Geoffery Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer can be understood as a text that criticizes glossing and those who gloss. In this case, glossing a text is the comments, explanations, and interpretations one infers from reading the piece of literature and the understanding that can be taken away from it; this is different for every individual who reads the written word. I believe Chaucer wrote some of these tales as a critique of certain figures in his society. The question one should ask when reading, or being read to, is what is the meaning behind the text and where does the meaning lie. When, directly, reading a text one can determine the meaning of the author through one’s own interpretation. When one is being read to, they are being given the information in a biased form; this prevents one from being able to interpret the text for oneself and leads to the audience being glossed, as well as the text, and Chaucer criticizes the crowd’s contentedness to be glossed at and to.

Canterbury Tales is an exquisite literary work for numerous reasons among them being the satirical way that Chaucer is able to get his agenda across. However, as the times change, the areas where we need to provide more discretion change as well. There are a lot of characters in Canterbury Tales that while they were great for their time period are either nonexistent or not relevant anymore. The occupations alone have changed dramatically simply based on the demands that we now have socially or in the work force. In addition, while it is still a mainstay in millions of households, the church and religion don’t hold as big a sway over the current factions you would find in the world. While Chaucer, the father of the English language, does a masterful job when he intricately describes his characters in the general prologue, if the tales were adapted for modern times he would need to add a celebrity, an athlete, and a news anchor.

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of books written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The book starts off with a narrator who meets other pilgrims in the Tabard Inn on their journey to see St. Thomas â Becket. The narrator then writes about each pilgrim told their story in hopes of winning a free dinner from the Host at the inn. What the story teller writes is the reason on why The Canterbury Tales is known for being a “satire book”. As each pilgrim starts to tell their story, there is a irony about them and their story; this is because as each person tells their story it is noticed that they do the opposite of what their job entitles them to do.

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

The Canterbury Tales were written and pieced together in the late 1380's, early 1390's.  The author of the book is Geoffrey Chaucer.  When considering the structure of the tales, one can deduce that they were put together using Framework Narrative, a very unique style of writing.  The opening prologue speaks of 29 pilgrims, including Chaucer, who are all on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. All of them are seeking a certain shrine for spiritual cleansing, and relief.  The journey was to be long, but in the end it would all be worth it.  Chaucer's social views and prejudices are revealed through his description of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.

The Canterbury Tales” is a collection of twenty four original stories written by the one and only Geoffrey Chaucer published in seventeen forty eight. Mr. Chaucer’s frame story consists of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to England, also known as the wonderful Canterbury. As you can imagine, the journey to Canterbury is lengthy. The characters decide to kill time by unfolding tales stringing from different layers of society. Within every story holds its’ own wistful meaning. There are lessons embedded in every two stories to and from Canterbury. Especially “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Pardoner’s Tale”. Told by an evil preacher and a very lustful, beyond used up wife. Now usually preachers have a great reputation. Thought to be all

In his novel The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer presents the corruption of the Catholic Church through several of his characters. Chaucer lived in a time of controversial indulgences, a way to pay off sins. Chaucer’s tales show his opposition to these sinful behaviors that he believed were common among the clergy. In order to protest against sinful behavior and religious corruption, Chaucer uses characters such as the pardoner, the friar, the summoner, and the prioress to show the lack of morality and faith among the clergy, and presents the parson as an example of how to correct corruption of the Catholic Church.

In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the stereotypes and roles in society are reexamined and made new through the characters in the book. Chaucer discusses different stereotypes and separates his characters from the social norm by giving them highly ironic and/or unusual characteristics. Specifically, in the stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer examines stereotypes of women and men and attempts to define their basic wants and needs.

    When Geoffrey Chaucer undertook the writing of The Canterbury Tales, he had a long road ahead of him. He intended to tell two stories from each of thirty pilgrims on the way to Canterbury, and then two more from each pilgrim on the way back from Canterbury. Of these, he completed only twenty-four. However, in these tales, Chaucer depicts both the pilgrims and their stories with striking realism. In "The Nun's Priest's Tale," "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale," "The Friar's Tale," "The Reeve's Tale," and "The Cleric's Tale," Chaucer demonstrates his remarkable insight into human nature. By comparing and contrasting these tales, one can see the universality of human nature as shown by Chaucer.

In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, there are various tales with the main purpose of telling a moral story and having something amusing about them. Chaucer created this work composed of many tales with perspectives of different types of people. These tales are told as the pilgrims goes on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Although out of the thirty pilgrims,“The

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a story of a contest who can tell the best tale. The rules of the contest were as follows: Each pilgrim would tell four tales for the trip to Canterbury, two on the journey there and two on the way back.. The tales will be judged by the Host for it’s entertainment and moral lessons. The winner of the contest will enjoy a meal paid for by the remaining pilgrims at the Host's Inn. “The Miller’s Tale” had fulfilled the criteria to win the contest. It was a shorter story, but it was entertaining and had a few lessons that can be learned from hearing or reading it. This story is significant because it does a great job of pointing out of some of the problems in the church during that time as well as how the morals of some people were not strong as well.

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer comments on moral corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. He criticizes many high-ranking members of the Church and describes a lack of morality in medieval society; yet in the “Retraction,” Chaucer recants much of his work and pledges to be true to Christianity. Seemingly opposite views exist within the “Retraction” and The Canterbury Tales. However, this contradiction does not weaken Chaucer’s social commentary. Rather, the “Retraction” emphasizes Chaucer’s criticism of the Church and society in The Canterbury Tales by reinforcing the risk inherent in doing so.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” is a collection of stories written between 1387 and 1400 about a group of thirty people who travel as pilgrims to Canterbury (England) and on their way, they tell stories to each other about their lives and experiences. The stories constitute a critique of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church, while women seem to be presented in a different way than they are in other contemporary works.

The Middle Ages were not only a time of unstable economies, political unrest, significant changes in social structures, but also a time when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a collection of short stories. According to Keira Stevenson on EBSCO host, Geoffrey Chaucer had a good childhood and through family influences, he became a page (knight in training), in 1357. After fighting against France, getting captured and then released, he went back home and began writing. In 1387, the same year his wife died, he began working on The Canterbury Tales. He worked on this poem for several years but never finished it. The Canterbury Tales were approximately 17,000 lines and begins with 30 pilgrims beginning their trip on horses towards Thomas a Becket’s shrine in Canterbury. (Stevenson 1-2) Each pilgrim tells a story to pass the time on the long journey. The pilgrim characters come from all types of life, so the stories that they tell demonstrate the ways and beliefs of a large section of middle age society. The Canterbury Tales represents the middle class through the pilgrims who lived during the Middle Ages. (Canterbury Tales)

The Canterbury Tales are told in the passage of a Pilgrimage to Canterbury. We see that these characters all interact with one another, they all have different points of view on several topics. “The portraits [of the pilgrims] which appear in the General Prologue have a decided togetherness, that the portraits exist as parts of a unity” (Hoffman 492), Their actions and their tales should be thought about in context, who tells the tale, what is their age, what is his or her profession and how he or she interacts with other characters. They each have their own maistrie, they all have mastery over something that influences their own distinct personalities. Thus, how these personalities and maistries mesh with each other is incredibly important to further understand the tales themselves and the reasons behind why each character tells them. The tales themselves are merely parts of a bigger tale, the Canterbury Tales.