Chaucer: Satire And Humor

2658 Words6 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Chaucer’s satire

Chaucer: Satire And Humor

Until Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, he was primarily

know for being the writer of love poems, such as The Parliament of

Fowls, narratives of doomed passion, and stories of women wronged by

their lovers. These works are nothing short of being breath taking,

but they do not posses the raw power that the Canterbury Tales do.

This unfinished poem, which is about 17,000 lines, is one of the most

brilliant works in all of literature. The poem introduces a group of

pilgrims journeying from London to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket

at Canterbury. Together, the pilgrims represent a large section of

14th-century English life. To help pass the time of the journey, the

pilgrims decide to tell stories. These tales include a wide variety of

medieval genres, from humorous fables to religious lectures. They

vividly describe medieval attitudes and customs in such areas as love,

marriage, and religion. Chaucer was a master storyteller, and his wit

his shown throughout his work by the use of humor and satire, and it

is most present in The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, The

Pardoner’s Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale.

Many people that the most popular par to of the Canterbury Tales it

The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, which has long been admired for

the lively, individualized portraits it offers. More recent criticism

has reacted against this approach, claiming that the portraits are

indicative of social humor and satire, “estates satire,” and insisting

that they should not be read as individualized character portraits

like those in a novel (Gittes 15). It is the Prologue to the

Canterbury Tales that serves to establish firmly the framework for the

entire story- collecti...

... middle of paper ...

...o her husband, and this defeats the whole purpose of the Wife of

Bath’s entire argument.

For almost a seven hundred year old book, the Canterbury Tales still

is a very irresistible collection of analyses of human life. Not much

has changed in seven hundred years. Medieval traits that Chaucer

described in his tales such as corruption and greed still play a major

part in our society today. Also, issues such as woman’s rights that

were debated back then are still heavily debated today. No other

writer has been able to duplicate the way Chaucer has analyzed and

described human life, and no one has even come close to doing it in

such a humorous and satirical way. The Canterbury Tales brought

Geoffrey Chaucer too his full artistic power, and it will forever

remain as one of the most brilliant and vivid piece of literature ever

written in the English language.

Show More
Related

  • Essay on Verbal and Situational Irony in The Pardoner’s Tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “The Pardoner’s Tale,” Geoffrey Chaucer masterfully frames an informal homily.  Through the use of verbal and situational irony, Chaucer is able to accentuate the moral characteristics of the Pardoner.  The essence of the story is exemplified by the blatant discrepancy between the character of the storyteller and the message of his story.  By analyzing this contrast, the reader can place himself in the mind of the Pardoner in order to account for his psychology.

    Read More

  • Cheeky Chaucer: An Analysis on Chaucer´s Characters

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    Chaucer's Prologue is an introduction to the characters that he will soon be talking about in his short stories. It was written to combat the Italian Buchartio, and write his own version to achieve fame. The reason that the Italian version became so popular is because of how it was written in the Italian of the street people, in other words, it could be understood by the whole of Italy, not just the rich. Chaucer wanted to do the same thing, but came to halt when he was deciding what language to write it in, he thought of Russian and other languages, but soon decided on English. This is extremely important because it is the first time that English has ever been written down, usually it is just a spoken language with no written form. This is why it was so important to the English language that he wrote it specifically in English. Giving the language a written form, sort of. It was a mixture of German of the east and native language from the Anglo Saxons. It is difficult to read, because this is the first time English has been written down, so there wasn’t any set way to spell words, and they were spelled how they sounded phonetically.”Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March Hath Perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich liquor” (Page 97 Lines 1-3). Typically, this meant that the same word was spelled fifty different ways throughout the entire Prologue. Though it is hard to read it is still an excellent story, and has very depth in its characters, which are fully developed and give further detail into the story and make it one of the best stories in English there is today.

    Read More

  • Use Of Satire In The Sarcastic Chaucer

    1175 Words  | 3 Pages

    When someone is trying to prove a point or make a statement, what do you think is the most effective was to do so? Do you think using sarcasm is an efficient way to do so? Do you think that by using sarcasm you will just anger the party that you’re trying to get your point across to? What if the person or group of people doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say or still doesn’t agree with the point that you’re making? Chaucer, a very controversial writer, uses sarcasm, or satire, to get his points and views across in a very alarming way. What Chaucer did in the mid 1350’s was very controversial and had a lot of repercussions, although many of them could be seen as good.

    Read More

  • Chaucer's Use of Satire to Reach Specific Audiences

    847 Words  | 2 Pages

    “One may say that pilgrimages are just as much about the journey as they are about the destination.” (Higl) Pilgrimages are very important to religions around the world. They are important for people when they are working on a deeper faith, and these pilgrimages are to places of great importance. It is important to note that people do not only learn when they are at their destination, but also on the trip to those destinations. “The Canterbury Tales”, Chaucer’s unfinished work, was a group of stories about a group on pilgrimage, but the stories did not take place at the destination. These were stories told on the way to Canterbury. They were also very satiric stories. They showed great hypocrisy, and immorality. The stories seemed to have a purpose, and to be pointed towards specific audiences. These audiences would most likely have taken Chaucer’s work as a joke at first, but then quickly seen how the words cut sharply into the way that people lived during that time. Using Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”, you can analyze his use of satire to reach specific audiences, three of which include the church, the common man, and those married, or intended to be.

