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Canterbury Tales And Canterbury Tales Comparison

Good Essays

There are many literary elements to compare and contrast and different ways to do so. Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” from the Canterbury Tales and “Beowulf” (author unknown) have many things that compare and contrast them. These two stories greatly compare. “The Canterbury Tales” and “Beowulf” compare in many things, including imagery. There are many types of imagery seen throughout these two poems, including visual imagery, sense imagery, and internal emotion imagery. In the story of The Canterbury Tales: “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, the main character is a young knight who finds himself raping a maiden who he just so happened to see near a river that day. He was going to be severely punished for doing so. Already, this knight is seen as a bad and immature one. A knight’s job during this time period was to protect women and be chivalrous towards them, but he most definitely did not show that trait throughout this story. His punishment was to find the answer to the queen’s question and if he couldn’t he would be beheaded. Though he finds his answer, his attitude hardly changes. On the night of his wedding, he tells his fiancé, the hag, that he doesn’t want to marry her because she was ugly and old, and he didn’t want her.
“Now ther ye saye that I am foul and old:
Thanne drede you nought to been a cokewold,
For filthe and elde, also mote I thee,
Been grete wardeins upon chastitee.” (The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, lines 1219-1222)
This is seen as visual imagery because of the

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