The Most Honorable Characters In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

In the story of Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, there is a lawyer who narrates the entire story. He owns his own law practice and also has an assortment of scribes who work for him. The first scrivener, named Turkey, was a hard worker until 12 o’ clock noon daily. Following that time, his work begins to diminish. The second, who they called Nippers, was the complete opposite. He worked best during the afternoon and evening hours. Lastly, Bartleby didn’t do much work at all. He was lazy, he had nothing to lose, and he understood how to take advantage of someone else’s kindness. The rest of the workers are just stuck in the “Rat Race”, so they are dependent upon their jobs to support families, and they know how to work hard for

The Clerk is one of the 29 pilgrims who travel to Canterbury with Geoffrey Chaucer. From his description, we know a couple things about him. He is very thin, as Chaucer describes both him and his horse as “As meagre was his horse as is a rake, nor he

Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” was written in the mid-nineteenth century, during a time when economic revolutions swept across Europe and class riots erupted in New York. Inspired by this environment, Melville depicts the working class as laborers struggling to survive the game of life and achieve their goals. The working class possesses a very hectic and repetitive life that often leads to unhappiness. This is demonstrated in the office where Bartleby and his coworkers, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut work. They all exhibit signs of depression, they all appear easily bothered, and they all possess an odd and unique quality. The context of the story and the environment in which it was written encourages an analysis from the lens

The Canterbury Tales is a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1392. In this poem each character tells four stories, two on the way there and two on the way home, to provide entertainment for the people on the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. One part of Chaucer’s tales that truly stands out is the character prologue where he introduces all of the characters on the pilgrimage and conveys the narrator’s opinions of them using satire and other literary devices. Of characters that Chaucer’s narrator describes, two are the Parson and the Friar. Both of the characters share similarities in their social status and job position however greatly contrast in morals and character. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses contrasting characteristics to convey an idea that teaches that power does not always lead to corruption.

Herman Melville, American author of the short story “Bartleby the Scrivener”, introduces to the readers the story of the narrator, an elderly lawyer, who has recently hired another scrivener, a law-copyist copyist or clerk, to his office by the name of Bartleby. The narrator finds Bartleby to be an enigma, unlike his other three peculiar employees, Turkey, Nippers, and Gingernut, who each have food-derived names. Upon being hired, Bartleby’s work ethic is commendable due to the abundant amount of work he completes from sunrise to sunset. It was only a short time until the dreary work of copying letters that would never reach their destinations had finally depressed Bartleby and drove him to slowly refuse his daily duties

Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” tells a story of a nameless lawyer who has four nicknamed employees. Throughout the descriptions of the four employees, their daily work and the way the lawyer viewed them, it shows that the four employees have been used to symbolize the lower classes and the lawyer have been used to symbolize the upper classes of a capitalist society. Based on the use of symbolization of Melville, the main purpose of this story were to show how the lower class workers were viewed and treated by the upper classes with a class divided capitalist society. In the short story “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” written by Herman Melville, Melville argues that working in a capitalist society dehumanizes the employees because the

The author describes this citizen as being an overall regular man in society, who did not change or impact the world by any means. He was a normal man who bought a paper every day

This story is about Pilgrims and how they each are presented as. The narrator is also part of the story and hie is called Chaucer. The Knight is the highest social standing one in the pilgrim group. Along the way all in total twenty-nine of them have met. The story describes him as not gay, showily dressed, and still wear his military padded coat stained by the armor he has only recently taken off. He loved everything that pertains the knighthood meaning truth, honor, and magnanimity. The narrator likes the Knight. The Knight has always been listed in the combats at least three times and always killed his opponent. The Knight has a twenty year old son but he seen some military action just so he can impress his lady not his Lord God. His son is name Squire. Squire is

The Medieval Period in history brought along scores of fables about everything from knights engaging in courtly love to corruption in the Catholic Church. The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer expertly encapsulates many of the great motifs of the era. The Tales are a series of stories and descriptions of characters of all social classes that were composed in the late 1300’s. Chaucer utilizes a multitude of literary techniques to convey his personal views of people, and ultimately, what they represent in society. The author uses such devices when depicting two morally contrasting characters, the Parson and the Summoner, that are documented in the Prologue.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the prioress’s behavior can be interpreted as being part of the change occurring within religious institutions, which were changing to allow for freedom of thought and individual choice, as the nun does when she takes the liberty of customizing her fine garb by wearing it with beads and a gold brooch. The nun is one of the first characters to be given a name and as such is identified as being an individual, and not just seen as being a nun. The nun’s deviation from expected behavior and norms can thus be seen as a positive trait which Chaucer praises as women became more independent and redefined their own roles in society. Excessive understatement, negative imagery, and refined diction, however

Chaucer has created many characters in the Canterbury tales that he likes and many he dislikes. He is a very critical and detailed writer about these characters. With these characters, Chaucer has created real life issues with religious figures. Chaucer’s has showed how good religious figures can be and how corrupt they can be as well.

       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

In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer introduces a variety of characters with a multitude of personalities. From the despicable Summoner to the abrasive Miller, these characters are created with their own personalities and their own human failings. One common fault that characters share is hypocrisy. From pretending to be wealthy to cheating the poor out of money, hypocritical tendencies are abundant in the Canterbury Tales. Throughout the story, Chaucer ridicules the human criticizes the human failing of hypocrisy through the examples of the Pardoner, the Merchant, and the Friar.

In The Canterbury Tales, the knight is a modern type of knight. Although the description of this character’s personality is vague, it is not hard for modern day people to visualize him. In the prologue, it mentions that the knight follows the five basic ideals that a good knight should possess: “chivalry, Truth, honour, generousness, and courtesy” (Chaucer 4). The knight fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian places and tried to convert people’s culture by brute force, which was considered noble and brave hearted. From his love of the five basics ideals previously mentioned to his impressive military career, the knight is a perfect example of how a knight should be represented. Indirectly, the tale is discussing both the knight and the idea of how a knight should be. The tale does not describe much about the knight as in physical appearances and characteristics of this knight but as the tale comes to an end, the book starts to unfold how this story connects with this character. The tale itself is not important yet it’s what the tale represents that is important, such as pursuing courtly love, risking death, and respecting women. All of the previously mentioned attributes are ones that knights should possess to achieve expected standards.

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