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Gender roles in Literature
Gender roles in Literature
How is gender represented in literature
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Satiric Attitude
Three Satiric Messages from Chaucer In the story, Chaucer, the wife tells a tale about a knight and a young girl. This knight rapes a young girl, and when everyone in the village found out the knight got in serious trouble. They told the knight in order to be a free man, and have all the women he wants he has to complete a quest. The quest was that he had one year to answer a question. The question was whether or not he can find out what all women want. The knight though that this was going to be an easy question to answer, and he said instead of it taking him a year he could most likely find the right answer within a matter of days. So the knight set off on his quest and after asking a few women what they want he now knew that this question was not going to be as easy for him to figure out then what he thought it was going to be. The three satiric messages would be: the wife’s tale, the use of humor, and wrongful punishment.
First, would be that he finally finds out that most women want to be in charge. That is the quest that he is sent upon to complete. Nothing makes a women for happy then knowing that she is dominant. A women wants to be able to snap her fingers and
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The most obvious punishment would be that of the knight’s. He was punished like I mentioned before because he rapped a young girl. Well anyone else knows that he would have been sentenced to death if it was to actually happen. Well in the poem the guy was given a chance to take a quest instead. This would never ever happen, but by Chaucer adding this into the poem it caused humor and satire. In the poem it says, “In all the parish there was no goodwife Should offering make before her, on my life; And if one did, indeed, so wroth was she It put her out of all her charity.” And even though that some parts in the story seem more serious it is not meant to be it is meant to be more suspenseful and add even more
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.
In the tale that Geoffrey Chaucer had wrote, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, a man was described as a Knight. This Knight wasn’t like any normal Knight, he messed up and raped a girl. This is a big mistake, giving a lot of Knights a bad name, and having those that look up to them start to be disappointed in them. Usually the punishment that is given to those that rape, or in general any other crime, is death or time in the slammer, however, the Queen says no because he is a good looking guy. Instead of death, he had find out what women most desire from men. He is given a year and a day to find out, and on the last day, when he nearly had given up all hope, he sees an old woman in a field who makes a deal with him. The old lady gives the Knight a choice: to have an old, but faithful, wife, or to have a drop-dead gorgeous woman, but to have her never to be faithful, before she tells him what the Queen wants to know. The old lady and Knight get married and she wants him to sleep with her, like husbands are supposed to do with their wives. They argue and she gives him the two choices again; to have an ugly wife, but she is faithful. The other choice is to have a drop-dead gorgeous wife, but is never faithful. With this, he learns a lesson, and sufficient punishment.
In most cases today rape gets you sentenced to prison and sometimes death. Back in Chaucer’s day, in the text The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer wrote about a knight in the text The Wife of Bath’s Tale. This knight was arrested for his deed of raping a woman. His punishment is not as suffice as it would be in the modern world. The life of the knight was spared because of his beauty that the Queen had seen. Instead, the Queen insisted that the knight go on a trip; a trip that would last a year and a day. When the knight’s time was up, he would return to the Queen and explain what she had asked him before he left on his journey. The question that was asked was, “’yet you shall live if you can answer me: what is the thing that women most desire?’” says the queen ([Prentice Hall Literature] page 140 lines 50-51).As for the knight, what final choice does the old woman offer the knight? In what way does his response show that he has finally learned his lesson about the nature of women? And finally, Has the knight experienced sufficient punishment and redemption for his crime.
...irony, the corruption he believes can be found in the Church, pointing at its common tendency in this time to take advantage of the people through its power. He also shows through the Pardoner that perhaps immoral people cannot guide people to morality, through subtle lines such as “For though myself be a ful vicious man,/ A moral tale yit I you telle can” (GP 171-172). Through Chaucer’s portrayal of the Pardoner in this tale, the audience is able to see that the Pardoner is a self-absorbed, greedy man that mirrors what the author thinks of the Church, and that the Pardoner is the exact opposite of what he preaches, which also points towards the supposed corruption of the Church. The irony found throughout this work serves the important purpose of bringing attention to the dishonesty and fraud Chaucer believes can be found in the Roman Catholic Church at this time.
The moral of this story is you can’t trust the system, man. The knight went against what was common for men to do in that era, and he was greatly rewarded. Patriarchy is just a silly result of the misconception that men are better than women. Chaucer intended to disprove that misconception and dampen the effects of the strict patriarchy in England. I love the way he uses satire and his obvious understanding of the way young men’s minds work to convince men to treat women as equals. I’m starting to sound a bit like a feminist. Yikes! I agree with Chaucer that men and women should treat each other as equals, but some feminist are truly crazy and irrational! Chaucer is a very smart man, as shown by the way he structured this story. I believe that it was probably very effective for changing the way men treated women. It’s a very nice story.
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.
In this example, Chaucer, by writing this parody, is trying to express the idea that a lot of the ideals of chivalry are a ...
During Chaucer’s time, there was only one church, the Roman Catholic Church. There is only one church because the Protestant movement hasn’t started yet, it started in the 16th century. Anyone who was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, for example a Pardoner, a Summoner, or a Friar, are not to have sex, or party around, as well as not having money. Chaucer notices that some of these people in the Church break these rules repeatedly. Chaucer uses satire to brilliantly describe the hypocrisy in the church. Although Chaucer may come off as anti-religious, he is religious, he is against anti-hypocrisy. The first character Chaucer uses satire on is the Friar. Chaucer tells his audience that the Friar liked to sleep around a lot with women. The Friar also got lots of girls pregnant and then married them off to men in the church. The Friar was also very wealthy, and liked to party. Which are clear violations of the church’s code. To make things worse, Chaucer said that this particular Friar was better than others. The next characters that Chaucer introduced were the Pardoner and the Summoner. The Summoner’s job in a church is to find people who have committed sin and bring them to the church so that their sins can be forgiven by the Pardoner. However, the Summoner abused his power by blackmailing people to go see the Pardoner or else they
...ished in real society. It is through of the eyes of Chaucer the pilgrim, and through his tendency to use long words, complicated sentences and paragraphs, attractive mannerisms of expression and absurd situations that the parodist features can be easily identified and then analysed. Expressions like “men should not be too serious at a game” shows how everything is being softened so as not to bother anyone, but amuse them and invite them to read, for later inspire the sense of criticism – satire. Chaucer the poet is “therefore a man who takes it upon himself to correct censure and ridicule the foolishness and vices of society and thus to bring contempt and mockery upon anomalies from a desirable and civilized norm”. Thus, Chaucer’s collection of parodies actually conveys a satire: a protest, a sublimation and refinement of anger and indignation of the medieval times.
