The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is set up with a frame tale with 29 pilgrims, and these pilgrims are going on a journey to Canterbury to worship at the shrine of Thomas Becket. These pilgrims represented different parts of society during the time of Chaucer, and Chaucer used the pilgrims to draw critism of the different classes of his time. Chaucer used how society viewed the appearance of people and how it related it to their characteristics to make his critiques of certain aspects of society. The Nun Prioresses is a prime example of Chaucer’s use of physical appearance to make criticism of a certain social class. In the general prologue, the nun’s non-physical characteristics describe her as trying to be better than herself by,” …show more content…
The reader has to ask what is the point of making a “curvy” or describing her lips. The reader has to pay attention to the non-physical details of the nun which talk about she tries to make herself look like she is high class. She wants to impress people around her by using her poor French that was spoken with a Stratford ascent (Line 124-125). The nun would also use her looks to impress the men around her by showing off her forehead or her curves. Chaucer used the nun as his vessel to critique the members of the church on how vain they could be. This vainity was shown by the members of the church by the way they acted and how they tried to obtain objects like a “broche of gold” (Line 160) that made them looked wealthy in which as a member of the church they should not need because of the words Jesus said,” Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew …show more content…
The job of the summoner was to find those who were not living a “holy” life and bring them to the court. This “unholy” life that they would get people for were for things like adultery. The narrator tells the reader of one of the acts of this summoner,” A good felawe to have his concubyn/A twelf-month and excuse him ate fulle;/Ful prively a finch eek could he pulle,” these lines tell the reader that the summoner would sleep around with girls which was one thing he would arrest people for. Chaucer use the ugliness of the summoner to show the hypocrisy of the church. Things the members would condemn would be things they would be
A nun is someone whom is not vain, lives without sin, and puts others before herself. The prioress within Chaucer's tale, on the other hand, does not stay true to this statement. Despite being a nun, she wears a necklace of vanity other than keeping a rosary on her. She is on the bigger side compared to other women, which suggest she eats a lot and possesses the sin gluttony. The Prioress does not act like one and instead is quite vain compared to other nuns. The Prioress can be considered allegorical because she teaches that one
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.
The Nun or Prioress according to Chaucer does not act how a true nun should act. The Nun in the tales is obsessed with correct table manners and brags about how she can speak incorrect French. Chaucer says she is not undergrown which means she is a heavy set woman. Chaucer or the narrator pokes fun at the Prioress and the way she acts. Chaucer states she cries when she sees a mouse caught in a trap; however, she can not stand helping dirty children. He uses direct characterization saying how the Prioress is dainty. Chaucer
Chaucer used controversies to create character. He wanted his characters to teach the readers something new about life. The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner demonstrate Chaucer’s way of creating characters based on the sexuality of the medieval period.
In the passage “Hir over-lippe wyped so clene” (Chaucer GP line 133), the word clene draws attention to the nun’s fastidious mannerisms. Rather than spiritual cleanliness - which a nun should devote herself to – clene is used to describe physical cleanliness. This illustrates the nun’s lack of spiritual focus by using a word which would typically be used to discuss spiritual matters to demonstrate the gluttony of the nun’s behavior. Also, clene may draw attention
Writing about pilgrims drawn from almost every rank of 14th century English society, The Canterbury Tales takes a look at medieval life from (what seems like) every angle and every class, displaying the actuality of the Church by illuminating and emphasizing the wanton ways of those individuals who purportedly represented it. In essence, Chaucer uses religious characters within his text to broadcast to his audience what was wrong with the Church during his era. Chaucer's salty feelings towards these crooked types of individuals are showcased when he discusses five of six ecclesiastical characters included as part of the group of pilgrims. The five flawed characters (who also happen to command most of the spotlight) are, in order of depravity, the Monk, the Prioress Nun, the Summoner, the Pardoner and worst of all, the Friar. The only character that fulfills generic expectations placed upon members of the clergy during medieval times is the Parson, who actually embodies what clergymen should have been. The others, whom we must also assume are symbolic of actual clergy members during Chaucer's era, typify an extravagantly sinful and unscrupulous bunch. This immoral (five) to moral (one) ratio of Church-related characters is the weapon used b...
