The Catholic Church has been a historically important entity with much control over how people lived during medieval times. In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer demonstrates how Church officials have come to abuse this power, excepting themselves from their own rules. There should be made mention that while most of the first estate is hypocritical not all of the church officials are wholly corrupt, leading the reader to believe that Chaucer supported the ideas of the Church, but did not support those in charge of enforcing those ideals. During this time period there was much conflict over who should really have control of England. Some sided with the crown, but many more went to the church simply because of the death of Becket. It can be assumed …show more content…
Chaucer repeatedly uses these characters to show the hypocrisy of the church. This is a theme that is exhibited mostly in the higher ups of the church. The Pardoner is one of his main examples of corruption in the church. He takes money from even the poorest by selling fake relics and pardons. He preaches against greed while fueling his own desires, and seems to show no regret for it. No one can really call him out on his behavior because of his position in the church. He even says himself that he is not genuine in “The Pardoners Prologue” in which Chaucer writes “Out come the pence, and specially for myself, For my exclusive purpose in to win and not at all to castigate their sin.”(Chaucer 243). There is also the Nun and Monk who live lavishly despite each taking vows of poverty. However, these characters are not seen as bad as the Pardoner. This implies that the more power one has in the church the more corrupt they are because the less their actions are regulated. The reader does not see the other pilgrims questioning these things because people of the time wish to side with the church given the recent death of Thomas Becket by the crown. This pushed people to side with the church and allow for such
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.
middle of paper ... ... to extract money from his audience, the tale is morally beneficial to Chaucer’s contemporary audience; it shows the extent to which values had become mutated. The Tale also has a lasting resonance today; as we laugh at the humiliation of the pardoner by the Host we overlook the fact that what we think of as inversion of values in the Pardoner is in fact present in us, a modern-day audience. Although it may have a moral effect on his usual “lewd” congregation, the Pardoner’s sermon does not seem to have a moral effect on the pilgrims as we see them simple continue on their way. They do not seem to consider to the moral questions raised by the Pardoner; he touches on issues such as the vices of gluttony, drunkenness and gambling which several of the pilgrims are undoubtedly guilty of, and contemporary issues such as death and the fallen nature of mankind.
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
Throughout literature, relationships can often be found between the author of a story and the story that he writes. In Geoffrey Chaucer's frame story, Canterbury Tales, many of the characters make this idea evident with the tales that they tell. A distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and the tale that he tells.
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.
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 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.” The narrator describes the Pardoner as an extremely over confident, arrogant, and unattractive man, noting that his hair is “as yellow as wex,” lying thin and fl...
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories by a group of pilgrims who are heading to Canterbury Cathedral. In this book, the pardoner and the reeve show antipodal characters in many ways. The pardoner is beautiful blonde hair man who is being loved by everyone. However he is very corrupted and smart and sells fake religious stuff to people saying very good compliment. On the other hand, the reeve is very serious and honest business man. He is very smart enough to know what criminals think and do. The pardoner story-tells a great example (or tale?) of seven deadly sins and reeve’s story is mocking of the miller. These very different characteristic men tell story telling that human beings are always punished for being greedy. The crooked pardoner and the honest reeve have different purposes for telling their tales, but their stories have the same major theme; sins deserve punishment.
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.
Geoffrey Chaucer was known as the father of literature. Chaucer is most known from his work, The Canterbury Tales. In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals his viewpoint of medieval society. Chaucer is not a fan of the church, its members, or the upper class. The Canterbury Tales illustrate how religion, in this time period, was more about social hierarchy. Chaucer’s description of the actions of the church and all of the society make it very evident that the church was corrupt.
The monk receives some scathing sarcasm in Chaucer’s judgment of his new world ways and the garments he wears “With fur of grey, the finest in the land; Also, to fasten hood beneath his chin, He had of good wrought gold a curious pin: A love-knot in the larger end there was.” (194-197, Chaucer). The Friar is described as being full of gossip and willing to accept money to absolve sins, quite the opposite of what a servant of God should be like. Chaucer further describes the friar as being a frequenter of bars and intimate in his knowledge of bar maids and nobles alike. The friar seems to be the character that Chaucer dislikes the most, he describes him as everything he should not be based on his profession. The Pardoner as well seems to draw special attention from Chaucer who describes him as a man selling falsities in the hopes of turning a profit “But with these relics, when he came upon Some simple parson, then this paragon In that one day more money stood to gain Than the poor dupe in two months could attain.” (703-706, Chaucer). Chaucer’s description of the pardoner paints the image of a somewhat “sleazy” individual “This pardoner had hair as yellow as wax, But lank it hung as does a strike of flax; In wisps hung down such locks as he 'd on head, And with them he his shoulders overspread; But thin they dropped, and stringy, one by one.” (677-681,
Many of the religious characters in The Canterbury Tales represent character traits that are different from what is traditionally expected of them. This is because the Catholic Church, which ruled all of England, Ireland and most of Europe in the Fourteenth Century, was extremely wealthy. Extravagant cathedrals were built in every big city while the people suffered from poverty, disease and famine. The contrast between the wealth of the church and misery of the people was overwhelming. As a result, the characters in Chaucer's tales were portrayed as deceitful and greedy. Two examples of this are the Summoner from the "The Friar's Tale" and Death from the "The Pardoner's Tale."
It is not hard to apply Chaucer's description of the greedy doctor to today's medical system, nor is it difficult to find modern-day people with equivalent personalities to those of many of Chaucer's other characters. However, it is the institutions of his time as well as their flaws and hypocrisies that Chaucer is most critical of; he uses the personalities of his characters primarily to highlight those flaws. The two institutions that he is most critical of have lost much, if not all, of their influence; in many instances, the Church has only slight hold on the lives and attitudes of the people as a whole, and the strict feudal system has entirely disappeared. Few institutions today are as clearly visible and universally influential as those two forces were in the Middle Ages, so, if Chaucer were writing his tales today, he would most likely turn to the hypocritical attitudes of the general populace and the idiosyncracies of our daily lives. He gives some emphasis to these in the Tales (for example, he mentions the prioress's ladylike compassion for even the smallest creature in the Prologue, but has her tell an anti-Semitic tale later), but, in today's American culture, he would be most likely to criticize businessmen, middle-class parents, and the demand formust instantaneous gratification.
The characters are on a pilgrimage which is a clear indicator that the text is of religious genre. The Catholic Church, at the time, was losing many followers due to the Black Death and their lack of faith in the importance of the church. The Summoner and the Pardoner, who both represent the Catholic Church, are both described as greedy, corrupt, and abusive. This is a direct correlation to how Chaucer and many others felt about the Catholic Church during this period. The Monk and the Prioress are not described as being corrupt like the Summoner and the Pardoner; however they are described as falling short of what is considered ideal for people of their position. They both are described as being in a depressed state. Also bot...
Chaucer uses the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar to represent his views on the Church. He makes the three model members of the Church appear to have no problems with self-indulgence, greed, and being unfaithful to their vows. He displays his anti skeptical thoughts of the faults of the medieval church by making fun of its teachings and the people of the church, who use it for personal gain. Chaucer see’s the church as corrupt, hypocritical and greedy.
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.