Chaucer 's Pandarus And Foucault 's Theory Of Power

True love’s path is paved with every step. Through the assistance of fanciful elements as well as characters Puck and Oberon, the true message of love in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revealed. The four lovers know the direction in which their hearts are inclined to turn, but when the love potion is administered, the bounds of their rectangle are thrashed without knowledge or consent. The rapid shifts in affection between the play’s “four lovers” is representative of the idea that love isn’t a conscious choice, but a cruel game in which we are the figurines, being controlled by whomever the player may be, relating the characters’ karmic fates.

This can be seen through a comparison of parallel protagonists Palamon and Ferdinand, as well as parallel antagonists Arcite and Caliban. Their many similarities reveal an insight to each author’s view of love and how it is gained. Palamon and Ferdinand are men of the heart who do not have the girl initially, nor do they claim her. Instead, they wish the best for her and are willing to work for and serve her, regardless of the outcome. In contrast, Arcite and Caliban are men of the physical who take the woman they love by force and physically serve her in order to fulfill their prideful desires, completely disregarding the wishes of their beloved. Strikingly, all four of these men are of noble birth, and all four willingly lower themselves from a position of power to a position of service in order to gain a woman’s love; however, only the men who also serve her selflessly succeed in winning her love. Both men of the heart end up “getting the girl” in the metaphorical sense, although it takes time and they must be patient. In contrast, the men who have the girl initially –Arcite and Caliban – begin by taking her by force and have her in the literal sense, but lose her in the end. All of these elements show that Chaucer and Shakespeare believe the selfless and humble approach to be the most effective way to gain

In Chaucer’s genius work, The Canterbury Tales, the Friar and the Summoner tell tales of mockery about one another. Like the Miller and the Reeve before them the Friar and the Summoner are in rivalry with each other. However the difference between the rivalry between the Reeve and the Miller and the rivalry between the Friar and the Summoner is the competitive spirit. Unlike the Reeve and the Miller, the Friar and the Summoner’s rivalry is not a personal hatred but a hatred for the other’s office.This hatred inspires the tales of both the Friar and the Summoner. The two tell tales

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s poem The Canterbury Tales a young Chaucer tells of the people he meets on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas Beckett in Canterbury. One of the most vivacious characters on the pilgrimage is The Wife of Bath. Both the Wife of Bath’s prologue and tale share a common theme of a woman’s control in a relationship with a man. The Wife of Bath and the old hag in her tale share a similar perspective on what women want most in life. In the prologue and tale the reader is exposed to the idea that what women most desire in life is to have control over their husbands and lovers. This tale and its prologue are linked through the way that Dame Alice, the Wife of Bath, fashions the old hag in her tale after herself.

 In the plays female sexuality is not expressed variously through courtship, pregnancy, childbearing, and remarriage, as it is in the period.  Instead it is narrowly defined and contained by the conventions of Petrarchan love and cuckoldry.  The first idealizes women as a catalyst to male virtue, insisting on their absolute purity.  The second fears and mistrusts them for their

The Canterbury Tales are a collection of literature that depicts the structure of society in the fourteenth century and the corruptness behind it. In this collection, Chaucer becomes a social commentator by communicating his beliefs on many issues happening in his age through his characters. Although Chaucer does not directly state these beliefs verbally, he allows the actions of the characters in his collections to speak for themselves. As one reads these collections, readers can hint that Chaucer knew or came in contact with everyone in these tales.

In Chaucer’s “Franklin Tale” the plot revolves around a married couple: the knight, Arviragus, his young wife, Dorigen, and a young squire, Aurelius who importunes and attempts to Dorigen. The characters can be said to oscillate between desire and their ego honor which affects what they say and do. Lacan’s definition of desire tells us that we desire for recognition from this “Other.” Our desire is to become what the other person lacks. Duby’s model of courtly love is a concept that focuses on chivalry, nobility and women being at the center. In this paper, I will examine what the story reveals about the relation each character has to his or her desire, how they act in accordance to their desire and the role magic or illusion plays in the plot and how it affect characters’ relation to desire.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales offers the reader an insight into our past, providing vivid glimpses into the 14th century's social structure, and into the personalities, lives, and ethics of twenty-eight members of that society drawn together to travel on a pilgrimage. The General Prologue to the Tales deals primarily with introducing these people to us, providing physical descriptions and character outlines of virtually each pilgrim; it is a tribute to Chaucer's skill that his descriptions (as filtered through the neurotically happy narrator) succeeds in creating such lively characters out of what are, essential, two-dimensional stereotypes from his era.

Throughout literature, deep relationships can often be discovered between a story and the author who writes it. Relationships can also be found in stories about a husband and wife. In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales many of the characters make this idea apparent with the stories they tell. In “The Pardoner’s Tale”, a distinct relationship can be made between the character of the Pardoner and his tale of three friends. Also, the Wife in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” boldly declares her relationship towards her husband.

There is no question that contradictory values make up a major component of The Canterbury Tales. Fate vs. Fortuna, knowledge vs. experience and love vs. hate all embody Chaucer's famous work. These contrasting themes are an integral part of the complexity and sophistication of the book, as they provide for an ironic dichotomy to the creative plot development and undermine the superficial assumptions that might be made. The combination of completely contradictory motifs leads to the unusual stories and outcomes that come to play out in the tales. And these outcomes draw focus on the larger universal issues that in many cases transcend the boundaries of vernacular periods to all of

The integration of Chaucer’s dual persona is important in showing her immediate appearance and how her character develops in her Prologue and Tale.

Geoffrey Chaucer made a huge contribution to English literature by writing in the vernacular language of English instead of Latin. His work The Canterbury tales is one of the greatest works in the world of literature. While Chaucer took inspiration from some of poets he created his own unique style and individuality. A true testament to the quality of Geoffrey Chaucer’s work is the fact that some six hundred years later we are still studying and enjoying his beautiful and intriguing work. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales between 1387 and 1300. The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories which begins with 30 pilgrims of all social status. The General Prologue states that each pilgrim was to tell two tales while travelling to Canterbury and two tales while returning from Canterbury. Amongst the pilgrims are a miller, a knight, a merchant and an oft-widowed wife from Bath. This essay will discuss the manner in which The Miller’s Tale responds to The Knight’s Tale. We will discuss the similarities and differences

Chaucer breaks the topic of sex into two basic parts: carnality and romanticism. Although carnal love is a controversial topic, Chaucer dives into the subject by creating characters with ferocious appetites for sex and the means to accommodate their desires. Whereas, to address romanticism, he relies heavily on

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