During Chaucer’s time, there was only one church, the Roman Catholic Church. There is only one church because the Protestant movement hasn’t started yet, it started in the 16th century. Anyone who was a member of the Roman Catholic Church, for example a Pardoner, a Summoner, or a Friar, are not to have sex, or party around, as well as not having money. Chaucer notices that some of these people in the Church break these rules repeatedly. Chaucer uses satire to brilliantly describe the hypocrisy in the church. Although Chaucer may come off as anti-religious, he is religious, he is against anti-hypocrisy. The first character Chaucer uses satire on is the Friar. Chaucer tells his audience that the Friar liked to sleep around a lot with women. The Friar also got lots of girls pregnant and then married them off to men in the church. The Friar was also very wealthy, and liked to party. Which are clear violations of the church’s code. To make things worse, Chaucer said that this particular Friar was better than others. The next characters that Chaucer introduced were the Pardoner and the Summoner. The Summoner’s job in a church is to find people who have committed sin and bring them to the church so that their sins can be forgiven by the Pardoner. However, the Summoner abused his power by blackmailing people to go see the Pardoner or else they
The Canterbury Tales is a literary masterpiece in which the brilliant author Geoffrey Chaucer sought out to accomplish various goals. Chaucer wrote his tales during the late 1300’s. This puts him right at the beginning of the decline of the Middle Ages. Historically, we know that a middle class was just starting to take shape at this time, due to the emerging commerce industry. Chaucer was able to see the importance and future success of the middle class, and wrote his work with them in mind. Knowing that the middle class was not interested in lofty philosophical literature, Chaucer wrote his work as an extremely comical and entertaining piece that would be more interesting to his audience. Also, Chaucer tried to reach the middle class by writing The Canterbury Tales in English, the language of the middle class rather than French, the language of the educated upper class. The most impressive aspect of Chaucer’s writing is how he incorporated into his piece some of his own controversial views of society, but yet kept it very entertaining and light on the surface level. One of the most prevalent of these ideas was his view that certain aspects of the church had become corrupt. This idea sharply contrasted previous Middle Age thought, which excepted the church’s absolute power and goodness unquestionably. He used corrupt church officials in his tales to illustrate to his audience that certain aspects of the church needed to be reformed. The most intriguing of these characters was the Pardoner. Chaucer’s satirical account of the Pardoner is written in a very matter-of-fact manner that made it even more unsettling with his audience. Chaucer uses his straightforwardness regarding the hypocrisy of the Pardoner, suggestive physiognomy of the character, and an interesting scene at the conclusion of the Pardoner’s Tale to inculcate his views of the church to his audience. The way that Chaucer used these literary devices to subtly make his views known to an audience while hooking them with entertainment, shows that Chaucer was truly a literary genius.
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.
Chaucer describes a nun Prioress called Madame Eglantine. A nun should be modest, had to have poverty, and pity. Chaucer describes the nun in the opposite way to show us, how the nun Prioress had all the characteristics that a nun should not have. She was a nun modest, well educated and with good manners. She also had tender feelings, and a strong love for God and his creations. The author connects the relationship between how she sang and with her nose. He is sarcastic when relating her physical and spiritual beauty. "She sang the divine service well, entuning it in her nose in a most seemly way." (122-123) She was a well educated person, who reflects her manners in her language and with her actions. "She spoke French well and properly" in this quote properly means with good manners, not with slang words or with the popular language used in France. "For the French of Paris was unknown to her."(124) All of these characteristics show how the nun Prioress was focused on things that should not be important for a nun.
In the “General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer indirectly denounces the church describing that they are corrupt, greedy, hypocritical, and selective. The people that have some sort of relation to the church are The Prioress, The Nun, The Priest, The Friar, The Monk, The Parson, The Summoner and The Pardoner. The “General Prologue describes each of the pilgrims and their general traits. Some characters are described more than others because of the fact that Chaucer likes people who are affluent, beautiful and noble. The problem with some of the characters that were described by Chaucer is that they were negatively viewed based on stereotypes and appearance. Overall, Chaucer wants the readers to know that the church people are corrupt and deceptive. Chaucer wants the reader to understand that most of the church people do not live their life by the holy book.
Chaucer uses the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar to represent his views on the Church. He makes the three model members of the Church appear to have no problems with self-indulgence, greed, and being unfaithful to their vows. He displays his anti skeptical thoughts of the faults of the medieval church by making fun of its teachings and the people of the church, who use it for personal gain. Chaucer see’s the church as corrupt, hypocritical and greedy.
...eveals insecurities of him in the process while that itself tells us more about the popular culture in this time. Chaucer, along with many of the other pilgrims attempts to place themselves in a socially desirable or even superior position. With the Narrator having the responsibility of articulating the tales to us in a coherent fashion, he might feel pressure to present himself as all-knowing or superior to his companions rather than show us an honest and unbiased point of view. After all, he is telling the story; the Narrator can ultimately choose to tell us whatever he pleases. The Narrator plays the role of telling tales and providing the groundwork for this pilgrimage story, but since his ideas and opinions are designed in such a particular way; he indirectly tells us so much more about not only about the pilgrimage but of this time period’s culture as a whole.
Chaucer, in his female pilgrimage thought of women as having an evil-like quality that they always tempt and take from men. They were depicted as untrustworthy, selfish and vain and often like caricatures not like real people at all. Through the faults of both men and women, Chaucer showed what is right and wrong and how one should live. Under the surface, however, lies a jaded look of women in the form that in his writings he seems to crate them as caricatures and show how they cause the downfall of men by sometimes appealing to their desires and other times their fears. Chaucer obviously had very opinionated views of the manners and behaviours of women and expressed it strongly in The Canterbury Tales. In his collection of tales, he portrayed two extremes in his prospect of women. The Wife of Bath represented the extravagant and lusty woman where as the Prioress represented the admirable and devoted followers of church. Chaucer delineated the two characters contrastingly in their appearances, general manners, education and most evidently in their behaviour towards men. Yet, in the midst of disparities, both tales left its readers with an unsolved enigma.
The Canterbury Tales is a great contemplation of stories, that display humorous and ironic examples of medieval life, which imitate moral and ethical problems in history and even those presented today. Chaucer owed a great deal to the authors who produced these works before his time. Chaucer tweaked their materials, gave them new meanings and revealed unscathed truths, thus providing fresh ideas to his readers. Chaucer's main goal for these tales was to create settings in which people can relate, to portray lessons and the irony of human existence.