Canterbury Tales Morality Paper

In the late 1300s Geoffrey Chaucer began wrote The Canterbury Tales, a story which follows the religious journey of twenty-nine people, who represent many aspects of Medieval society, to the Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England. While on the pilgrimage the host of the tavern, where all the pilgrims meet, suggests that the pilgrims each tell a story for the group’s entertainment. Chaucer intended for all the voyagers to tell two stories, but he unfortunately died before he could finish the book and only got to write one story apiece. However, the goal of the storytelling contest is to tell the most moral story possible, and the one who wins receives a free meal, which the rest of the pilgrims will pay for. Although some of the other stories have good moral messages, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are on different ends of the moral spectrum. “The Pardoner’s Tale” focuses on a pardoner who preaches against greed. While “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” exemplifies what all women want in their relationships: power. Although both “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” demonstrate the value of the opinion of elders, the stories differ in their moral values and their storyteller’s values.

The Catholic Church during the early 16th Century was rooted throughout Europe. The Church influenced every country and its respective monarchs through the Church’s wealth and power. The Catholic Church placed a tight hold on the general populace with individuals who went against the Church being branded as heretics and excommunicated. The wealth and power of the Church eventually caused the quality of the clergy to deteriorate. Priests became corrupt and subjected to their physical desires. They frequented taverns, gambled and kept mistresses. The reputation of the clergy were horrid as the general populace was relieved that “their priest [kept] a mistress” because it “[secured] their wives from seduction” The knowledge of the clergy degenerated as well as they were no longer required to learn and teach the Holy Scriptures because the Church dictated their actions. The pinnacle of the Church’s corruption was the sale of indulgences. An indulgence was the “extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment” sold by priests as a temporary relief from sins. The indulgences were then sold to the general populace for money as the monetization of a priest’s services. Johannes Tetzel was a prominent preacher of indulgences who relied on the money from the sales to subsidize the rebuilding of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome. The corrupt sales did not go unnoticed as Martin Luther, in an effort to stop the corruption of the Church, posted the 95 Theses on the door of a Castle

In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales he reveals an underlying flaw in society. Chaucer portrays the Pardoner as hypocritical in order to get his message across to readers. The Pardoner is shown to be the exact definition of a hypocrite by preaching to others to lead a spiritual life, while not living by those preaching's himself. In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals hypocritical qualities in the Pardoner through vivid characterization, tone, and morality.

Chaucer describes his grandiose opinion of himself, the friar is pompous and crooked. He surmises that a man of his “status” should not be seen with the lowly and poor, which is ironic because those are exactly the people he is meant to help. Chaucer as discloses the lengths he is willing to go for even the smallest person gain saying. “His brethren did no poaching where he went./For though a widow mightn’t have a shoe,/So pleasant was his holy how-d’ye-do/He got his/farthing from her just the same/Before he left, and so his income came” (“General Prologue”, 256-262). The friar is willing to take from the people who need it most in the community, the widow’s economic class and living conditions are used further show the reprehensible behavior of the religious characters. Friars, like several other religious orders are supposed to take a vow of poverty in order the become closer to Christ. The Friar in Canterbury Tales does the exact opposite. Both his greed and unscrupulous behavior of another religious character further substantiate the idea that the religious characters are used to reflect the corruption in the church.

The Canterbury Tales, written and narrated by Geoffrey Chaucer, explores manipulation and dishonesty in the Catholic Church. The Nun in “The General Prologue” exemplifies improper qualities to which a Prioress should have. Along with the Nun, The Friar in “The General Prologue” uses false information to gain customer. In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” the Pardoner uses greedy tactics to wield other pilgrims into buying his relics.In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the Nun and the Friar in “The General Prologue” and the Pardoner in “The Pardoner’s Tale” to show the hypocrisy in the Church.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories by a group of pilgrims who are heading to Canterbury Cathedral. In this book, the pardoner and the reeve show antipodal characters in many ways. The pardoner is beautiful blonde hair man who is being loved by everyone. However he is very corrupted and smart and sells fake religious stuff to people saying very good compliment. On the other hand, the reeve is very serious and honest business man. He is very smart enough to know what criminals think and do. The pardoner story-tells a great example (or tale?) of seven deadly sins and reeve’s story is mocking of the miller. These very different characteristic men tell story telling that human beings are always punished for

