Chaucer: an analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales"

When we are taken on the pilgrimage to Canterbury by Chaucer in the story “The Canterbury Tales” we are introduced to all classes of characters from every corner of life. The use of satire is used throughout the story and I believe it helps, it shows the stereotypical difference in class at his time of day. While keeping nothing from harm in “The Canterbury Tales” Chaucer takes a huge chance by mocking even the church. But did all the use of raunchy humor and everyday language really help him or did it make the story too much to read?

In Chaucer’s time there was a class system that divided the group into a sort of category they were grouped in 3 groups Clergy, nobility and peasants. In Chaucer’s story “The Canterbury Tales” this is no exception he uses this class difference to design his characters. There are many characters that fit into their stereotype of their class system for example the Knight. The Knight in Chaucer’s time was considered as part of the nobility. The Knight’s tale is a sophisticated fable of romance, betrayal and bloodshed. It is a high class story that pit’s two cousins Palamon and Arcite against one another after the affection of the same women Emelye. They fight with one another in the hopes one will win to which one cousin says “For god’s love take things patiently have sense, Think! We are prisoners and shall always be”. For the circumstance of Arcite having a mutual friend to the man who has imprisoned them Theseus the friend pleads for the release of his friend and Theseus agrees on the term that Arcite is to never return to Athens. Arcite who agrees moves to Thebes, Palamon is now worse off than ever because he is worried his cousin will come back and take Emelye by force and he will be stuck here...

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...riting the story. When he writes the story of the Miller the Miller makes references to animals that you wouldn’t think of comparing someone too. It makes the ability to take the story less serious because we cannot get past the thoughts the Miller is presenting us with. One of the characters most argued about is the Wife of Bath she is viewed as either a positive outlook for feminists but at the same time can also be seen as bringing the generation of women back. Chaucer wrote the tales as a collective piece of knowledge that pushes the limits of the traditional times in which he wrote them in.

In summation Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” is a story that mocks the church, shows us class separation and uses a language which may today be lost to us. But it has stood the test of time and showed us a pilgrimage of the century that to this day is still a good read.