Diversity In The Canterbury Tales

To eat or not to eat. In this battle of concocted tales, this is where it all boils down to. Both the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath have surely produced fine stories, each with their own charm; however, it will not be a battle without a clear winner—only one can enjoy a free meal. Although the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” tapped into a strong topic—gender equality—it only stated that women want to be equal to men as well, but never delved in deeper. The story even disregards the problem at hand: a knight who raped a girl and got away scot-free, even finding himself a beautiful and loyal wife. If the story went differently, the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” has all the components of a great story. Meanwhile, the “Pardoner’s Tale”, although short, successfully showed the corruptness that humans have, as well as the consequences if ever one finds themselves stuck in greed’s vice grip. Therefore, the Pardoner’s tale is better than the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” because it delves into the darkness of humanity, the consequences when one has dug themselves too deep and shows how, despite people knowing the result of their misconduct, will still choose to sink further into darkness.

Throughout history greed has corrupted and destroyed many people plunging them farther into the need for more; in contemporary times this has only strengthened. In 1387, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales” within this consist of “The Pardoners Tale”. This tale consists of a greedy pardoner preaching sermons only to benefit himself. An English poet, William Blake believes that “The characters of Chaucer’s Pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and nations…” As Blake states Chaucer’s pilgrims, can be considered a universal theme throughout all ages. The Pardoners greed is universal because of his sermons, his use of relics, and can be related to modern day Ponzi schemes.

In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer reveals hypocritical qualities in the Pardoner through vivid characterization, tone, and morality. The Pardoner's total lack of respect for the Church's expectations and the congregation allows Chaucer to display flaws in society. Chaucer is able to demonstrate scams and illustrate hypocrisy in the Church, and society in general through the techniques he uses in Canterbury Tales.

The world is full of hypocrites and in the story “The Pardoner’s Tale”, Chaucer writes about a man who is living a life of sin. The Pardoner’s tale is an epologia of a pardoner who has the power from the church to forgive others for their sins but makes a living out of lying and tricking his audience. Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale he preaches about greed, drinking, blasphemy, and gambling but in the Pardoner’s Prologue he admits to committing these sins himself. The pardoner is really just a 14th century con artist who makes a living by his own hypocrisy.

In the story, “The Pardoner’s Tales”, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the character the Pardoner in descriptive way. He describe the Pardoner’s corruption teaching and the way the Pardoner act in the tale. The religious that the Pardoner teaching is corrupted and very selfish, greediness, and gluttony. This thing are all opposite to what the real church religious is teaching. In the story, he tricks the people to buy his fake relics and other things by using the church’s believe. The Pardoner act and his teaching are all corrupted because of the church. It shows the side of greediness, gluttony and selfishness which highly reflect into himself and his believe.

In The Canterbury Tales: Pardoner’s Tale, three men who have excessive drinking and gambling issues have decided to seek revenge on Death, the killer of their mutual friend. This, in turn, leads the three men to a tree where they find gold instead of Death, and because of the gold the three men kill each other in efforts to keep it for themselves. In this work, monetary greed is a major theme and is the social issue of the tale. The tale also covers the consequences that greed can have on an individual's life. In the Pardoner’s Tale, greed is shown through how the friends cared so much about the gold they found, they not only forgot their true goal of killing Death, they in turn killed each other trying to selfishly keep the gold. The issue of greed is at the forefront of numerous modern day issues. Greed influences the decisions of today’s society and causes one to change the way they may have normally thought or acted. In “Canterbury Tales”, Geoffrey Chaucer’s depiction of greed is extremely relevant to the motive of many actions in modern time, and through his writing can show that greed is an issue that modern society has varied on only a small bit because in the end, humans have not tried to change the culture of greed.

The story the Wife of Bath tells is of a knight who rapes a young lady and subsequently is condemned to death by King Arthur. Chaucer then satirizes the male patriarchy by having the queen take ability to pass judgement on the knight, not King Arthur. This exhibits the power of women over men. This act foreshadows the course of events, manifesting the knight as merely a puppet on a string. The queen gives the knight the choice between a year long quest or to be put to death. The quest the knight must complete is to find what women most desire by the end of the year or he will put to death, “I’ll grant you life if you can tell to me / What thing it is that women most desire. / Be wise, and keep you neck from iron dire!” (Chaucer 910-912). With one of the

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

In analyzing The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer I discovered satirical stories such as “The Pardoner’s Tale” which mock church practices and religion. The Canterbury Tales is a frame story that exemplifies the theme: “looks can be deceiving.” In, “The Pardoner’s Tale,” a religious pardoner brags about various ways he deceives others into paying him money. The pardoner offers relics in exchange for high prices, advertising that these relics will free people from their sins. When telling his story to the group and when giving sermons, he ironically uses the theme,“money is the root of all evil”. He admits to the group that the relics are fraudulent and he preaches solely for the purpose of gaining riches. Although the pardoner is admittedly a sinful man, he swears he can tell a good moral story to the group. He tells a story of the

Greed is a horrible trait to have, greed effect a person as a whole, a relationship, and how your outlook on life is. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoners Tale, three friends get a chance to acquire so gold they were told is under a tree. This gold, they will soon find out, is costly to them.

In the story the pardoner tells, it says “these three, to live and die for one another as brother- born might swear to his born brother.” (100-101) Sadly, greed can break the bond between the strongest of bonds. The three didn’t realize that their bond was about to be put to the test with how greedy oneself can get with money and riches compared to each other lives. The pardoner mention in the story that greed comes in all shapes and sizes but don’t be fooled for it might cause oneself own life. The old man, which is mention in the pardoner’s story, represent Death by persuading the three rioters that “death” was going to be under the tree. Unfortunately, Death comes after greediness begins. In the pardoner’s story, the old man says “…if it be your design to find out death, turn up this crooked way towards that grove, I left him there today under a tree, and there you’ll find him waiting.” (159-163) Remember the three rioters were like brothers with a strong bond, but under the tree was an unfortunate surprise. there was Gold under the tree which cause a break in the friend’s bond, yet that cause is called greediness. The strong message that Geoffrey Chaucer is telling is that don’t be fooled by the people around oneself for everyone can change at any minute for the love of greed and riches. During the separation of one of

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

It tells in his tale that the Pardoner’s favorite thing to preach against is greed, but what people don’t know is that he is only the pardoner because he likes the money; he is greedy. Chaucer uses this type of satire to help illustrate that the Pardoned is a hypocrite. “Out come the pence, and specially for myself, for my exclusive purpose is to win and not at all to castigate their sin.” When the pardoned says this he is basically saying that I’m only doing this job for the money, and that he could care less about the people he is supposed to help. That is how Chaucer uses satire for the Pardoner.

Misogyny is not only visible in the Miller’s tale, but also in the Wife of Bath’s tale through the very superficial standards set for women by men. The old woman asks that the knight marries her in return for giving him the answer to the riddle and he reacts in disgust and horror, “‘...to take me as your wife…‘Alas and woe is me!...I am ugly and poor…my damnation! Alas, that any of my birth should ever be so foully disgraced!” (Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” 199-213). The knight is visibly distraught, using words such as “damnation” and “disgraced” when the old woman expresses her wish to marry him. He displays these emotions not because she wants to get married, but because she is ugly and poor. He is worried because an ugly wife will mar his reputation and is a poor reflection of him. This translates to the misogynistic society during the time period where women were seen as property to be shown off, rather than people who deserved respect. The recurring theme of misogyny in these two tales shows that Chaucer does not feel sympathy for the opposite gender, but instead belittles their plight.

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.