In a significant number of his tales Chaucer uses the comic genre of fabliaux, which are short, typically anti-intellectual, indecent tales of bourgeois or low life. The plot usually involves an older husband who is cuckholded by a younger man whom (often) the older man has himself brought into the house, and his often younger wife. The Miller, the Reve, the Merchant and the Wife of Bath all tell tales which are essentially amoral - in fitting with the genre; tales which would not have been acceptable had they been written in an aristocratic setting, but which were accepted as suitable depictions of lower class life. Furthermore, the women in these tales (with except to the Wife of Bath) are portrayed as goals to be attained or as sexual territories to be conquered, rather than equal and respected partners in marriage. Fabliau tales were once viewed as a lower class genre, but it is now accepted that they are aristocratic burlesques, contemptuously holding the lower classes up to amusement and coarse mockery through their demeaning portrayal of peasant life and peasant women.
Just as the audience enjoy a fantasy of superhuman qualities as shown by Palamon and Arcite in The Knight's Tale, so does Chaucer present the audience with a fantasy of the subhuman, exemplified in the characters of Nicholas, Absolon in the Miller's Tale, John and Aleyn in the Reeve's Tale and Damian in the Merchant's Tale. Chaucer ensures that these fabliau men demonstrate that they are not governed by any secular or religious morals, only by the satisfaction of their appetite. They sink to levels that courtly lovers such as Palamon and Arcite, although not perfect themselves, would not stoop to: Nicholas in the Miller's Tale sticks his "ers" out o...
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... the Merchant's Tale is a knight yet still falls fatally victim to the cunning of a woman. Thus, through the tales' demeaning caricatures of peasant life and their vicious misogyny, Chaucer creates a common understanding between himself and his audience that the will for satisfaction of appetite and personal gratification - for example the will of the male characters to pursue the objects of their desire whatever the cost - is universally and ubiquitously stronger than idealistic secular or religious values.
Bibliography:
The Riverside Chaucer, Chaucer (edited by Anthony Burgess)
A New Introduction to Chaucer, D. Brewer (Longman)
The Canterbury Tales, D. Pearsall (George Allen & Unwin)
Chaucer's Approach to Gender in the Canterbury Tales, A. Laskaya (Brewer)
Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry, Volume 11, P. M. Kean (Routledge & Kegan Paul)
The Merchant's Prologue and Tale presents the darkest side of Chaucer's discussion on marriage. Playing off both the satire of the moral philosopher, the Clerk, and the marital stage set by the Wyf of Bathe, the Merchant comes forth with his angry disgust about his own marital fate. Disillusioned and depraved, the Merchant crafts a tale with a main character who parallels his own prevarication and blind reductionism while he simultaneously tries to validate his own wanton life by selling his belief to the other pilgrims. As both pervert reality through pecuniary evaluations on different levels, however, both are exposed to be blind fools, subject to the very forces that they exert on others. As this reversal happens and the Merchant satirizes Januarie blindness, Chaucer reveals the Merchant's blindness, giving him the very significance that he had spent his whole tale trying to deny.
Women are prizes to be won over in this tale. Competition for women is portrayed throughout the entire story. This competition leads to lies and deceit which overall creates an unstable conflict. But, because of the way of life, the people who don’t lie and deceit still lose out in the end. Therefore, Chaucer teaches us that life isn’t fair and that people don’t always get what they deserve.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.
Some say women can get the worst out of a man, but in The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1485, proves it. The tales were originally written as a collection of twenty four tales, but has been narrowed down to three short tales for high school readers. The three tales consist of “The Miller”, “The Knight”, and “The Wife of Bath” along with their respective prologues. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer shows the weak but strong role of women throughout the “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to contrast different human characteristics and stereotypes on the spectrum of people.
