General Prologue Essay

Different scholars have had different understandings of Chaucer's Retraction and The Canterbury Tales. The divergent views have drawn different interpretations of the intended meaning and the context of its existence. Many scholars believe that The Parson's Tale was Chaucer’s final work. Some people feel Chaucer's Retraction was the final one in the collection, while others doubt that Chaucer was the real author of the repudiation. This dilemma is implored by the fact the retraction completely disowns

Her arguments in favor of marriage, though demonstrating a hearty common sense, are also suspect -- while it is true that marriage peoples the earth and replenishes existing stocks of "virginitee", her own marriages do not seem to have produced any offspring, and while it may be her marriages, despite her claim that, do not seem to have prevented her from which is after all what marriage was, according to her, supposed to prevent. Moreover, from the account she gives of her marriages, it becomes

It is clear that Geoffrey Chaucer primarily uses satire throughout The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer even explains in the work, as a disclaimer to the audience, that a lot of what is stated is a joke. Even so, the “General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales still provides the audience with the opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding of each character before they tell their stories.. This provides the audience with an idea of what common stereotypes are present during Chaucer’s time due to his work

the tale itself, but Chaucer also mentions two women in the pilgrims. One of these women is the Prioress or the Nun. The Prioress is described as a woman who was “modest...and coy”, but despite that, Chaucer uses satire in her description in the prologue. The Prioress is a woman with sophistication who “spoke her French...fluently” who also had table manners with “never a driblet fell upon her breast” (Chaucer 4-5). Along with those characteristics, she is also “charitable and piteous” caring for

Canterbury Tales are told in the passage of a Pilgrimage to Canterbury. We see that these characters all interact with one another, they all have different points of view on several topics. “The portraits [of the pilgrims] which appear in the General Prologue have a decided togetherness, that the portraits exist as parts of a unity” (Hoffman 492), Their actions and their tales should be thought about in context, who tells the tale, what is their age, what is his or her profession and how he or she

Argument In “The General Prologue,” we can see a few interesting characters among the pilgrims in the poem. Meanwhile, in “The Wife of Bath,” the persona seems religious, but at the same time, she is just giving excuses in order to fulfill her own desires. Analysis The poet, or the narrator, first introduces the Knight, who is the highest in rank among the pilgrims. He is also, in the narrator’s opinion, the noblest among them all. He is chivalrous, loyal and has a good reputation. Though he has

To add on to the corruption, earlier in the “General Prologue” the narrator mentioned how the Pardoner was adding to his irrelevent preaching of having relics. Such as the gobbet of Saint Peter, he goes as far as even saying he has a pillow case made of Our Lady’s veil. Indeed there were people who believed

In the General Prologue of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Host instructs the pilgrims to tell ‘“Tales of best sentence and moost solaas’” (GP 798). In other words, in order to win the contest, the pilgrims must tell stories which both impart serious meaning/wisdom (“sentence”) as well as entertainment (“solaas”). While the pilgrims all achieve these two goals to varying degrees, The Pardoner’s Tale seems at first to succeed very well in providing both moral teaching and entertainment. However, while

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s literary works, The General Prologue and The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer questions misogynistic ideas of the time. Within the General Prologue, Chaucer uses each tale to convey how some people of the time did not act as they should, most of them were corrupt and question the ideas of the church. The Wife of Bath’s Tale is mostly about a Knight who rapes a young woman, and learns his lesson by listening to the women around him. One of his characters, the Wife of Bath, is portrayed

In The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses the value of righteousness to clearly distinguish between the pilgrims - the exceptional, the decent and the terrible. The goodness of the pilgrims is determined, by Chaucer, based on his or her ability to adhere to their own superior moral standards. Some pilgrims, like the Parson and the Plowman, are highly praised by Chaucer for their righteous qualities. Some--on the other hand--like the Summoner and Pardoner, are chastised