Fortune and Nature in Canterbury Tales and As You Like It
The medieval world was a complicated place, full of the "chain of being," astrological influences, elements and humors. A man's life was supposedly influenced by all manner of externals acting by destiny or chance. "Fortune" and "Nature" are two terms that include many of these factors, representing chance and inborn qualities. Shakespeare mentions the two frequently, most notably in an extended dialogue between Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales also provide many examples of Fortune and Nature's combinations in human affairs. His Pardoner's Tale, Miller's Tale, and Wife of Bath's Tale all depend on the effects of these two metaphysical forces.
The Host wails that "The yiftes of Fortune and of Nature / Been cause of deeth to many a creature." (Pardoner's Tale, ll. 9-10). And so it proves, literally, in the Pardoner's Tale. The three young men, upon finding the treasure-trove of gold florins, explain that "This tresor hath Fortune unto us yiven / In mirthe and jolitee oure lif to liven." (ll. 491-2). Fortune has guided them on their quest, whether in the tavern as the funeral happens to pass by or on the road as they encounter the immortal old man who knows of Death's trove; and Fortune, too, causes their downfall, as "it happed him par cas / To take the botel ther the poison was, / And drank, and yaf his felawe drinke also, / For which anoon they storven bothe two." (ll. 597-600). Yet Nature assists in their demise: all "riotoures three" have already been established as drunkards, so it seems only "natural" for them to celebrate with the wine carried by their erstwhile comrade. The free-wheeling, physical, life-lovin...
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...and characteristic behavior, or creates a hero by letting his Nature triumph over the Fortune that has determined his previous actions. These interactions could, perhaps, be viewed merely as clever use of what we moderns would call "character" and "plot." Yet viewing them in terms of Fortune and Nature puts us more firmly in the medieval mind-view that characterizes so much of the Tales and lends them so much of their charm.
You may want to begin your paper with the quotes below.
"The Yiftes of Fortune And of Nature"
"Fortune reigns in gifts of the world,
not in the lineaments of Nature....
When Nature hath made a fair creature,
may she not by Fortune fall into the fire?"
-- As You Like It, I.ii.41-4.
"The yiftes of Fortune and of Nature
been cause of deeth to many a creature."
-- Pardoner's Tale, ll. 9-10.
Christopher Columbus was a cruel, delusional, and self-centered man who does not deserve high praises for the discovery of America.
For more than five centuries Americans have lifted Christopher Columbus to heights of greatness and god-like. We celebrate his life as though he was a man that had done us a great favor. In resent years Christopher Columbus has come under scrutiny, his life and works being questioned more than celebrated. There have be many great men and women that contributed to the building of our great nation but they do not receive anywhere as much recognition as Columbus. When a person begins to study the actual accounts of the "finding of the New World" they begin to wonder if Columbus should adored or hated for his actions. As a child I was taught that Columbus was a great man that had accomplished great things for the sake of humanity, but in reality his agenda was not to better humanity but to better himself. He found the Americas by mere chance and he did not even know of what he found. We give him credit for "finding" the Americas but history tells of the people, that he called Indians, already inhabiting the foreign land. So you decide whether or not Christopher Columbus should be revered a hero.
Christopher Columbus unintentionally discovered America, when he landed in the Caribbean Islands. He had left Spain in search of Asia and India. When he and his crew arrived at what now is Haiti for his second voyage, they demanded food, gold, and anything else they wanted from the Indians, even sex with their women. Columbus punished those who committed offenses against him. Rape and enslavement had been brought upon the natives. When the natives of the land, known as the Arawaks, tried to fight back, it led to a massacre of their people in which by Columbus? order, meant crossbows, small cannons, lances, and swords to destroy them. Even wild hunting dogs were released to rip up the Arawaks, whom by the end of the day were dead or ready to ship to Spain as slaves. None of this was ever taught to students.
Everyone remembers the nasty villains that terrorize the happy people in fairy tales. Indeed, many of these fairy tales are defined by their clearly defined good and bad archetypes, using clichéd physical stereotypes. What is noteworthy is that these fairy tales are predominately either old themselves or based on stories of antiquity. Modern stories and epics do not offer these clear definitions; they force the reader to continually redefine the definitions of morality to the hero that is not fully good and the villain that is not so despicable. From Dante’s Inferno, through the winding mental visions in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, spiraling through the labyrinth in Kafka’s The Trial, and culminating in Joyce’s abstract realization of morality in “The Dead,” authors grapple with this development. In the literary progression to the modern world, the increasing abstraction of evil from its classic archetype to a foreign, supernatural entity without bounds or cure is strongly suggestive of the pugnacious assault on individualism in the face of literature’s dualistic, thematically oligopolistic heritage.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.
