Compressions In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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.

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in a collection of 24 stories while on a pilgrimage to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The purpose behind this pilgrimage is for the pilgrims to visit the shrine to seek forgiveness for their sins. Due to the long trip, the host made a deal with everyone to tell two stories on the way and back from Canterbury and whoever tells the best one receives a paid for meal. Each character telling their stories gives away bits of information and a visual idea of who they really are. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses detail, point of view, and descriptive language to portray the Pardoner and Summoner to be worse than the Skipper.

The two tales, told by the Wife of Bath and the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales, have parallel plots. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” begins with a

The Canterbury Tales depict many characters that, although fictionally created by Geoffrey Chaucer, may give the reader the opportunity to analyze and interpret their tales as a way of determining their personalities. The Wife of Bath and her prologue accurately supports this statement, as her intentions become expounded due to her questionable actions. The Wife of Bath exhibits in her prologue that she lacks respect and gratitude towards the men she beguiles into marriage and does so by falsely claiming direction from God. She shows not only deceit towards her many husbands, but also does not possess the ability to care about others before herself.

In the prologue Chaucer talks about many of the characters. He often tells stories and describes how they act and how they are. From being members in the church to having a good and bad reputation in the town, all the characters are unique in their own way. Chaucer describes the summoner, pardoner, and the friar by using indirect characterization in each of their stories.

The Canterbury Tales is a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1392. In this poem each character tells four stories, two on the way there and two on the way home, to provide entertainment for the people on the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. One part of Chaucer’s tales that truly stands out is the character prologue where he introduces all of the characters on the pilgrimage and conveys the narrator’s opinions of them using satire and other literary devices. Of characters that Chaucer’s narrator describes, two are the Parson and the Friar. Both of the characters share similarities in their social status and job position however greatly contrast in morals and character. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses contrasting characteristics to convey an idea that teaches that power does not always lead to corruption.

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

Geoffrey Chaucer introduces numerous characters in the prologue of The Canterbury Tales; each character possessing a distinct personality and lifestyle. Chaucer gives insight into the lives of the characters on their pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Pardoner unfurls his thoughts and feelings giving us extended insight into his own character, by providing us with a tale of his own. In doing so, he contrasts other pious figures who are introduced in the prologue, with character traits consisting of an effeminate lifestyle, avariciousness, as well as hypocrisy.

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 Canterbury Tales, begun in 1387 by Geoffrey Chaucer, are written in heroic couplets iambic pentameters, and consist of a series of twenty-four linked tales told by a group of superbly characterized pilgrims ranging from Knight to Plowman. The characters meet at an Inn, in London, before journeying to the shrine of St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The Wife of Bath is one of these characters. She bases both her tale and her prologue on marriage and brings humor and intrigue to the tales, as she is lively and very often crudely spoken. Her role as a dominant female contrasts greatly with the others in the tales, like the prim and proper Prioress represents the

Everyone has a story. Certainly Chaucer believes so as he weaves together tales of twenty nine different people on their common journey to Canterbury. Through their time on the road, these characters explore the diverse lives of those traveling together, narrated by the host of the group. Each character in the ensemble is entitled to a prologue, explaining his or her life and the reasons for the tale, as well as the actual story, meant to have moral implications or simply to entertain. One narrative in particular, that of the Wife of Bath, serves both purposes: to teach and to amuse. She renounces the submissive roles of a woman and reveals the moral to her story while portraying women as sex seeking, powerful creatures, an amusing thought

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 characters introduced in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales each represent a stereotype of a kind of person that Chaucer would have been familiar with in 14th Century England. Each character is unique, yet embodies many physical and behavioral traits that would have been common for someone in their profession. In preparing the reader for the tales, Chaucer first sets the mood by providing an overall idea of the type of character who is telling the tale, then allows that character to introduce themselves through a personal prologue and finally, the pilgrim tells their tale. Through providing the reader with insight about the physical and personal traits of

In Chaucer’s famous novel: The Canterbury Tales, he describes many characters in a satirical way, while others he describes with complete admiration. The narrator (a constructed version of Chaucer himself) is staying at the Tabard Inn in London, when a large group of about twenty-nine people enter the inn, preparing to go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. After the narrator talks to them, he agrees to join them on their pilgrimage. Although, before the narrator progresses any further in the tale, he describes the circumstances and the social rank of each pilgrim. There are two characters in these tales of the same social class, but Chaucer’s opinion on them vary greatly. These two characters are the beloved Parson, and the loathed Pardoner.

Canterbury Tales is a story about a group of thirty people, including the Host, that are traveling to the shrine of the martyr St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury. The diverse group is a concoction of contradicting personalities that are intricately described by Chaucer. Among these twenty-nine excursionists are two women. One of them is the coquettish Prioress while the other one is the partially deaf Wife at Bath. Although both women possess discernable similarities, both possess divergent personalities and experiences.