Nun Prioress

    Chaucer's view of the clergy class is not as positive as his view of the ruling class.  For example, Chaucer describes the Prioress/Nun using a great amount of satire.  He speaks of how the nun has excellent etiquette and manners.  She tries so hard to be respected and viewed as one with higher status.  Her character is best described in the quote:

The Nun is not viewed in the same light, and as a result she wishes to gain the respect of others. The Nun is described as “a counterfeit of a courtly kind of grace” (Chaucer 148.143). The author views her as a fraud of courtliness because although she possesses a low position in society as a nun, she tries to act in a worldly fashion. Chaucer uses both of these pilgrims to contribute to the overall theme of one’s need to be liked by others by showing how the Nun goes out of her way to look sophisticated to gain others’ respect and fondness of her.

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.

In the “General Prologue”, the Nun exposes the hypocrisy and manipulation of the Church through her actions. Nuns are supposed to devote their lives to Christianity while portraying a positive Christian figure. Chaucer describes the Nun’s actions toward being well mannered.

Chaucer creates a multitude of female characters that are used to critique the current social order of his time some subtly and some overtly. He presents the audience with female Christian figures some of which represent a passive attitude and a meek demeanor to allow themselves to be used by the patriarchal dominated society; some Christian individuals who speak out against the authority that is placed upon the men in fourteenth century England whether or not they accept the idea of being subservient to men

Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" is at once a fable, a tale of courtly love, and a satire mocking fables and courtly love traditions. To this end, Chaucer makes use of several stylistic techniques involving both framing and content. The tale begins and ends with "a poor widwe somdeel stape in age" (line 1), but the majority of the content involves not the widow but the animals on her farm, in particular an arrogant rooster name Chauntecleer. The first mention of the main character does not come until the twenty-ninth line, after twenty-eight lines of minute description of the widow and the farm. The donation of large amounts of time to detail slows down the plot of the story; this plot is even further drawn out by the Nun's Priest's

Chaucer makes forceful insults in his character explication. “The Rule of good St. Benet or St. Maur/ As old and strict he tended to ignore” (Chaucer 7.) A monk is supposed to have a strong authority in the Church, but Chaucer explains that he breaks the written laws and precedents set by people recognized as Saints and highly acclaimed people. The Monk is a lazy, disgusting man who lived a dishonest and imprudent life.

Three of Chaucer’s tales are written with a central Christian theme, the Prioress’s Tale, the Second Nun’s Tale, and the Parson’s Tale. The Prioress’s Tale is said to be about a miracle of the Virgin Mary, the Second Nun’s Tale is a biography of Saint Cecilia, and the Parson’s Tale is considered a sermon. Just as The Canterbury Tales shows a theme of Christianity, it also shows a theme of religious corruption. In the tales of the Friar, Prioress, Pardoner, and Monk, corruption of the church is shown and influences each character in a different way. In the Friar, the focus is on money, horses, and the responsibility of his monastery. But, the Friar also seduces women and provide them with a spouse to stay out of trouble. In the tale of Prioress, Chaucer describes her as too busy being a court lady to take care of her nunnery. In the Pardoner, he takes advantage of others by taking money for giving pardons for the sins of others, even going as far as selling relics. The Monk takes money for forgiveness, refuses to help the poor, and pays other beggars to leave so he can attain all of the money from that area. He does all of this while he is supposed to be pledging his life to poverty and those less fortunate. Chaucer shows a theme of Christianity just as he shows a theme of religious corruption. As

He is the most famous poet of Medieval England. “Geoffrey Chaucer immortalized Medieval England in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ – the stories of various people gravitating to Canterbury at the end of a pilgrimage. Geoffrey Chaucer has to go down as one of Britain’s finest writers” (Buford 2). One of Chaucer’s most famous works, The Canterbury Tales, makes him the astounding poet we know him as today. In Chaucer’s early life, he spent a lot of time traveling.

The Canterbury Tales, the most famous and revolutionary work of Geoffrey Chaucer, is a collection of twenty-four tales presented in the form of a story-telling contest by pilgrims who are traveling from London to Canterbury. In my viewpoint, The Canterbury Tales can be understood as a representation of the English society at Chaucer's time as it documents several of the social tensions of life in the late Middle Age. The choice of setting the tales as part of a pilgrimage allowed the author to cover a wide range of social roles with varying hierarchical positions and occupations. Therefore, the tales depict a number of the evolving themes by that time in many segments of the society, such as the ones presented in The Wife of Bath tale: the

      Yet not all of Chaucer's religious characters are failures in spirituality. His description of the Second Nun is of a truly pious woman who spends her life in the service of

       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

The theme for this tale is Love Conquers All (Sparknotes). The Prioress is a Nun who must accept the 4 vows. But the readers see her as someone who is opposite and does not accept them. Poverty is a vow in which a Nun must hold no worthy possessions. But the Prioress happens to own a beautiful brooch in which the readers believe she is not fully dedicated to the church. Another vow that the Prioress does not exceed in is the faithfulness of chastity. Nuns are servants to the church and they are suppose to show promiscuity. Since Chaucer does not mention the third vow, obedience, it shows that the Prioress does not follow this one either since she is not apart of the first two "The Prioress of The Canterbury Tales." 123HelpMe.com. 18 Oct 2009 http://www.123HelpMe.com/view.asp?id=15607. Now the readers believe that the Prioress does not serve God in any way. The third vow is probably the most important one. The Prioress is

In Geoffrey Chaucer's, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer narrates the accounts of several pilgrims on their way to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at the Cathedral in Canterbury. Through his narratives, Chaucer presents his audience with a broad representation of life and social class interaction in both the pilgrims and the characters in their tales. Chaucer brings to light various ideas, thoughts, and commentary in regards to medieval society. The two most significant characters who provide the greatest insight into contemporary medieval society are the Wife of Bath and the Prioress. Through both the Wife of Bath's Tale and the Prioress's Tale, Chaucer articulates his opinionated views of the etiquette and conduct of women in the

Chaucer makes it quite clear to the reader that these men boast about the high morals of the Church, and then proceed to live in stark contrast to nearly every one of these morals. One example is how the Church preaches a solemn vow of chastity. Nevertheless, Chaucer tells of how the Friar had "fixed up many a marriage, giving each/ Of his young women what he could afford her." Therefore, the Friar would find husbands for the women that he had previously seduced but then lost interest in. Another aspect of the Church that these "holy-men" prove inconsistent is the vow of simple living. The Monk lives a rather lavish lifestyle, as Chaucer tells, "The Rule of good St. Benet or St. Maur/ As old and strict he tended to ignore;/ He let go by the things of yesterday/ And took the modern world's more spacious way." The monk enjoyed the comforts of good living, with fur-lined clothing, a fine horse, and first class meals. Likewise, the Friar enjoyed fine clothing, as Chaucer says, "Not then appearing as your cloistered scholar/ With threadbare habit hardly worth a dollar,/ But much more like a Doctor or a Pope." These elegant lifestyles are clearly in opposition to the teachings of the Church on simplistic living. Finally, the Pardoner preaches on behalf of the Church against greed and avarice, however he is very greedy himself. In his tale, the Pardoner tells an excellent tale denouncing greed and showing how greed leads to a person's downfall, yet the