Catholic Church In The Catterbury Tales Essay

Stewart Hodges

Ms. Morris

Advanced English 12

11 December 2017

Chaucer’s Exposing Views of the Roman Catholic Church In the fifteenth century, well known author, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote his most famous piece, The Canterbury Tales. In his work, he describes a story in which a host narrates a journey of twenty-nine pilgrims on their way from England to Canterbury. The host, debatably presumed to be Chaucer, explains the characteristics of each of the twenty-nine pilgrims. Many of the characters are not given enough detail to allow the audience to decipher their motives as good or bad. However, some are described as blatantly bad or truly pure. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer criticizes the Roman Catholic Church by introducing and explaining

Many people believe that this was the sole purpose of him writing his works. However, what if it was presumed that Chaucer chose to write about his subject, the church, because he saw himself starting to act in the same way as some of the greedy, corrupt characters he described? One can only imagine why Chaucer gave more than enough detail to the mostly bad characters portrayed in the tales of his work. Nevertheless, The Roman Catholic Church was indeed as corrupt as he described.

Works Cited

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales Prolouge.” Prentice Hall Literature Grade 12. Pearson. 2014. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Creighton, James Joseph, "Chaucer's Presentation of the Church in the Canterbury Tales " (1957). Master's Theses. Paper 1377. http://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/1377

Day, Lauren, "The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Respectful Critique of Church Officials and Their Abuse of Power" (2011). Pell Scholars and Senior Theses. Paper 75. http://digitalcommons.salve.edu/pell_theses/75

Thannickal, James. “The Frior-- Humble Shepherd or Crafty Wolf?” 1998, csis.pace.edu/grendel/projf983i/char.html.

Ziff, Artie. “How Chaucer Uses Contrast to Create a Pious Parson.”