What Is Chaucer's Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

Satire. Satire is a biting literary tool, one that Geoffery Chaucer used liberally when he wrote his Canterbury Tales. Webster's New World Dictionary says that satire is "the use of ridicule, sarcasm, etc. to attack vices, follies, etc." Using that definition, I think that all of the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales are satirized to some extent; some of the satirizations are more subtle than others. The Knight is one of the pilgrims that is more subtly satirized.

The Canterbury Tales were written and pieced together in the late 1380's, early 1390's.  The author of the book is Geoffrey Chaucer.  When considering the structure of the tales, one can deduce that they were put together using Framework Narrative, a very unique style of writing.  The opening prologue speaks of 29 pilgrims, including Chaucer, who are all on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. All of them are seeking a certain shrine for spiritual cleansing, and relief.  The journey was to be long, but in the end it would all be worth it.  Chaucer's social views and prejudices are revealed through his description of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer describes his grandiose opinion of himself, the friar is pompous and crooked. He surmises that a man of his “status” should not be seen with the lowly and poor, which is ironic because those are exactly the people he is meant to help. Chaucer as discloses the lengths he is willing to go for even the smallest person gain saying. “His brethren did no poaching where he went./For though a widow mightn’t have a shoe,/So pleasant was his holy how-d’ye-do/He got his/farthing from her just the same/Before he left, and so his income came” (“General Prologue”, 256-262). The friar is willing to take from the people who need it most in the community, the widow’s economic class and living conditions are used further show the reprehensible behavior of the religious characters. Friars, like several other religious orders are supposed to take a vow of poverty in order the become closer to Christ. The Friar in Canterbury Tales does the exact opposite. Both his greed and unscrupulous behavior of another religious character further substantiate the idea that the religious characters are used to reflect the corruption in the church.

“One may say that pilgrimages are just as much about the journey as they are about the destination.” (Higl) Pilgrimages are very important to religions around the world. They are important for people when they are working on a deeper faith, and these pilgrimages are to places of great importance. It is important to note that people do not only learn when they are at their destination, but also on the trip to those destinations. “The Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer’s unfinished work, was a group of stories about a group on pilgrimage, but the stories did not take place at the destination. These were stories told on the way to Canterbury. They were also very satiric stories. They showed great hypocrisy, and immorality. The stories seemed to have

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.

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century, The Canterbury Tales is a poetic masterpiece. This work is rather unique because of its format and use of satire. The story is a framed narrative, a story within a story. The outer frame is a pilgrimage to the shine of Saint Thomas Becket, the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury. This journey is made by thirty pilgrims, including Chaucer the Pilgrim, who vary in social standing, ranging from aristocrat to peasant but excluding royalty and serfs. Chaucer often utilizes satire to draw attention to how well or how poorly suited a pilgrim is to his or her social status. The pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, England, outside London. Harry Bailly, the owner of the Inn, proposes a story-telling contest among the pilgrims to keep them entertained along the pilgrimage. He offers to accompany the pilgrims at his own expense in order to judge the contest. The plan is for each of the thirty pilgrims to tell four tales, two on the ay to the shrine and two on the journey home. The individual tales comprise the inner frame. Of the proposed 120 tales, the story that is considered most entertaining and most moral will be selected as the winner. The teller of that story will receive a dinner at the Inn upon his or her return at the expense of the other pilgrims. Despite the planned 120 tales, only twenty-two full tales and two fragments exist. One completed tale, told by the Wife of Bath, epitomizes Chaucer’s uncanny ability to match each tale to its teller.

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

(An analysis of Chaucer’s use of satire to reach his intended audience in his Canterbury Tales)

of the poor outfit of the Knight. Instead he attempts to point out that the

In the story, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, this human nature is most reverently displayed in the character of Nun Prioress, because she wants to appear as a woman of higher class. Through the use of literary elements, such as characterization, symbolism and satiric irony, Chaucer is able to illustrate how the Nun Prioress reflects the most basic of human traits, which is the desire to want something they cannot have.

Geoffrey Chaucer used sarcasm to describe his characters in "The Canterbury Tales." It will point out details that are seen in the book that help explain how he used this sarcasm to prove a point and to teach life lessons sometimes. I will also point out how this sarcasm was aimed at telling the reader his point of view about how corrupt the Catholic Church was. Chaucer uses an abundance of sarcasm, as opposed to seriousness, to describe his characters in "The Canterbury Tales."

Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, using his characters as the mouthpiece for his iconoclastic views. Chaucer had serious issues with the hypocrisy of the church as well as, many other sacred institutions. The only reason that Chaucer was not exiled or even imprisoned for his views is the way in which he exposed them. Through the allegorical meanings of this text and Chaucer’s claim that he is simply retelling the events of his pilgrimage to Canterbury as it occurred, Chaucer is saved from extreme persecution. From the beginning of time there has always been issues with challenging the higher order; allowing people to make their own decisions and separate themselves from the way of the church often lead to death. In 1350 the

To begin, back in the days on Geoffrey Chaucer, religion was ruled by one and only one church, the Roman Catholic Church. He never really agreed with the ways of the church so he wrote a series of tales making fun of the people of England and the ways of the church. Even though he was purposely making fun of the church, he had to be careful of the way he said some things. With some of the characters he creates, Chaucer finds himself apologizing in advance for what he is about to say; or what the characters were about to say. By doing this Chaucer is using satire. Satire is when you say something but mean another or the opposite of the thing you say. Most of Chaucer’s tales are not appropriate for high schools, but of

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.

The aim of any true satirical work is to poke fun at a certain aspect of society, while also inspiring reform to that very same aspect in one way or another. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chaucer satirizes the Medieval Church and those associated with the church. Medieval society was centered largely around the Church. Ideally, the people were expected to understand that earthly possessions were meaningless when compared to the prospect of closeness with God. Man was expected to work until he died, at which time he would receive eternal salvation. This eternal salvation was achieved by obeying God's commandments. This theory, however, was becoming progressively corrupted as hypocrisy began to pollute the Church, particularly at the higher