Chaucer’s Satire
(An educational view of Chaucer’s use of Satire to reach his intended audience)
Chaucer is arguably the greatest author of all time. The reasoning behind this accusation is because he is the father of the English language. Chaucer is the king of writing of controversial items that highly enrage people. Chaucer writes many satires being very iconoclastic towards many things he doesn’t agree with. Many of these statements anger a lot of people to this day. Chaucer’s “methods of satire seem to have an inevitability and rightness which preclude either surprise or analysis” (Woolf, Chaucer as a Satirist in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales). A lot of these satires that Chaucer writes come from the book Canterbury Tales.
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The three big texts from The Canterbury Tales which he expresses his disgust in are The General Prologue, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale. The major ideas that Chaucer writes his iconoclastic satires on are the problems he has with The Catholic Church, social classes and estates, and the family and relationships. All throughout each of Chaucer’s books in The Canterbury Tales he writes makes many satires towards religion, specifically The Catholic Religion. In The General Prologue Chaucer writes satirically about the monk. The monk is a religious figure who is “supposed to live a monastic life of deprivation and hard work, but instead lives a life of luxury and ease” (The Monk). Chaucer describes The Monk in The General Prologue in a very satirical way. Chaucer says, “Why should he study as a madman would/Pouring a book in a cloister cell? Or yet/Go labour with his hands and work and sweat,/As Austin bids? How shall the world be served?/Let Austin have his toil to him reserved.” (Coghill, lines 184-188). Chaucer is making a satirical approach about The Catholic Religion here. He is saying that monks never work at all and they are all about themselves and the money they earn. The pardoner also steps in later in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale. Chaucer also makes a satirical attack at the the pardoner as well. The pardoner’s drunk so he starts to tell everybody how he could care less about the people’s salvation. He says all he basically cares about is stealing their money and the next girl he’s going to sleep with. Through these examples and money Chaucer uses to write satire about everything that’s wrong with Catholicism. Chaucer also writes many things throughout that are satiristic towards social classes and estates in that point in time.
Some even go as far to say that Chaucer’s “literature of the estates is the most comprehensive form of complaint literature” (Tuma, Literature of The Estates). What this means is that Chaucer’s satire towards social classes and estates is most identified by readers. In The Wife of Bath Prologue and Tale Chaucer tells of a fictional character named The Wife of Bath. He uses this character to satirically attack the idea of class and estates of that time. When Chaucer is telling he describes her that “She'd been respectable throughout her life,/Married in church, husbands she had five,/Not counting other company in youth;/But thereof there's no need to speak, in truth.” (Coghill, lines 461-464). Chaucer is using satire to attack social classes by showing a common example of a women in those days. He is basically attacking Plato’s idea from The Republic. Plato said that women should be educated and treated equal to men. Chaucer highly disagrees with Plato. He thinks that women should never be equal to men. He shows this character called The Wife of Bath who is saying that she has had five husbands and is looking for a sixth one. She is starting to claim her own independence. Chaucer wrote this as a satire. He is brutally attacking how independent women are becoming, and how educated they are getting Chaucer. Chaucer thinks they should always be below …show more content…
men. Chaucer satirically makes fun of how relationships and families were at that time, specifically friendships.
Many will say “Chaucer's works engage with ethical and moral questions at issue in the late fourteenth century” (Blamires, Ethics and Gender). This means that the problems that Chaucer brings up for the fourteenth century is accurate information. One of the biggest examples of Chaucer’s satire towards relationships in The Canterbury Tales is in The Pardoner’s Tale. It is the pardoner’s turn to tell a story. He tells of a story where three friends are in search of “death” so they can kill him because he’s been killing other people in the village. Instead of finding death they find a huge pile of gold by a tree. This leads to their demise. One leaves and while he is gone the other two have a conversation. This conversation goes like this, “"Now," said the first, "you know that we are two,/And two of us are stronger than is one./As soon as he sits down, as if for fun/Arise as though you'd have with him some play,/Then in both sides I'll stab him right away/While you and he are struggling as in game./And with your dagger see you do the same./Then all this gold, dear friend, when we are through/Shall be divided up twixt me and you.” (Coghill, lines 824-832). All three friends end up dying. Chaucer’s point here is that relationships don’t work out because people are too greedy and that doesn’t work
out. Chaucer, for a long time, has been known as the greatest writer of all time. But is that because he is the father of the English language? Or is it because he wrote so many satires that got people thinking, but also got people very angry. Many would say that it is because of the latter part. Some also say things along the same lines that he is the greatest English writer “because he was extremely intelligent and he had a wide knowledge of the people around him” (Preavy, Chaucer). These sort of sayings elude to the same idea. Chaucer wrote about many things that some people knew very well about and didn’t want to admit. Others didn’t know about these things at all and were very shocked when Chaucer wrote these things. Some of the biggest stories that Chaucer wrote about are from The Canterbury Tales. The three biggest stories he wrote were The General Prologue, The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale all of which contain satires of extremely aggravating information for a lot of people in the fourteenth century. Chaucer’s main ideas that he has problems with are the problems with Catholicism, social classes and estates, and relationships and families.
