Dante And Chaucer As Cristocracy

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Dante and Chaucer: Anti-Clerical? In the short selections that we have read so far from Dante and Chaucer one important topic of discussion that seems to reoccur often is whether or not Dante and Chaucer should be viewed as anti-clerics because of their writing style and the apparent shots they take at the Church throughout their writings. By the late fourteenth century, the Catholic Church, which governed many parts of Europe, had become very wealthy. The cathedrals and churches that were being built started to become very expensive to produce and the amount of decorations and money that were going into these cathedrals and churches even had many of the wealthier people surprised. In a century that included many hardships such as death, disease, famine, and work that was hard to find, many saw this sudden rise to power and wealth by the Church to be quite disturbing and unfair. Many people also thought of the Church as deceitful since it is known for preaching against the concept of greed. This is where Dante and Chaucer came in. Dante and Chaucer were part of a large group of people that saw this rise to power and wealth as unfair and because of this they expressed their displeasures through their writings. Through their writings, Dante and Chaucer used similar and different writing techniques to express their irritations toward the Church and to shed some poor light on the actions that the Church was taking. In the fourteenth century, the Church affected pretty much every aspect of life, from social to economical, etc. Dante was not immune to these influences. Throughout his life he ran into many conflicts with the Church and especially people like Pope Boniface VIII. Dante saw the Church as a corrupt institution th... ... middle of paper ... ...ng corrupt with each and every one of them. This is how Chaucer got his anger out towards through the Church, through his characters and describing and mocking how Church officials acted. In conclusion, you can tell that Dante and Chaucer were two very unique writers that used similar and different techniques to express their anger towards the Church. Many sarcastic comments and descriptions of certain characters and stories really emphasized Dante and Chaucer’s anger towards the Church and I believe that some people really agreed with them and had the same stance of the sudden rising power and wealth of the Church. Dante and Chaucer were courageous to stand up and go against the Church in their writings and say what they really believed was wrong with the Church and its practices, and they expressed their views through what they both knew how to do best: write.

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