Writing has been a way of communication for centuries, being used for many different forms of literature such as oral stories, literary poems, theology, and others to express thoughts and other acts of communicating. When writing, the objective is to use rhetoric to grab the reader’s attention and hold it for the duration of the writing. During the Medieval era, it was important that scholarly people communicate clearly with the common folk. There are multiple strategies that help persuade and obtain the reader’s attention. There are multiple varieties of rhetoric that writers use to perfect the art of persuasion and effective writing, even dating back to the medieval era.
In the Medieval era, people would venerate education because educated
…show more content…
people tended to control cities, government, and overall power. When Chaucer says “People can die from mere imagination” he adds a sarcastic, almost humorous, tone. In the middle ages philosophers, poets, and authors referred to speaking in the vernacular, and to talk in the vernacular was a popular rhetoric that seemed to connect authors with the reader. This strategy helps the readers feel more comfortable, therefore the writing becomes more popular. Chaucer was a master of rhetoric and used it constantly throughout his literary works. Aristotle, a philosopher, created the rhetorical triangle that consisted of three parts: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos appeals to ethics and refers to the manner of delivery. Trustworthiness, reliability, and fairness are all created by the author through the appeal of ethos. Pathos covers all emotions as in love, hate, greed, humor, and pity. Any emotion the character portrays appeals to pathos. Logos is any logical statement made by the author which includes all facts and statistics and can even include authoritative voices in the writings. Ethos is seen abundantly in the prologue of The Canterbury Tales when the author is describing all of the characters and their attributes. The story of the Canterbury Tales shows Chaucer’s brilliant ways to burgeon the pomposity of the work. The Canterbury Tales are meant to highlight the archetype of each person in the village, although the author makes this seemingly in a rhetoric manor. This character, for example, the knight, is described as kind and noble and approaches people without ever spilling a word of hate out of his mouth. By using this rhetoric, the character’s personality is described and each character is meant to match a position in the feudal system. Chaucer has now established characters that the reader can connect to and makes the writing more appealable, which is the author’s way of expressing ethos. Chaucer applies pathos to fabricate the character’s emotions and feelings throughout the Canterbury Tales.
The feelings of love, hate, envy, and pity help shape the story and provide a resemblance to the person engaged in the story. For example, Chaucer describes the Prioress and Monk as loving and devoting people but in reality, they are both greedy. This creates the two-faced front people purpose every day that confuses others into seeing who they really are. Chaucer provides a personal connection to the reader which will cause them to be more persuaded and intrigued by the story. Both ethos and pathos put the reader in the character’s shoes, and the author makes it easy and clear to do …show more content…
so. The audience can also see when Chaucer applies logos to capture the legitimacy of the characters and the story itself. For example, at the end of the prologue, before the actual storyline begins, Chaucer apologizes in advance for the crude behavior and language of the pilgrims. Having done this, the reader now knows that they will read every grim detail of the truth and nothing will be sugar coated. Some authors use rhetoric to outsmart the audience, but Chaucer follows Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle method to almost grant the audience an advantage when they read the story. Satire, including humor and irony, is seen a lot in the Medieval era as a strategic form of rhetoric.
Chaucer has a humorous tone throughout the Canterbury Tales and tends to make fun of the character’s while the story is being told. For example, it is humorous to the reader when the three men go out to kill death and are accusing the old man of being an accomplice to death because we know that death is not actually a person. That story is also ironic because as the trio goes out on their mission to kill death, they end up being seduced by death. When the men find the gold their emotions of greed and anger take over until they all individually have a plan to kill off the remaining two. Irony and humor connect the reader to the characters even more so than just knowing the physical attributes and emotions of the
character. Effective writing, in some cases, is supported by the backbone of the storyline. In 1485 when Le Morte Arthur was written, the skeleton of the story is based on the hero’s journey method created by Joseph Campbell. The hero’s journey is a guideline that almost every story follows and consist of every task the hero will overcome on his adventure through life. King Arthur denies his rightful place as king as a child because he does not know he was actually born into royalty, and throughout his life Arthur conquers any task he is faced with. This short story is fully casted with rhetoric and relatable among all people. Along with Le Morte d’Arthur, Beowulf is written with the hero’s journey supporting the story. Beowulf travels with a group of helpers and conquers many battles. The hero’s journey covers all the challenges and temptations that the main character will face and create an guideline for the author to demonstrate rhetoric. Even though Beowulf is presented as an honorable and in the people’s eyes “conventional” man, the author changes this view by changing his tone of the story. The only way that Chaucer can change the tone of the story is with rhetorical devices. He often refers to the term wyrd, which means that our fates cannot be escapable. He heavily relies on death as a tone-setting device. The term wyrd is saturated with pathos and logos. In this story it is almost considered to be the marrow of the story. During the Anglo-Saxon period, stories were primarily told by mouth; stories were hardly ever written down. Stories were heavily influenced by rhetoric and the use of influential words. Then artist such as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Mallory was among the first in their profession. The Bible played a huge role in literature. It reinforced a higher vernacular and sustained rhetoric as well as ethos, pathos, and logos. It sprung change in oral stories, oracles began to include religion in their stories that haven't changed for thousands of years. The Bible alone had cultivated new wisdom and proclaimed new culture-hearths which would ultimately discover a new way to use rhetoric and its literary arsenal.
