Literary Essay: Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales

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One of the most recognized attribute of Chaucer’s narrative was the ability to create characters that embodied features distant from the fiction, making them very real and believable through the writing. To verify this statement it is necessary to examine Chaucer’s work. The most celebrated of them is the collection of stories "The Canterbury Tales" (originally written in Middle English) which were the last work of Geoffrey Chaucer and perhaps the best of the middle ages in England. Therefore, for literary reasons, three characters were taken for an analysis to distinguish the level of transcendence recognized (if any) in their inner and outer lives.
When is said that the characters created by Chaucer had features distant from the fiction, it is referring to aspects that made them real, in other words, made them like us, common people that commit sins, have values and virtues, have regular jobs (or not) and have problems and not always face them, or leave gracefully.
In the general prologue to The Canterbury Tales were seen the hierarchical barriers being broken by joining representatives of various strata on a pilgrimage. For this reason The Cook, The Squire and The Manciple were chosen. The first character is The Cook, where whose description begins with a rather daily language, but never quite approaching this informality. The physical experience of the cook is represented by grotesque details; he suffered from a sore in his shin that was visible to everyone even when he cooked. It also had the reputation of being dirty. And despite of having decent repertoire of dishes and cooking techniques, he was not very reliable with his job, as dirt and flies flying around his kitchen made a lot of their guests become intoxicated with th...

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...iplomat, and civil servant for the king collecting and inventorying metal scraps) that Chaucer had led him to meet the 'types' of people portrayed in his stories exemplifying in a certain way social classes. He was able to model the speech and ways to parody the very people, in which his literature would become popular. His narrative was closer to society with which they felt identified.

Works Cited

1. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. N.p.: Blackmask Online, 1999. 89-90. Web. 7 Dec. 2013.
2. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. N.p.: Blackmask Online, 1999. 4. Web. 7 Dec. 2013.
3. "Geoffrey Chaucer." 2013. The Biography Channel website. dic 8 2013, 10:57 .
4. "Romanticism." Encyclopedia Britannica. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. .

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