T his outrageous act created a great stir and King Arthur was petitioned for justice. The Knight was condemned to death according to the law and would have been beheaded if the queen had not mediated on his behalf. After many pleas for mercy King Arthur finally told the queen to decide the Knight’s fate. The queen then told the Knight to answer the question what women desire the most in order to save his life. She also gave him a time period of one year to find an answer and appear before her. Seeing no other solution the Knight decided to go in search of the answer. He visited every house and every spot in the country but couldn’t find any two people who agreed on the subject. Some women loved riches and wealth while others loved fine clothes. There were yet others who claimed that they best loved flattery and attentiveness. There were still others who took great delight at being considered as dependable and discreet. In short everybody held a different opinion. The one-year granted to the Knight eventually drew to an end but he had still not found an answer. He rode back home with a heavy heart. On his way he happened to catch a glimpse of twenty-four ladies dancing but they miraculously disappeared when he reached the spot. There was nobody in sight except for an extremely ugly old woman. She asked the Knight, what he was looking for, as she might be able to help him since old women know plenty of things. The Knight explained his predicament. The old woman said that if he would pledge to do the first thing that she required of him then she would give him the correct answer before the night. The Knight promised to grant her a wish and they rode for the Court. The Knight proclaimed that he had found the answer and told the entire court that women most desire to have mastery over their husbands and their lovers. None of the women assembled in the court could contradict the Knight and the queen spared his life. Thereupon the old woman sprang up and told the queen that she had taught the answer to the Knight in exchange for a wish. She now demands, that the Knight marry her and fulfill her wish. The Knight pleads with her to ask for ...
During the mid 1590’s John Donne went through a life changing personal struggle in regards to religious opinions. It was during this time that Donne began to make his move from the faith of Catholicism he practiced during childhood as a member of the Roman Catholic Church, to Protestantism through the Church of England. According to of Richard Strier’s book Resistant Structures: Particularly, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts Donne “for a remarkably long time, was a religious nothing” (121) using this period, of “intellectual and religious bachelorhood” (122) to develop his own ideas, thoughts, and opinions on religion through freedom of conscience. One of the results from this period in Donne’s life was his creation of the third Satire (“Of Religion”). In his work Satire III, John Donne uses the literary genre of satire as a means for critiquing a multitude of religious stances. Donne expresses his own personal problems and discoveries about religion as he engages in freedom of conscience to develop a solution. After reading Satire III, I believe that the effect or outcome that Donne wishes to achieve through his satire of specific religious approaches and authorities is that his readers will also engage in freedom of conscience to seek true religion instead of simply following their religious mascot of choice.
The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is a masterpiece of satire due to the frequent use of verbal irony and insults towards the characters and their roles in society. A major source of Irony is Chaucer’s representation of the Church. He uses the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar, who are all supposed to be holy virtuous people to represent the Church. In his writing he suggests that they are actually corrupt, break their vows and in no way model the “holiness” of Christianity.
Geoffrey Chaucer was a on a mission when he wrote The Canterbury Tales. That mission was to create a satire that attacked three major institutions. Raphel displays, “Medieval society was divided into three estates: the Church (those who prayed), the Nobility (those who fought), and the Patriarchy. The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is an estates satire.” Chaucer wanted to shed light on the institutions that were taking advantage of the everyday man. Chaucer does this by making up tales about certain people that she light to the undercover world of the institutions. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses satire to attack the Church, the Patriarchy, and the Nobility.
Two of the greatest masters of British literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer, tended to look to the classics when searching for inspiration. A lesser-known example of this lies in an ancient tale from Greece about two star-crossed lovers. There are many variations on the names of these lovers, but for the purpose of solidarity, they shall henceforth be referred to as “Troilus and Criseyde” for Chaucer and “Troilus and Cressida” for Shakespeare. Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” offers up a classic tale of love that is doomed, whereas Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida” is not only tragic but also biting in its judgment and representation of characters. This difference may be due to the differences in time periods for the two authors, or their own personal dispositions, but there can be no denying the many deviations from Chaucer’s work that Shakespeare employs. Shakespeare’s work, by making the characters and situations more relatable, builds upon Chaucer’s original work, rather than improving it or shattering it.
Chaucer's Irony - The Canterbury Tales Chaucer's Irony Irony is a vitally important part of The Canterbury Tales, and Chaucer's ingenious use of this literary device does a lot to provide this book with the classic status it enjoys even today. Chaucer has mastered the techniques required to skilfully put his points across and subtle irony and satire is particularly effective in making a point. The Canterbury Tales are well-known as an attack on the Church and its rôle in fourteenth century society. With the ambiguity introduced by the naïve and ignorant "Chaucer the pilgrim", the writer is able to make ironic attacks on characters and what they represent from a whole new angle. The differences in opinion of Chaucer the pilgrim and Chaucer the writer are much more than nuances - the two personas are very often diametrically opposed so as to cause effectual irony.