Hende Nicholas: Trickter Stereotypes For College Students In The Middle Ages

When Nicolas, the young devious student began living with the two, it was only a matter of time before infidelity occurred. The double entendre is used to create a meaning of innocence at the same time as promiscuity. Chaucer goes into tremendous detail in regard to Alison her beauty and sexuality. "A girdle wore she, barred and striped, of silk. An apron, too, as white as morning milk About her loins, and full of many a gore;" (Lines 127-129). The reader is imagining this beautiful bodied woman until he clues them in. "Fair was this youthful wife, and therewithal, as weasels was her body slim and small." (Lines 125-126). It becomes very clear to the reader that not only is Alison very slim but slim as a weasel. A weasel is considered sneaky and devious. Chaucer lets the reader know that Alison is not to be viewed ethical.

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

Stereotype plays a big part in today’s society. In the Memoir “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, others would easily misjudge Jeannette’s family just by their image and the way they lived their life. Although they lived the way they did the walls family had much potential and were very well educated in their own ways. People need to live by the quote “Never judge a book by its cover” because you never know who they are until you meet them.

In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer gives a detailed description of what life was like in Medieval times . In the “Prologue”, the reader comes to better understand the people of the time period through the characters words and actions. Chaucer uses a variety of groups of society to give the reader a deeper insight into the fourteenth century Pilgrims customs and values. Through the Court, Common people and the Church, Gregory Chaucer gives a detailed description of ordinary life in the medieval times.

Based on the Canterbury tales, Chaucer's point of view of the Church was that he thinks highly of the priests who pastor their congregations because they follow the commandments of Jesus Christ. The Summoner, the Pardoner, the Monk and the Prioress are full-time servants of the Church, but they tend to be selfish and care more for themselves than for God's work. The students Nicholas and Absalom are interested in promiscuous behaviors more than the Church. Nick' a misled God-fearing man is similar to the tale of Noah's Ark. He is swindled to cheat on his wife, and Abby is also lustful of his wife. The Church doctrine really doesn't help, by taking advantage of the men's situation for their own

People from many nations, religions, and cultural backgrounds settled in the middle colonies in several ways. One way people could settle is by taking land; they found land and made a claim on it or stole property from other settlements. Men or women could also have established their own colony where they were the leader. Religious organizations who rebelled against the government, such as the Quakers, were forced to leave the colony and therefore developed new communities. These were the significant ways many different ethnicities fixed themselves in the middle colonies.

The Gilded Age, a term coined by author Mark Twain, refers to the years 1879 through 1899. This was a time period of high extremes that included high immigration rates, rapid economic growth, poverty, concentrated wealth, and high urban violence often associated directly with alcohol consumption. Though wages were higher in America than across Europe, causing higher immigration rates, the influx of immigrants led to many of them enduring poverty and living in slums which was vastly different from the life they had imagined when traveling to America. “...tend to dichotomize Gilded-Age society into a few fabulously wealthy industrialists and a mass of impoverished workers…”1. During this time there was rapid economic growth, however the concentrated

Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous medieval classic, The Canterbury Tales, offers its readers a vast array of characters. This God’s plenty features numerous unique and challenging individuals, but there is one specifically who stands out as particularly interesting. The immoral Pardoner, who, in a sense, sells away his soul for the sake of his own avarice, puzzles many modern readers with his strange logic. Already having laid his considerable guilt upon the table, this corrupted agent of the Church attempts to pawn off his counterfeit relics for a generous price. His actions are slightly troubling and mysterious, but his shameless misdeed is easily explainable if a reader chooses to interpret the man as a symbol rather than a fully formed human

Stereotypes come about from ignorance, stupidity, and insensitivity. Two characters, Joe and Red are so unbelievably racist that they hallucinate a “Big Indian” and try to get rid of him. Therefore, they prove themselves to be racist by believing preconceptions without any other information about the group of minority. Stereotypes are always going to be around, especially if two people like Joe and Red think they can get away with their behaviour. People will be continuing to take a step backwards if the false information about a culture is going to affect their judgement. In the short story, “A Seat In The Garden,” Thomas King attests to the fact that Joe and Red are held hostage by their own prejudices and stereotypes of Indigenous people.

Throughout the Canterbury Tales, various characters are introduced and tell a tale, each of which tells a different story. All of the tales are unique and address different issues. “The Miller’s Tale” is the second of the many stories and varies from all of the rest. As seen from the “General Prologue,” Chaucer clearly depicts the Miller as a crude, slobbish man who will say anything. This reputation is held true as the Miller drunkenly tells a story full of adultery and bickering. Despite the scandalous nature of “The Miller’s Tale,” the story also displays some of Chaucer’s prominent beliefs. As “The Miller’s Prologue” and “The Miller’s Tale” are told, it becomes evident that Chaucer is challenging the common roles and behaviors of women, and he is also questioning the effectiveness of social class.

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.

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the fourteenth century, The Canterbury Tales and more specifically it’s prologue, shed a great deal of light on the rising middle class in (fourteenth century) England. Despite the fact that some readers may not know a lot about the time period today, Chaucer’s writing in the prologue elaborates on topics such as occupations, wealth, education, and political power. Scholar Barbara Nolan writes of the prologue, “it is more complex than most…It raises expectations in just the areas the handbooks propose, promising to take up important matters of natural and social order, moral character, and religion and outlining the organization the work will follow” (Nolan 154). In other words, while noting the

It is clear that Geoffrey Chaucer was acutely aware of the strict classist system in which he lived; indeed the very subject matter of his Canterbury Tales (CT) is a commentary on this system: its shortcomings and its benefits regarding English society. In fact, Chaucer is particularly adept at portraying each of his pilgrims as an example of various strata within 14th century English society. And upon first reading the CT, one might mistake Chaucer's acute social awareness and insightful characterizations as accurate portrayals of British society in the late 1300s and early 1400s. Further, one might mistake his analysis, criticism, and his sardonic condemnation of many elements of British culture for genuine attempts to alter the

“With torment and with shameful deeth echon, this provost dooth thise Jewes for to sterve that of this mordre wiste, and that anon. He nolde no swich cursednesse observe. ‘Yvele shal have that yvele wol deserve.’ Therfore with wilde hors he dide hem drawe, and after that he heng hem by the lawe.” (Lines 628-35)

      In the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes the men and women of the Church in extreme forms; most of these holy pilgrims, such as the Monk, the Friar, and Pardoner, are caricatures of objectionable parts of Catholic society.  At a time when the power-hungry Catholic Church used the misery of peasants in order to obtain wealth, it is no wonder that one of the greatest writers of the Middle Ages used his works to comment on the religious politics of the day.