the Manciple, the General Prologue, the Manciple’s Prologue, and the Manciple’s Tale to convey the importance of silence and discretion of speech. It may have seemed as though Chaucer’s writing was long and flawed because of his age but the irony of speech is just how Chaucer conveyed his point.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales.” British Literature. Eds. Janet Alan, et.al. Evanston: McDougal Littel, 2009, 140-62. Print.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Manciple’s Prologue,” The Canterbury Tales. 14 March 2014. Handout.
Chaucer, Geoffrey . “The Manciple’s Tale,” The Canterbury Tales. 14 March 2014. Handout
Rossignol, Rosalyn.. "’The Manciple's Tale’" Bloom's Literature. 14 March 2014. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
The Pardoner is the best representation of an allegorical character in “The Prologue” of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner is the perfect personification of fraudulence. He shows this in three basic ways: his appearance, speech, and actions. If one just glances through the reading of the Pardoner than one will think that he is a good religious man, but if one look further into it than he will find the small double meanings that he is the exact opposite. Chaucer likes to use an allegorical style to add some comedy and sophistication to his writings.
The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales People never change. In every town you will always be able to find the "rich guy," the "smart guy," the "thief," and the "chief." It has been that way since the first man was swindled out of his lunch. Throughout his life, Geoffrey Chaucer encountered every kind of person and brought them to life for us in "The Canterbury Tales," a collection of short stories written in the 1300's. There are tales of saints, tales of promiscuity, tales of fraud, and tales of love.
The structure Geoffrey Chaucer chose for his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, of utilizing a melange of narrative voices to tell separate tales allows him to explore and comment on subjects in a multitude of ways. Because of this structure of separate tales, the reader must regard as extremely significant when tales structurally overlap, for while the reader may find it difficult to render an accurate interpretation through one tale, comparing tales enables him to lessen the ambiguity of Chaucer’s meaning. The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale both take on the institution of marriage, but comment on it in entirely different manner, but both contain an indictment of patriarchal narcissism and conceit.
“The Canterbury Tales” was written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer. These tales constitutes a frame story which each pilgrim has to tell their own story to the Chaucer, the pilgrim; not the poet. As we know, the tale itself is a satire, but the stylistic structure in the tales creates a sense that can be a parody as well. To support this idea of parody, it is need to know the definition of parody and how Chaucer use this style to make his own ideas clear through the general prologue and the tales such as “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Knight’s Tale”.
In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the stereotypes and roles in society are reexamined and made new through the characters in the book. Chaucer discusses different stereotypes and separates his characters from the social norm by giving them highly ironic and/or unusual characteristics. Specifically, in the stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer examines stereotypes of women and men and attempts to define their basic wants and needs.
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.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, (written c. 1387), is a richly varied compilation of fictional stories as told by a group of twenty-nine persons involved in a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England during the fourteenth century. This journey is to take those travelers who desire religious catharsis to the shrine of the holy martyr St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The device of a springtime pilgrimage provided Chaucer with a diverse range of characters and experiences, with him being both a narrator and an observer. Written in Middle English, each tale depicts parables from each traveler.
In his Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer assembles a band of pilgrims who, at the behest of their host, engage in a story-telling contest along their route. The stories told along the way serve a number of purposes, among them to entertain, to instruct, and to enlighten. In addition to the intrinsic value of the tales taken individually, the tales in their telling reveal much about the tellers. The pitting of tales one against another provides a third level of complexity, revealing the interpersonal dynamics of the societal microcosm comprising the diverse group of pilgrims.
Chaucer identifies a pardoner as his main character for the story and utilizes the situational and verbal irony found in the pardoner’s interactions and deplorable personality to demonstrate his belief in the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church during this time. 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 a 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.”
In the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale, Chaucer once again plays with the divergence between the actual author and the narrator of each tale with the lawyer's critical reference to Chaucer, as if he were not the actual architect of the tale's words. The lawyer's critique of Chaucer is playful, little more than a sarcastic jibe at Chaucer's own abilities and a critique of Chaucer's contemporaries not meant to be taken seriously. In fact, little that the lawyer says is momentous or significant. Chaucer portrays the lawyer as pompous and formal, addressing the motley crowd as if he were speaking to the court.
The Canterbury Tales is a very popular and well known set of stories, written by Geoffrey Chaucer. This collection of stories is great entertainment and some even provide very good moral lessons; most of these stories show the contempt Chaucer had for the Church of England which had control at the time over most of England. Chaucer’s bias towards the corruption of the Church is best demonstrated in the Pardoner’s Prologue, in contradiction with the Parson’s Tale, and the level of power within the Church structure. These are two of the stories of the many that are in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a high level leader who is corrupt and yet enables him to convert the sinners even if he does it for personal gain. While the Parson is of lower standing in the Church, he is not corrupt, and gives the message to the pilgrims so that they might be forgiven.
(2) Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales edited by M.H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001). All future references will come from this text.
...eveals insecurities of him in the process while that itself tells us more about the popular culture in this time. Chaucer, along with many of the other pilgrims attempts to place themselves in a socially desirable or even superior position. With the Narrator having the responsibility of articulating the tales to us in a coherent fashion, he might feel pressure to present himself as all-knowing or superior to his companions rather than show us an honest and unbiased point of view. After all, he is telling the story; the Narrator can ultimately choose to tell us whatever he pleases. The Narrator plays the role of telling tales and providing the groundwork for this pilgrimage story, but since his ideas and opinions are designed in such a particular way; he indirectly tells us so much more about not only about the pilgrimage but of this time period’s culture as a whole.
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.
we see how Chaucer the pilgrim has been swayed and convinced by what the other pilgrims tell him. So much so that he reports qualities that are often the opposite of the true personalities of the characters he is describing. This ambiguity reveals a very clever sort of irony on behalf of the writer - while Chaucer the pilgrim is easily drawn in by their deliberate misrepresentations, it is up to the readers to see how wrong he is and draw their own, more accurate, conclusions. It shows many of the pilgrims to be very different people than those symbolised by the ideal qualities they want others to see.