Essay on The Age of Chaucer

After the Romans left Britain in AD 410 Anglo-Saxons started to occupy the land, and the Angles settled down in East Anglia, the Midlands, and the North. (Wales, 2006, p. 34) In the seventh and eight centuries, Britain was divided into seven kingdoms from which Northumbria was the most powerful. Later this kingdom lost its authority and status as the power started to concentrate around southern kingdoms. (Barber, Beal & Shaw, 2009, p. 108)

    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:

For instance, political leaders only had local power, the Church was the most powerful institution. Also, two parts of the Code of Chivalry really talked about the Church. They were, “Thou Shalt believe all that the Church teaches, and shalt observe all its directions” and “Thou Shalt defend the Church” (Doc. 5). In other words, people valued the Church’s teachings and directions, so they had to protect it with all they had. This proves that the Church was important to all the people, the peasants, the kings, the nobles and the knights. Furthermore, “the Church became very powerful, and it often used this power to influence the kings to do as it wanted” (Doc. 3). In summary, the Church had even more power than the kings. As you can see the Church had the most political

Here the Middle and Modern words don’t look the same and the word meanings differ as well. Modern English pronunciation reflects the Great Vowel Shift. The shift involved a regular movement of the places of articulation. Front vowels each moved up a notch, except for /i/: which formed a dipthong. Likewise the back vowels moved up, except for /u/, which formed another dipthong (Benson).

In terms of literary quality, Chaucer went great lengths to give all elements a bit of attention. The work is primarily about a knight who is pardoned from a rape on the condition that he acquires the answer to one of life’s

The Commoners were made of many groups of people, majority were farmers. They participated in agriculture and common trades. The lowest group of commoners were not allowed to own property, but they could work on somebody else’s. Merchants and artisans held unique status and they received additional privileges.

being, he begins to poke fun at him. He insists that the Knight was “a

In Book Two, Chaucer changes his course from the past into the present. The topics of Book One and Two are linked as two sources of the poem, tradition and

We cannot read the CT as an honest criticism of 14th century English society without examining the entire picture - and this picture includes Chaucer's ideological contradiction. To better understand Chaucer's real message - criticizing the Three Estates system in order to encourage acceptance of his own Estate, the merchant or middle class - I will briefly discuss the Three Estates system and Chaucer's role in the system's shift to include a Fourth Estate (and how this shift influenced the CT). Then I will examine four stories from the CT (The Wife of Bath's Prologue, The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale, and The Pardoner's Tale) in which Chaucer seems to denounce elements of the social paradigm. I will then examine four stories from the CT (The Knight's Tale, The Man of Law's Tale, The Second Nun's Tale, and The Parson's Tale) in which Chaucer contradicts his criticism of his society. Finally, I will discuss how the dominant social paradigm influenced Chaucer's view of the lower classes, and how the classist structure led to ideological contradictions within the CT. Before we discuss Chaucer's ideological contradictions, however, we must first examine the system he was attempting to change, the Three Estate system.

A cross section of medieval society: feudal (the knight), ecclesiastical (pardoner, priest, nun), urban (lawyer, doctor, merchant). And Chaucer's interest in middle class characters, such as a cook, carpenter, miller, lawyer, merchant, clerk, physician reflects the rise of the middle class in the fourteenth century (Collin 1).

The Medieval period of The Canterbury Tales is held on April 11, 1387. The writing style of tales are literary skilled. “There is clear evidence in them that Chaucer was familiar with a considerable number of the great book of his time, and it is fairly well established that his writings show a steady increase in his literary skill” (Chaucer xxxvii). Chaucer is a writer of surprise. His stories not only come from plots of other writers but also from his lifetime. “There is of course no explaining where or how Chaucer acquired his ability as a great storyteller. However, the fact that he was a man of affairs as well as a man of books, a civil servant who dealt frequently with people from all walks of life, seem to have had great

Chaucer’s life and writings have made a huge impact on the writings of today’s time. He is often hailed as the father of English poetry. Many writers were influenced by Chaucer, including Shakespeare. “He had an abundance of natural buoyancy which he communicates…On the other hand, he had no gift for tragedy…”1 Chaucer invested most all of his characters with all varieties of human nature . “There are some critics who are not satisfied with {Chaucer’s} poetry unless it exhibits moral values.”2 The Canterbury Tales are incomplete because he probably “…came to realize that the whole scheme was too ambitious.”3 He most likely died before he could finish

Chaucer shows facts about the Middle English through the people of the court system in society. In the “Prologue” Chaucer reveals the honorable qualities of the Knight during this time period. Through the speakers words “To ride abroad had

Geoffrey Chaucer was a poet, a writer, and of course a diplomat. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in the early hours of 1340s to John Chaucer, a vintner and assistant to the king's butler. As a boy, he was a leaf to the Countess of Ulster. (Lombardi) Chaucer was the most famous for writing his unfinished Canterbury tales. (Geoffrey Chaucer) He was born in London, only problem is, the exact date and place are unknown. From his writings Chaucer emerges as poet of love, both worldly and heavenly. No information exists about his early education, although without a doubt he would have been as good in French as in the Middle English of his time. (Bio.True Story) Chaucer pops up in the record books in 1357 he was working for the queen.

Chaucer is generally considered the father of English poetry, and The Canterbury Tales has been required reading for countless students over the generations. The influence of his work on generations of English-language writers is undisputed. Some critics have worried that such wide and shallow exposure of the reading public to Chaucer's work has diluted full appreciation for his complex contribution to literature. Critic Derek Traversi says, “The appreciation of Geoffrey Chaucer has suffered a good deal in the past from his reputation as the ‘Father of English poetry.’ It has been easy to think of him as a ‘naif,’ the possessor of a charming simplicity of outlook which tends to convey itself, for a modern reader, through language considered ‘picturesque’ or simply childish, alternately ‘quaint’ or redolent of innocence for readers who think of themselves as more sophisticated and more psychologically complex.” However, this view is not correct, Traversi argues: “His early poems show him engaged in exploring the possibilities of the English language as an instrument for sophisticated literary creation.” As poet William Blake put it, over four hundred years after the book's first publication: “Of Chaucer's characters, as described in his Canterbury Tales, some of the names are altered by Time, but the Characters themselves for ever remain unaltered and consequently they are the Physiognomies or lineaments of