Miller's Tale And The Canterbury Tales Analysis

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The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, one of the stories told in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Second Shepherd’s Play, authored by the unknown Wakefield Master, were both written in the same general time period in England and therefore share a lot of social context. The works both have a self-aware tone, and both works deal heavily with both Christian religion and humor. The two works also have many differences, including a difference in how personal their tone is and in the way both works use humor. However, the defining difference in regards to religion between the two works is that The Miller’s Tale seems to use religion to create humor and drive plot, while The Second Shepherd’s Play uses humor and plot to relay a religious
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales seem more interested in exploring the social class system of the time than religion by itself. In this time period, there were three main classes: people who fought, people who prayed, and people who worked. In Chaucer’s time, however, these social classes were becoming divided into subsections, and a middle class was growing out of the “people who work” category. It could be argued that Chaucer is much more interested in exploring these social changes than religion. Undoubtedly, religion was a huge part of society and culture, but it seems that Chaucer only dealt with religion as it related to social class. This is evidenced by the way he set up The Canterbury Tales, with a member of several social classes being tasked to tell a story. On the other hand, The Miller’s Tale deals directly with religion, and a religious message may be interpreted depending on the
However, the most easily made observation when comparing the two is the immediately obvious difference in their level of commitment to creating a religious message. While The Second Shepherd’s Play is obvious in its religious message, The Miller’s Tale is far more ambiguous, and in fact may not contain a religious message at all. This reflects the different focus of the authors – while The Wakefield Master wrote his play specifically to educate commoners on religions matters, Chaucer seemed more interested in exploring the changing social climate of his

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