In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer fully explicates the cultural standard known as curteisye through satire. In the fourteenth century curteisye embodied sophistication and an education in French international culture. The legends of chilvalric knights, conversing in the language of courtly love, matured during this later medieval period. Chaucer himself matured in the King's Court, and he reveled in his cultural status, but he also retained an anecdotal humor about curteisye. One must only peruse his Tales to discern these sentiments. In the General Prologue, he meticulously describes the Prioress, satirically examining her impeccable table manners. In the Miller's Tale Chaucer juxtaposes courtly love with animalistic lust, and in various other instances he mentions curteisye, or at least alludes to it, with characteristic Chaucerian irony. These numerous references provide the reader with a remarkably rich image of the culture and class structure of late fourteenth century England.
The dominance of men in the Middle Ages is unethical, irrational, and dangerous; women are given few rights and the opportunity to earn rights is non-existent. The dictates to the dominance is formed by the internal combination of man’s personal desire and religious interference. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, the combined perspectives’ on a haughty Pardoner and non-subservient wife is the stronghold of separation in moral roles. The moral roles between men and women are exemplified in the rankings of religious hierarchy for men are at the top and women towards the bottom. Even prestigious women, ones with noble connections, are subservient to men, but contradictorily have religious affiliations. The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a perfect example of defying man’s dominance and the “Pardoner’s Tale”, a problematic reasoning of why selfishness connects moreover to the manipulation. The frailties of religious reasoning however, will cause The Pardoner and the Wife of Bath to be separated from society’s morals.
The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales People never change. In every town you will always be able to find the "rich guy," the "smart guy," the "thief," and the "chief." It has been that way since the first man was swindled out of his lunch. Throughout his life, Geoffrey Chaucer encountered every kind of person and brought them to life for us in "The Canterbury Tales," a collection of short stories written in the 1300's. There are tales of saints, tales of promiscuity, tales of fraud, and tales of love.
In this example, Chaucer, by writing this parody, is trying to express the idea that a lot of the ideals of chivalry are a ...
The complexity of the Wife’s character lead to a great deal of controversy about whether the Wife is meant to be a symbol of Chaucer’s egalitarian ...
In both the Miller’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer uses his characters and stories in order to project various stereotypes to the reader. Although varying a tad bit throughout the book, the tone that seems to be drawn from the stories is that women are manipulating, sinful, and power hungry, while men are considered gullible and rash. Its through understand and analyzing these stereotypes that we can fully understand what Chaucer’s stories are trying to convey to us.
Mandell, Jerome. Geoffrey Chaucer : building the fragments of the Canterbury tales. N.J. : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992.
Chaucer, in his female pilgrimage thought of women as having an evil-like quality that they always tempt and take from men. They were depicted as untrustworthy, selfish and vain and often like caricatures not like real people at all. Through the faults of both men and women, Chaucer showed what is right and wrong and how one should live. Under the surface, however, lies a jaded look of women in the form that in his writings he seems to crate them as caricatures and show how they cause the downfall of men by sometimes appealing to their desires and other times their fears. Chaucer obviously had very opinionated views of the manners and behaviours of women and expressed it strongly in The Canterbury Tales. In his collection of tales, he portrayed two extremes in his prospect of women. The Wife of Bath represented the extravagant and lusty woman where as the Prioress represented the admirable and devoted followers of church. Chaucer delineated the two characters contrastingly in their appearances, general manners, education and most evidently in their behaviour towards men. Yet, in the midst of disparities, both tales left its readers with an unsolved enigma.
As a man fascinated with the role of women during the 14th Century, or most commonly known as the Middle Ages, Chaucer makes conclusive evaluations and remarks concerning how women were viewed during this time period. Determined to show that women were not weak and humble because of the male dominance surrounding them, Chaucer sets out to prove that women were a powerful and strong-willed gender. In order to defend this argument, the following characters and their tales will be examined: Griselda from the Clerk's Tale, and the Wife of Bath, narrator to the Wife of Bath's Tale. Using the role of gender within the genres of the Canterbury Tales, exploring each woman's participation in the outcomes of their tales, and comparing and contrasting these two heroines, we will find out how Chaucer broke the mold on medievalist attitudes toward women.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Project Gutenberg EBook of Troilus and Criseyde." 12 July 2008. Project Gutenberg. Web. 27 November 2013.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Nevill Coghill. "The Pardoner's Tale." The Canterbury Tales. London: Penguin, 2003. 103-06. Print.