Chaucer's Views Exposed in The Canterbury Tales Essay

Chaucer has created many characters in the Canterbury tales that he likes and many he dislikes. He is a very critical and detailed writer about these characters. With these characters, Chaucer has created real life issues with religious figures. Chaucer’s has showed how good religious figures can be and how corrupt they can be as well.

The Canterbury Tales features a character called The Nun (The Prioress). Chaucer describe her as a friendly and charitable Nun with a big heart, but also makes fun of her actions and looks. For example, “And she spoke daintily in French, extremely, after the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe, French in the Paris style she did not know.” (128-130). In addition to the blatant negativity he mentions “She was very entertaining” (141). He makes fun of her then mentions she is very entertaining as if she is entertainment to him. Her flaws and attitude are seen very clearly through the passage such as her bad french and table manners. This being said the Nun is told to be lower on social ranking. “To counterfeit a courtly kind of grace a stately

    People that work in a Christian church are thought to be Godly examples. However, that wasn’t the case in Chaucer's time. People in the church broke rules, craved money, and

I. Introductory Paragraph -In the time of Chaucer, people had very patriarchal ideas about marriage and women. -They thought that women who remarried so many times were ‘wicked.’ -People believed that men should be in control of the relationship and women should be held in subordination to their husbands. -‘The

   Somehow, Chaucer is mocking the behaviours of the characters in this story, he does not condone their actions, in fact, he punishes them for behaving in such a fashion. One can wonder if Chaucer is expressing the idea of a majority of people from his time, or if his voice was singled out among his countrymen.

Within Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, “The Wife of Bath Tale and Prologue”, was written with a main focus of promoting power among women; when during that time, medieval ages, it was uncommon among women to desire so much power. In Chaucer’s General Prologue, also within the Canterbury Tales, readers question the Monk by whether or not he should be seen as a religious figure. In both Chaucer’s works misconception becomes a huge factor.

When Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, he used satire to point out problems in society without getting in trouble. Most of the problems were in the church, but since the church is with the king, if you stated the problems with the church, you would surely die. Chaucer never states his opinions about the people in The Canterbury Tales and lets his readers make up their own minds. All of the characters associated with the church have flaws and aren’t like they are meant to be. One of the characters that reflect wrongs of the society is the Prioress.

This Parson was of humble beginnings and not particularly elite, and yet Chaucer saw him as a spiritual and intellectual superior to even any other priest. This was very radical, and a large challenge to the way society saw priests at that time, and to the way society sees pastors and scholars today. Grudin states concerning the satire in Chaucer’s writing, “In delightfully, and

To begin with, the narrator describes two men in particular, the Monk and the Friar, as being contributors to the fraudulence of the church. The monk is described as a very manly man who enjoys hunting and worldly possessions, such as money and clothing. Although these attributes don’t sound unholy, they were frowned upon in Chaucer’s time. The author describes him as a man who “let go by the things of yesterday and took the modern world’s more spacious way” (Chaucer 8). The Monk also does not follow the rule which states “hunters are not holy men” (Chaucer

One could say that the author Geoffrey Chaucer’s writing is very opinionated. His pieces seem to be directly correlated with how he perceives the church in medieval times. Characters affiliated with the church are portrayed as atrocious people due to their corrupt actions. Chaucer uses his characters to point out all of the flaws found in the members of the clergy and exploits them for who they truly are in his time period. Chaucer conveys his thoughts of the greedy, hypocritical church through the prologue to The Canterbury Tales along with The Pardoner's Tale.

The author of The Canterbury Tales is Geoffrey Chaucer. The publishing time of The Canterbury Tales is in the late 1400’s. The Canterbury Tales is about a group of middle-class people who are going on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket. On the way Chaucer is giving explanations of each of the pilgrims. The pilgrims are going to tell two stories on the way there and two stories on the way back. Unfortunately, Chaucer did not live long enough to finish the story. Two of the pilgrims are the Friar and the Summoner. The Friar is a worse person than the Summoner. While the Friar and the Summoner are alike in that they do not follow their jobs’ rules, they are different because of who likes and dislikes them.

   Geoffrey Chaucer is considered by many critics as the father of English literature.  His literary masterpiece was "The Canterbury Tales."  In these tales, Chaucer writes about pilgrims who are on a journey to Canterbury.  Each pilgrim has a tale that they tell on this journey.  Chaucer expresses themes and messages through the characterization of each pilgrim.  Through the Parson, one of the pilgrims, Chaucer is able to portray the life of a true Christian through the general prologue, prologue to the Parson's tale, and the Parson's tale itself.

Chaucer’s most brutal attack was on the high ranking class and nobility, his use of satire allowed for him to make accusations of their lack of accountability for their actions. This concept was outlined in the Wife of Bath’s Tale, where a young knight physically assaulted a maiden the instance was brought to a court of the king and the knight was then sentenced to execution. The queen, however, chose to spare the knight’s life if he was able to find what women desired most within one year. He returned to the court a year later and revealed that women wanted freedom more than anything, and in return he was forced to marry an old lady that revealed the secret to him. This was what taught him the ultimate lesson. The old lady made a deal with the knight, he could have her old and ugly, but loyal or he could have a young and beautiful wife that he could not trust; when presented with the choice the knight chose to let the woman decide. “The knight thought long, and with a piteous groan at last he said, with the care in life, “My lady and my love, my dearest wife, I leave the matter to your wise decision. You make the choice yourself, for the provision of what may be agreeable and right in honor to us both, I don't care which; whatever pleases you suffices me.” (lines 374-381) The knight has learned that he cannot control his wife and have her love him, as a result of this revelation the lady changes herself into a loyal and beautiful wife. This lesson

We cannot read the CT as an honest criticism of 14th century English society without examining the entire picture - and this picture includes Chaucer's ideological contradiction. To better understand Chaucer's real message - criticizing the Three Estates system in order to encourage acceptance of his own Estate, the merchant or middle class - I will briefly discuss the Three Estates system and Chaucer's role in the system's shift to include a Fourth Estate (and how this shift influenced the CT). Then I will examine four stories from the CT (The Wife of Bath's Prologue, The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale, and The Pardoner's Tale) in which Chaucer seems to denounce elements of the social paradigm. I will then examine four stories from the CT (The Knight's Tale, The Man of Law's Tale, The Second Nun's Tale, and The Parson's Tale) in which Chaucer contradicts his criticism of his society. Finally, I will discuss how the dominant social paradigm influenced Chaucer's view of the lower classes, and how the classist structure led to ideological contradictions within the CT. Before we discuss Chaucer's ideological contradictions, however, we must first examine the system he was attempting to change, the Three Estate system.

Geoffrey Chaucer was a prominent figure within English Literature during the Middle Ages, and is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. Among Chaucer’s works, The Canterbury Tales is arguably one of his most famous pieces. In this fictional work, there is a collection of over 20 stories that are told by pilgrims who are on their way to the Cathedral at Canterbury. It is written in Middle English at the end of the 14th century, during the Hundred Years’ War. It is a story-telling competition between pilgrims, as they travel together on their pilgrimage for a free meal upon their return. Scholars argue that Chaucer began writing The Canterbury Tales around 1387, and concluded around 1400, when he passed away. However, some Chaucer scholars continued working on the unfinished tales.