In the Horatian satire, The Wife of Bath, Chaucer is trying to teach the reader that if you respect others, you will get respect back. When the knight disrespected the maiden in the beginning, he was almost put to death. When he respected his wife as she was in the end, she respected him back. The reader also learns that “the most important thing is doing good deeds.” (Chaucer) Overall, the purpose of The Wife of Bath is to tell the reader how important it is to be a good
In the words of the Broadview Anthology’s introduction to the Wife of Bath, she is “a sexually experienced cynic who teaches young people the tricks of love…. The Wife’s history and the literary shape of her prologue conform to many of the traditional misogynistic stereotypes found in her husband’s book” (Broadview 298). Why would Chaucer write such a clever portrayal of personal pleasure through the eyes of a woman, and yet design her to possess every quality so despised and abhorred within her so-called lifetime? Because the audience of this poem would probably include wives, and because everything the Wife describes is almost laughably vulgar, it can be understood that this poem would not be interpreted literally and women would instead be forced to listen to an account about female power, desire, and pleasure written, unfortunately, as cruel satire of their
Chaucer’s Use of Satire (An in depth analysis into the General Prologue, Pardoner's Tale, and the Wife of Bath.) What does it mean for literature to be characterized as a type of satire? According to Oxford Dictionaries, “Satire, is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” There are countless examples of how satire has enabled great writers to achieve their ultimate goals. In fact, many of the modern stories and works of literature that we study, have, in one way or another, some type of satire.
In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath is a strong woman who loudly states her opinions about the antifeminist sentiments popular at the time. Chaucer, however, frequently discredits her arguments by making them unfounded and generally compromising her character. This brings into question Chaucer's political intent with the Wife of Bath. Is he supportive of her views, or is he making a mockery of woman who challenge the patriarchal society and its restriction and mistrust of women? The Wife's comedic character, frequent misquoting of authorities, marital infidelity, and her (as well as Chaucer's) own antifeminist sentiments weaken the argument that Chaucer supported of the Wife's opinions.
Chaucer is best known for his works which included the Parliament of fouls. He is also believed to have written many famous poems, but also containing the most famous and obvious, The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer’s best known work. His plans were to write 120 tales but only reached 24. Sadly the famous English poet died October 25...
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.
First, it is essential to know the definition of parody as “the imitative use of the words, style, attitude, tone and ideas of an author in such a way as to make them ridiculous. Its purpose may be corrective as well as derisive” (Cuddon, 660). What Chaucer wants to prove in the course of the tales is that how ridiculous is the society showing certain behaviour codes using irony or simply mocking of the stereotypes that people believed important in that epoch.
Every author has a set agenda before writing their piece of literature. Without an agenda, there is no motivation to write such piece of literature. This holds true with Geoffrey Chaucer. In the 14th century, Chaucer read Boccaccio’s Decameron, and was inspired to write his own version of the Decameron essentially. Therefore, Chaucer came up with The Canterbury Tales. Although The Canterbury Tales is very controversial, it was widely famous at the time Chaucer wrote it. Not only was it popular because Chaucer decided to write The Canterbury Tales in “the people’s language,” but he also spoke for many people at the time who shared the same opinions
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 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.
In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, which included a progressive view of women's concerns in "The Wife of Bath." During a time when women were still considered chattel existing almost exclusively to produce heirs, Chaucer takes a stand on issues affecting women that were not commonly given consideration. Writing in the first person, Chaucer is able to describe life from the viewpoint of a woman. Through this style, Chaucer addresses subject matter that would have been too candid for a female writer during his time period. By writing "The Wife of Bath" in a satirical way, Chaucer points out issues facing women regarding double standards, the validity of female desire, and the economic necessity of women to marry well while keeping the text humorous with some common female stereotypes regarding deception that have persisted into present day culture.
Morgan implies, “Geoffrey Chaucer is a major influential figure in the history of English literature.” Chaucer battled problem that we face today. Chaucer fights the idea of the patriarchy by creating the character The Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath challenges the idea that men are better than women. Chaucer claims on page 145 line 212, “Less than your wife, nay, than your very love.” The Wife of Bath wouldn’t listen to any man over her. She was an independent woman that only listened to
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.
In this novel, in comparison, there are more men than women. Most of the tales told by the men stretch over a wide range of how female should be. On the other hand, the women tend to focus on one idea and stick to it to prove their point. Since there are more men, the women tend to loose the importance and focus from the men. The women figure in this book are the Prioress, the Wife of Bath, and the Second Nun. Chaucer description of the women in this novel is very stereotypical. Although he describes them with great elegance and respect, there is always a condition to it. These conditions then tend to leave no importance for the reader. The Nun is described a “charitable solicitous” who “weep[s] is she … saw a mouse caught in a trap”1. These small details put a wrong impression on the readers therefore leaving no interest and meaning for the tales the women have to say. Even after the tales are done, the Host says things that discourage the
The Canterbury Tales is a great contemplation of stories, that display humorous and ironic examples of medieval life, which imitate moral and ethical problems in history and even those presented today. Chaucer owed a great deal to the authors who produced these works before his time. Chaucer tweaked their materials, gave them new meanings and revealed unscathed truths, thus providing fresh ideas to his readers. Chaucer's main goal for these tales was to create settings in which people can relate, to portray lessons and the irony of human existence.