Immorality and moral ambiguity are two concepts that will ruin any relationship. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, he specifically illustrates through his pilgrims’ stories some comical and realistic events that display immorality in the Middle Ages. There are several characters whose stories are focused on presenting the immorality within their tales. Like that of “The Miller’s Tale,” and “The Merchant’s Tale.” Chaucer utilizes these tales to display one specific immoral act, which is sexual sin or lust. Chaucer addresses the seven deadly sins in his novel; The Canterbury Tales, lust can be highlighted in two major tales “The Miller’s Tale,” and “The Merchant’s Tale” which help display key elements of the immorality in the Middle Ages.
Marriage is an aspect of medieval society that strives to remain pure and innocent, but when the sin of lust is compounded, problems start to rise. The marriages during the middle ages are not much different than present day, because they originate by a physical, emotional, and mental attraction between two people of the opposite sex. Chaucer demonstrates several different circumstances dealing with marriages. Most are comic in nature, and illustrate crude, sexual humor (Varnam, 1). The first circumstance that Chaucer addresses is a “January and May,” relationship. This is a situation where an older man falls in love with a scandalous young girl in “The Merchant’s Tale.” In this specific case, she deceives him to believe that she is innocent (Rogers 2: 385). January has a description in “The Merchant’s Tale,” of being single for over sixty years and he has reached a point in his life when he wanted to experience the bliss of marriage. January chooses May because of enticing feelings o...
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...n, Islamic, and Judaic- from Constantine to Dante: A.D. 325-1300. Vol. 4. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950. 819-844. Print.
Parry, Joseph D. “Interpreting Female Agency and Responsibility in ‘The Miller’s Tale’ and ‘The Merchant’s Tale’.” Philological Quarterly. 80.2(2001): 133+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Oct. 2011.
Rogers, Shannon L. All Things Chaucer: An Encyclopedia of Chaucer’s World. Vol. 2. Westport: Greenwood, 2007. 385, 288-292. Print.
Rogers, Shannon L. All Things Chaucer: An Encyclopedia of Chaucer’s World. Vol. 1. Westport: Greenwood, 2007. 107-109. Print.
Varnam, Laura. “Chaucer’s Fabulous Fabliaux: Laura Varnam Shows That Chaucer’s Miller’s and Merchant’s Tales Both Conform to and Transgress the Expectations of the Popular Comic Genre of the Fabliaux.” The English Review. Feb. 2007: 28+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Oct. 2011.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. In the Riverside Chaucer. Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton, 1987.
The moral compass of mankind has always piqued the interest of authors. The Middle Ages was a time of immoral behavior, corrupt religious officials, and disregard of marital vows. Geoffrey Chaucer used The Canterbury Tales to explore his personal views of this dark time. In particular, he crafted “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” “The Prioress’s Tale,” and “The Shipman’s Tale” to portray the tainted society, using women in all of them to bring forth his views. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts women as immodest and conniving beings to suggest the moral corruption of the Middle Ages.
Brown, Peter. Chaucer at Work: The Making of the Cantebury Tales. New York: Longman Group, 1994.
Boardman, Phillip C. "Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)." Enduring Legacies: Ancient and Medieval Cultures. 6th ed. Boston: Pearson Custom Pub., 2000. 430-54. Print.
Parry, Joseph D. "Interpreting Female Agency and Responsibility in The Miller's Tale and The Merchant's Tale." 80.2 (2001): 133-67. Academic Onefile. Web. 16 May 2013.
Mandell, Jerome. Geoffrey Chaucer : building the fragments of the Canterbury tales. N.J. : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.
The dominance of men in the Middle Ages is unethical, irrational, and dangerous; women are given few rights and the opportunity to earn rights is non-existent. The dictates to the dominance is formed by the internal combination of man’s personal desire and religious interference. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, the combined perspectives’ on a haughty Pardoner and non-subservient wife is the stronghold of separation in moral roles. The moral roles between men and women are exemplified in the rankings of religious hierarchy for men are at the top and women towards the bottom. Even prestigious women, ones with noble connections, are subservient to men, but contradictorily have religious affiliations. The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a perfect example of defying man’s dominance and the “Pardoner’s Tale”, a problematic reasoning of why selfishness connects moreover to the manipulation. The frailties of religious reasoning however, will cause The Pardoner and the Wife of Bath to be separated from society’s morals.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed Mack, Maynard et al. W. W. Norton and Co. New York, NY. 1992.
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.
Hansen, Elaine. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. 188-207.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Ed Mack, Maynard et al. W. W. Norton and Co. New York, NY. 1992. 1551-1621.
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.
What makes Chaucer’s characters so unique and unforgettable is that he cast them outside of these roles. Bordering on the controversial but lightened by his use of humor, his characters...
The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale. Geoffery Chaucer. The Middle Ages, Volume 1A. Eds. Christopher Baswell and Anne Howland Schotter. The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Fourth ed. Gen.eds David Damrosch, and Kevin J. H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson-Longman, 2010. 375-408. Print.
As a man fascinated with the role of women during the 14th Century, or most commonly known as the Middle Ages, Chaucer makes conclusive evaluations and remarks concerning how women were viewed during this time period. Determined to show that women were not weak and humble because of the male dominance surrounding them, Chaucer sets out to prove that women were a powerful and strong-willed gender. In order to defend this argument, the following characters and their tales will be examined: Griselda from the Clerk's Tale, and the Wife of Bath, narrator to the Wife of Bath's Tale. Using the role of gender within the genres of the Canterbury Tales, exploring each woman's participation in the outcomes of their tales, and comparing and contrasting these two heroines, we will find out how Chaucer broke the mold on medievalist attitudes toward women.