In the poem, by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts the people of the church and describes them as people who are not the sole embodiment of people who have sworn themselves to God, and to live by the four vows that the church requires them to commit themselves to. The Prioress, a Nun, is no exception, but Chaucer does not directly say how she represents the four vows but rather it is what he does not say that leads people to believe the Prioress is the exact opposite of what is expected of a nun that has committed herself to the four vows.
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.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales became one of the first ever works that began to approach the standards of modern literature. It was probably one of the first books to offer the readers entertainment, and not just another set of boring morals. However, the morals, cleverly disguised, are present in almost every story. Besides, the book offers the descriptions of the most common aspects of the human nature. The books points out both the good and the bad qualities of the people, however, the most obvious descriptions are those of the sinful flaws of humans, such as greed and lust.
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.
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.
While looking at “Pardoner’s Tale” we can see Chaucer effectively use irony and hypocrisy in ways the reader can understand and realized all his allegories for the people of his time. Chaucer also showed how he felt people and the government that ruled them in his time period.
There are few great literary works that have withstood the test of time to still be well known in the modern era; however, with the use of many advanced literary techniques and styles some authors have managed to accomplish this daunting task. Despite being unfinished, The Canterbury Tales - written by Geoffrey Chaucer - is one these renowned works. Chaucer manages to unify this particular collection of short stories through the use of the Miller, a member of the cast. Chaucer use of figurative language, satire, and tone allow for this works’ unified frame.
The Canterbury Tales took place in the 1300’s. During this time period the church was able to dictate the people of London because they were uneducated and did not have the ability to read or write. The church began taking advantage and praised the word of God by telling them the only way to live your life by God was to give the church your money and to volunteer your time when needed. Some or most of this money was later given to the king as the king was also taking advantage of his people. Around this time period the Black plague was making its way around killing half of Europe’s population. Throughout Chaucer’s stories he will criticize the church, uses the characters as metaphors, and showing inequality. This story tells about the lives of 29 people living during this time period. They have decided to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury to arrive at Thomas A. Becket’s grave to pray for good health and to ask for healing. The characters in “the prologue” of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
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 Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses satire to make a statement about the nature of humanity. “The Prologue” shows the importance of a historical meaning as it describes the social classes of the 1300’s. However, most modern readers can relate to the hypocrisy being displayed by the first three major characters.
Alone, the five canons of rhetoric can be used to establish the basis of a speech. Together, when used correctly, the five cannons of rhetoric will work together to effectively improve the oral or written skills of any orator. The goal of the ancient rhetoricians was to improve the people’s speaking abilities. They accomplished this goal especially with the practices of the five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. That goal was not only accomplished back in ancient times, but in modern times too with the continued use of rhetoric and its practices to help further the skills of orators.
Describe how Chaucer’s words, or irony affects the audience (Chaucer 145). This is your opinion, so no citation needed.
An interesting aspect of the famous literary work, "The Canterbury Tales," is the contrast of realistic and exaggerated qualities that Chaucer entitles to each of his characters. When viewed more closely, one can determine whether each of the characters is convincing or questionable based on their personalities. This essay will analyze the characteristics and personalities of the Knight, Squire, Monk, Plowman, Miller, and Parson of Chaucer's tale.
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.
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories in the