The Summoner likes his wine as red as his face, frequently getting drunk and bellowing out the only few Latin words that he knows (Elements of Literature). He’s also shown to take bribes, which can be seen within the section, “Why, he’d allow---just for a quart of wine---Any good lad to keep a concubine a twelvemonth and dispense him altogether!” Simply put: If anyone was caught with a mistress, he’d give them a break for twelve months, but if they aren’t able to give him a quart of wine, he summons them to the church to get them excommunicated (Elements of Literature). Overall, the Summoner wasn’t a very suave person, but he really didn’t seem to care.

In the medieval age there are norms that people in a society are supposed to abide by. In this time, there was a lot of wars dividing the nations and changed how people lived. The black plague also devastated the nation in many ways. During this time, if you weren't a noble or part of the church, then you didn't really have any power or voice in your society. Chaucer uses elements of the other or otherness to satire religion, social structure, and patriarchal institutions to show how corrupt these groups are in hope to change people’s mind about these groups and institutions.

The Church creates woe for citizens by acknowledging and advertising that earthly suffering is permissible because heaven grants rewards to faithful followers who do not complain (2). Since the Church bears so much influence and power, citizens feel they have no other choice but to follow the advice given to them. Many are probably so miserable that their only hope of

The Medieval Period in history brought along scores of fables about everything from knights engaging in courtly love to corruption in the Catholic Church. The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer expertly encapsulates many of the great motifs of the era. The Tales are a series of stories and descriptions of characters of all social classes that were composed in the late 1300’s. Chaucer utilizes a multitude of literary techniques to convey his personal views of people, and ultimately, what they represent in society. The author uses such devices when depicting two morally contrasting characters, the Parson and the Summoner, that are documented in the Prologue.

The Canterbury Tales, the most famous and revolutionary work of Geoffrey Chaucer, is a collection of twenty-four tales presented in the form of a story-telling contest by pilgrims who are traveling from London to Canterbury. In my viewpoint, The Canterbury Tales can be understood as a representation of the English society at Chaucer's time as it documents several of the social tensions of life in the late Middle Age. The choice of setting the tales as part of a pilgrimage allowed the author to cover a wide range of social roles with varying hierarchical positions and occupations. Therefore, the tales depict a number of the evolving themes by that time in many segments of the society, such as the ones presented in The Wife of Bath tale: the

The Canterbury Tales is a story that incorporates a multitude of stories told by a multitude of characters. Written by Geoffrey Chaucer, he devises a novel in which each character has to narrate a total of four stories as part of a competition; on their way to visit Saint Thomas Becket, the characters would tell two stories going and two stories returning from the journey. The perspective changes through each story, and each story is introduced by a general, opening, third person prologue. Though many of the characters got to share some ideas, Chaucer unfortunately passed away before his story’s entirety. As a result, a winner was never officially clarified. Needless to say, it is evident that the clear winner would be the Miller’s Tale.

Negative imagery is used by Chaucer to undermine the effects of the narrator’s words. The manners practiced by the prioress are described by

The Canterbury Tales, a masterpiece of English Literature, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is a collection, with frequent dramatic links, of 24 tales told to pass the time during a spring pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The General Prologue introduces the pilgrims, 29 "sondry folk" gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark (outside of London). Chaucer decides to join them, taking some time to describe each pilgrim.

In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer gives a detailed description of what life was like in Medieval times . In the “Prologue”, the reader comes to better understand the people of the time period through the characters words and actions. Chaucer uses a variety of groups of society to give the reader a deeper insight into the fourteenth century Pilgrims customs and values. Through the Court, Common people and the Church, Gregory Chaucer gives a detailed description of ordinary life in the medieval times.