The Canterbury Tales Essay

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in a collection of 24 stories while on a pilgrimage to visit the relics of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. The purpose behind this pilgrimage is for the pilgrims to visit the shrine to seek forgiveness for their sins. Due to the long trip, the host made a deal with everyone to tell two stories on the way and back from Canterbury and whoever tells the best one receives a paid for meal. Each character telling their stories gives away bits of information and a visual idea of who they really are. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses detail, point of view, and descriptive language to portray the Pardoner and Summoner to be worse than the Skipper.

The Merchant is a high figure in society because he is a part of the wealthy class. Although he may seem unmoral because being part of the wealthy class, Chaucer’s perception is very different. Chaucer believed he was a “worthy man” because he “governed all [his] trade affairs well.” (Lines 282-283) Chaucer admires the way the Merchant handles his business, doing what it takes to get his job done. He borrows money and disguises himself well if and never he is in debt. Looking at the Merchant physically, we can see that he has nice things such as his “elegant boots [and] Flemish beaver hat.” (Lines 272-273) Again, it seems as though he cares immensely over material possession, but he does it to look more sophisticated in his business plans. Even though the Merchant is already classified a member of the higher class, Chaucer also puts him in the higher ranks because of his intelligence in trade and business. Chaucer’s principle

The Canterbury Tales, an anthology or collection of short stories was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, as he participated in the pilgrimage to Canterbury with 29 other pilgrims by his side. During their travels, each of them are responsible for telling four tales; and the pilgrim which tells the best tale will receive dinner by the group. As four stories are to be told by each of the pilgrims, each tale differs significantly as well as the themes of each. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Knight’s Tale” do share common characteristics, by building off of the ideas of the Knight’s Code of Chivalry. Whether humorous or representing the gravity of a person’s decision, Knight’s Code of Chivalry and Art of Courtly Love can be discovered in the two

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of more than 20 stories, written in Middle English around the 1380s, during the Hundred Years' War, by Geoffrey Chaucer. Within a narrative about a pilgrimage,(from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral) Chaucer sets a series of stories. These collection of stories are built around a frame narrative, which was an already established and common genre of the 14th century. (The tales are in verse, except The Parson's Tale and Chaucer's own story of Melibee which are in prose.) Chaucer's collection of tales differs from other story compilations, since most story collections are focused on a theme, usually on a religious one. In Boccaccio's Decameron (which contains more parallels

Unlike the others, the clerk is not seen as a role model of any class. Rather, he lives more by his actions. He is fully dedicated to his job, which is learning and studying. “By his bed / He preferred having twenty books in red / And black, of Aristotle’s philosophy (303-05).” The clerk does not have many friends, and he is not an outgoing person; however, he loves what he does and strives to be the best at it.

The Canterbury Tales, begun in 1387 by Geoffrey Chaucer, are written in heroic couplets iambic pentameters, and consist of a series of twenty-four linked tales told by a group of superbly characterized pilgrims ranging from Knight to Plowman. The characters meet at an Inn, in London, before journeying to the shrine of St Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The Wife of Bath is one of these characters. She bases both her tale and her prologue on marriage and brings humor and intrigue to the tales, as she is lively and very often crudely spoken. Her role as a dominant female contrasts greatly with the others in the tales, like the prim and proper Prioress represents the

Dustin Sarracino Ms. Morris English 12- 2nd period 5 December 2016 Chaucer’s Influence Through Writing Geoffrey Chaucer wrote multiple books, but his most famous writing is the “Canterbury Tales”. In the “Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer wrote about pilgrims going on a pilgrimage to the Canterbury cathedral. The pilgrims were very diverse, ranging from monks and nuns to doctors and knights. Each pilgrim had a tale to tell while traveling to the cathedral, and through these tales, Chaucer identified multiple problems that were common during his era. Chaucer was a very harsh critic, but hid it behind comical sarcasm.

The author of The Canterbury Tales is Geoffrey Chaucer. The publishing time of The Canterbury Tales is in the late 1400’s. The Canterbury Tales is about a group of middle-class people who are going on a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Thomas à Becket. On the way Chaucer is giving explanations of each of the pilgrims. The pilgrims are going to tell two stories on the way there and two stories on the way back. Unfortunately, Chaucer did not live long enough to finish the story. Two of the pilgrims are the Friar and the Summoner. The Friar is a worse person than the Summoner. While the Friar and the Summoner are alike in that they do not follow their jobs’ rules, they are different because of who likes and dislikes them.

However, Chaucer clearly highlights the point to the reader that the prioress is none of these things as she flaunts her apparent beauty with what she wears and how she behaves. As David Aers tells us, "The Prioress is one of the least reserved of Chaucer's characters, openly flaunting her sexuality through her behaviour around the other pilgrims." Comments from Chaucer the pilgrim such as "ful fetys was hir cloke," describing her elegant coat that she wore and the description of the prioress' physical appearance itself clearly represent the idea that the prioress is drawing attention to herself. The idea of the prioress' nose being "tretys" and "Hir mouth ful small, and therto softe and reed" show the physical flaunting of the prioress and though a nun's habit in the 14th Century would have been different to today, it was a sombre, highly modest garb worn to show penance. As such, the reader begins to wonder how our Prioress's forehead shows, much less how she displays the artificially high brow that was the height of fashion at the time.

A guy named Geoffrey Chaucer wrote a very long group of stories called The Canterbury Tales. This literature has been around for a very long time. The Canterbury Tales are a very historic piece of literature. He specifically talks about many characters in the stories. He describes them in a way that nobody has done before. However, the way he wrote the stories and described the characters can make a reader not understand them very well. Overall, The Canterbury Tales are very boring, complex, and full of weird descriptions.

Geoffrey Chaucer's the Canterbury Tales divulges into the lives of twenty-three individuals, who did not know each other before meeting at the Tabard Inn, that have come far and wide to get to Canterbury, a then religious site. The host tells them that they each should tell two stories both on the way over and on the way back, to pass time, whoever had the best story got a free meal. Known as the “Father of English Literature,” Geoffrey Chaucer was the first person to publish a work in English, when it was more common to publish in French or Latin at the time. This very piece of literature, the Canterbury Tales, is his most praised work, not only due to his decision to write in English, but as well as his decision to write more realistically

In fact, all of the previous examples highlight not only other characteristics but his insincerity and falseness as well. It is described many times how the Friar kept company with people of means than the sick, poor and beggars. He begged in the name of the poor but did not associate with those he supposedly begged for. The guise under which the Friar lived and worked proved him to be a false man. The insincerity of the Friar is exemplified in his tale as well.

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.

Hunting during this time was quite expensive and was most likely a leisure activity for the wealthy. This Monk had greyhound dogs chasing after bunny rabbits, which seems a little odd for a public servant. The detail of the Monks

The Prioress, known as Madam Eglantyne, has an elegant nose, a Lilliputian, soft, and red mouth, a big-forehead, and a glass gray mouth. She wears a cloak, a set of beads, and a broche that reads, “Love conquers