Religion In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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Religion does not seem to be people’s number one priority anymore. Some prefer to dedicate their lives towards religion, basing their decisions on it and committing to follow the rules the religion may dictate; while others have decide to follow science and logic rather than following what they believe is imaginary and superstitious. During the middle ages, people treated this matter differently. As it is universally known, religion was definitely a main concern during the middle ages, while the written word was mostly authored by monks. The early author Geoffrey Chaucer began writing “The Canterbury Tales”, although he did get far into it, it was unfinished. Chaucer retracted from “The Canterbury Tales”, in his concluding paragraph, in which …show more content…

288). What Chaucer means by “worldly vanitees” is the universal sins, mistakes, and vanities, in which he is ashamed to have written down examples of these vanities. The author felt guilty for exposing these sins to the reader. For example: women were not given the freedom of speech, they were objectified by men and judged by their looks, as well as their past and their experiences. When Chaucer writes about The Wife of Bath, he exposes readers to a promiscuous woman who is open about her sexuality and who speaks of it freely; this was not common in the middle ages and was looked at as a very sinful matter. Also, atheism was not acknowledged then, thus when someone preferred science over religion, it was not socially accepted and was judged. When Chaucer describes the lifestyle of the physician, he bases his decisions off the science of astrology and does not center his world on biblical studies. Due to this manner, he exposes the readers to atheism, which was very looked down on during the middle ages. The last and most important example was the prioress, he satirizes a religious figure when he writes about her. She does not have the normal characteristics of a prioress and she goes by the motto: “Amor vincit omnia” (Chaucer, p.197). Her character does not necessarily represent the best nor most faithful prioress, it only shows how she cares about her etiquette, her reputation, materials and her

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