As there is a letter to which Columbus himself admits on 'discovering' west Indies. In the time, the news was spread in Europe and the arawaks were not aware. One would like to thoroughly explore the meaning of discover, to discover a place means to be the only person to find something before anyone else. How can Columbus 'discover' when people already inhabited it? How can he claim he was the s...
The definition of the tragic hero is a protagonist who is otherwise perfect except for a tragic flaw, also known as a fatal flaw, which eventually leads to his demise. One may ask, why have a tragic hero? The reason to have a tragic hero is to give a story purpose. A tragedy by nature isn't an uplifting story, but the introduction of a tragic hero presents an opportunity to learn from the tragedy. In other words, tragic heroes make tragedies worth reading. Let's first define the characteristics that are common to most tragic heroes and focus on those that are demonstrated by Gawain. Tragic heroes are born into nobility, responsible for their own fate, endowed with a tragic flaw, and are doomed to make a serious error in judgment. Eventually, the tragic hero will fall fr...
The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales People never change. In every town you will always be able to find the "rich guy," the "smart guy," the "thief," and the "chief." It has been that way since the first man was swindled out of his lunch. Throughout his life, Geoffrey Chaucer encountered every kind of person and brought them to life for us in "The Canterbury Tales," a collection of short stories written in the 1300's. There are tales of saints, tales of promiscuity, tales of fraud, and tales of love.
The bulk of the praise a hero receives tends to be in response to his or her actions. People look up to the heroes who can perform the most miraculous feats. However, there is an element of heroism beyond the superficial element of a hero’s actions: the hero’s character. Both heroes and antiheroes might do great things; however, the similarities end where motivations are considered, and these differences in motivations are rooted in the differences in the character of heroes and the antiheroes. An antihero’s character is flawed, leading to actions based on selfish and impure motivations. In contrast, a hero is characterized by his or her selflessness; this can be defined as putting the interests of others above the interests of oneself, and
In The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, the stereotypes and roles in society are reexamined and made new through the characters in the book. Chaucer discusses different stereotypes and separates his characters from the social norm by giving them highly ironic and/or unusual characteristics. Specifically, in the stories of The Wife of Bath and The Miller’s Tale, Chaucer examines stereotypes of women and men and attempts to define their basic wants and needs.
Any analysis of the Heroic Life of certain men and women makes for a complex and challenging psychological inquiry. We will delve into this subject, by looking into at least three main aspects of the heroic character. First we will discuss the nature of the singularity of the hero; second, his social significance at the time he lives; and third the interaction between fate or destiny and the hero’s own known attributes and defects which may bring him success or failure. Let us use three examples to illustrate these three points: Homer’s Achilles, Sophocles’ King Oedipus and finally G.B. Shaw’s Saint Joan.
In every history course, you are taught that Columbus was the one who founded the Americas, the hero. Now that you have researched more about Columbus through the years, is he really the superb person they characterize him as? Columbus could be either portrayed as a hero by replenishing culture or as a villain by killing many innocent lives. It is quite obvious that his evil actions outweigh his few accomplishments. It is “politically correct” that there is no cause for celebration. Citizens argue that this holiday preserves the Western Civilization. The correct view is that Columbus did not discover America because people have been settling there for thousands of years before. The only thing brought back from his expedition was the new understanding
In lines 952-74 of The Knights Tale in Canterbury Tales Chaucer uses imagery, tone, and characterization in order to draw attention to the tale’s overall themes of courtly love and knightly companionship, which reinforces the genre of the work as a medieval romance.
An interesting aspect of the famous literary work, "The Canterbury Tales," is the contrast of realistic and exaggerated qualities that Chaucer entitles to each of his characters. When viewed more closely, one can determine whether each of the characters is convincing or questionable based on their personalities. This essay will analyze the characteristics and personalities of the Knight, Squire, Monk, Plowman, Miller, and Parson of Chaucer's tale.
Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is re...