Nothing gives us a better idea of medieval life than Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Written in the late fourteenth century in the vernacular, it gives us an idea of the vast spectrum of people that made up the different classes within society. The poem describes the knightly class, the clergy, and those who worked for a living, thus describing the different classes as well. Chaucer gives us a cross-section of fourteenth century society by giving us the small details of people’s clothing, demeanor and professions; therefore giving us information on the lower and middle classes, not discussed in literature before.
Geoffrey Chaucer survived The Black Death’s peak at around age six, where twenty percent of England’s (about fifty percent of Europe’s) population quickly died within a span of five years. He was born into a prosperous wine merchant family, who was wealthy enough to send Chaucer to be a page to another wealthy family as a child and to receive an education. During his lifetime he held many different types of titles and professions allowing him to meet many different kinds of people within the social classes, probably giving him the background information for making the wide array of characters found in The Canterbury Tales. This story, in which many people from every aspect of fourteenth century society happen to meet at this inn in Southwark and travel the last sixty miles together on a pilgrimage to shrine of Christian martyr, Thomas Becket, in the Canterbury Cathedral. “Medieval Christians believed that a pilgrimage to a holy shrine was of particular spiritual benefit” (Spielvogel 272). They believed that by making the long journey and visit a shire it would bring them closer to God and their entrance into Hea...
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...s part in society. From the knightly, more higher class, to the lower and middle classes of the clergy and the kinds of people who worked. Without these poems, these people would have never been written about and the small unique jobs found in the medieval ages would never be learned about.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Lawall 1701-1769.
Field, Richard. “Life Expectancy.” business.ualberta.ca 2002. 18 Apr 2011. .
Freudenrich, Craig Ph.D. "How Knights Work" HowStuffWorks.com 22 Jan 2008. 18 Apr 2011. HowStuffWorks.com. .
Lawall, Sarah, ed. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.
Spielvogel, Jackson J. Western Civilization. 6th ed. Belmont: Thomson Higher Education, 2006.
The moral compass of mankind has always piqued the interest of authors. The Middle Ages was a time of immoral behavior, corrupt religious officials, and disregard of marital vows. Geoffrey Chaucer used The Canterbury Tales to explore his personal views of this dark time. In particular, he crafted “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” “The Prioress’s Tale,” and “The Shipman’s Tale” to portray the tainted society, using women in all of them to bring forth his views. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts women as immodest and conniving beings to suggest the moral corruption of the Middle Ages.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 348-350. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012. Print.
The development of social classes in medieval England affected life for the people in many positive ways. It served as a means of organization to base their daily lives off of, and also gave the peasants and trade classes protection from the rulers and the clergy class in return for their labor and allegiance (“Quizlet”). Life in the Middle Ages was based on the framework of social classes so they could flourish socially and economically.
Ireland’s purpose is to show how Chaucer had a good example to show his final order to his audience. He establishes a reflecting tone for explaining the Wife of Bath’s sovereignty. This work is significant because of the comparison between The Wife of Bath’s Tale and Prologue. (Ireland 10)
Lawall, Sarah N. The Norton Anthology of Western Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. Print.
Baym, Nina. “The Norton Anthology of American Literature.” Rev. 6 ed W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 2003.
Chaucer’s book The Canterbury Tales presents a frame story written at the end of the 14th century. It narrates the story of a group of pilgrims who participate in a story-telling contest that they made up to entertain each other while they travel to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. Because of this, some of the tales become particularly attractive for they are written within a frame of parody which, as a style that mocks genre, is usually achieved by the deliberate exaggeration of some aspects of it for comic effect. Chaucer uses parody to highlight some aspects of the medieval society that presented in an exaggerated manner, not only do they amuse the readers, but also makes them reflect on them. He uses the individual parody of each tale to create a satirical book in which the behaviours of its characters paint an ironic and critical portrait of the English society at that time. Thus, the tales turn satirical, ironic, earthy, bawdy, and comical. When analysing the Knight’s and the Miller’s tale, one can realise how Chaucer mocks the courtly love convention, and other social codes of behaviour typical of the medieval times.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales: Riverside Chaucer Third Edition. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,1987. 3-328 Secondary
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, (written c. 1387), is a richly varied compilation of fictional stories as told by a group of twenty-nine persons involved in a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England during the fourteenth century. This journey is to take those travelers who desire religious catharsis to the shrine of the holy martyr St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The device of a springtime pilgrimage provided Chaucer with a diverse range of characters and experiences, with him being both a narrator and an observer. Written in Middle English, each tale depicts parables from each traveler.
The Canterbury Tales examines many important qualities of human nature. Chaucer purposely mocks the faults in his characters, and shows the hypocrisy and deceitfulness ...
Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 8th ed. New York:
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.
Chaucer's society represents every social class. In doing so, it shows what it takes to actually make a society function. The different people carry different stories to share. These stories carry lessons learned in hopes of sharing them with others so that they may not end up in the same predicaments. After all, that is the main point of sharing stories, isn't it?