    Read More

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

    964 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Chaucer Satire Analysis

    837 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story, Chaucer, the wife tells a tale about a knight and a young girl. This knight rapes a young girl, and when everyone in the village found out the knight got in serious trouble. They told the knight in order to be a free man, and have all the women he wants he has to complete a quest. The quest was that he had one year to answer a question. The question was whether or not he can find out what all women want. The knight though that this was going to be an easy question to answer, and he said instead of it taking him a year he could most likely find the right answer within a matter of days. So the knight set off on his quest and after asking a few women what they want he now knew that this question was not going to be as easy for him to figure out then what he thought it was going to be. The three satiric messages would be: the wife’s tale, the use of humor, and wrongful punishment.

    Read More

  • The Pardoner's Tale Analysis

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout “The Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer, all the tales have a variety of clever humor, witty repartee, and comic relief. In the book a group of Pilgram’s travel to Canterbury Cathederal and they tell a collection of different stories on there way their and back. Each tale is unique and intresting in it’s own way. Some met the Host request of being entertaing and moral, and some tale’s didn’t but “The Canterbury Tales” is still a significant book. In the book Chaucer talks about different streotypes and gives his of the Pilgrams different ironic or unusal characteristics. Each one of Chaucer’s tales were entertaining and moral but “The Pardoner’s tale” is a skillful blend of both, which The Host requested.

    Read More

  • Signification Through Structural Irony in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

    2175 Words  | 5 Pages

    The structure Geoffrey Chaucer chose for his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, of utilizing a melange of narrative voices to tell separate tales allows him to explore and comment on subjects in a multitude of ways. Because of this structure of separate tales, the reader must regard as extremely significant when tales structurally overlap, for while the reader may find it difficult to render an accurate interpretation through one tale, comparing tales enables him to lessen the ambiguity of Chaucer’s meaning. The Clerk’s Tale and The Merchant’s Tale both take on the institution of marriage, but comment on it in entirely different manner, but both contain an indictment of patriarchal narcissism and conceit.

    Read More

  • Parody in The Canterbury Tales

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Canterbury Tales” was written in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer. These tales constitutes a frame story which each pilgrim has to tell their own story to the Chaucer, the pilgrim; not the poet. As we know, the tale itself is a satire, but the stylistic structure in the tales creates a sense that can be a parody as well. To support this idea of parody, it is need to know the definition of parody and how Chaucer use this style to make his own ideas clear through the general prologue and the tales such as “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Knight’s Tale”.

    Read More

  • Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

    2088 Words  | 5 Pages

    Following the fall of the great Roman Empire a new age was born, the age of knights in shining amour and the great kings in stone castles. Yet, it was also a chaotic time, War and plague was a disease upon Europe. Countries fought for land, resources, and above all, the attention of God. The world was young and so was the English Language. Few writers wrote in English, the language of the commoners, as French and Latin was the Language of the powerful élite. Yet one writer dared to speak against the feudal society of which he was born into. Geoffrey Chaucer served most of his life in the employment of the crown, as both a soldier and a clerk. Yet through all of these titles, Chaucer would be forever immortalized as Geoffrey Chaucer the writer, and the Satirist. The true goal of any Satire is to point out the flaws in certain aspect of society, while also inspiring reform to that very same aspect in one way or another. In Chaucer’s Canterbury tales, Chaucer satirizes the corruption Catholic Church and those associated. Chaucer saw that hypocrisy polluted the pureness of the church and expressed his disillusionment through the use of satire. Fearless of discommunication Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of satire, dared to speak openly of the absolute corruption of the medieval church.

    Read More

  • The Canterbury Tales

    842 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Satire: Enlightened Wit in the Age of Reason

    1466 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mad Magazine, The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live. In our society, satire is among the most prevalent of comedic forms. This was not always true, for before the 18th century, satire was not a fully developed form. Satire, however, rose out of necessity; writers and artists needed a way to ambiguously criticize their governments, their churches, and their aristocrats. By the 18th century, satire was hugely popular. Satire as an art form has its roots in the classics, especially in the Roman Horace's Satires. Satire as it was originally proposed was a form of literature using sarcasm, irony, and wit, to bring about a change in society, but in the eighteenth century Voltaire, Jonathan Swift and William Hogarth expanded satire to include politics, as well as art. The political climate of the time was one of tension. Any criticism of government would bring harsh punishments, sometimes exile or death. In order to voice opinions without fear of punishment, malcontented writers turned to Satire. Voltaire's Candide and Swift's Modest Proposal are two examples of this new genre. By creating a fictional world modeled after the world he hated, Voltaire was able to attack scientists, and theologians with impunity. Jonathan Swift created many fictional worlds in his great work, Gulliver's Travels, where he constantly drew parallels to the English government.

    Read More

  • Double Standards and Stereotypes in "The Wife of Bath"

    1162 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 14th century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, which included a progressive view of women's concerns in "The Wife of Bath." During a time when women were still considered chattel existing almost exclusively to produce heirs, Chaucer takes a stand on issues affecting women that were not commonly given consideration. Writing in the first person, Chaucer is able to describe life from the viewpoint of a woman. Through this style, Chaucer addresses subject matter that would have been too candid for a female writer during his time period. By writing "The Wife of Bath" in a satirical way, Chaucer points out issues facing women regarding double standards, the validity of female desire, and the economic necessity of women to marry well while keeping the text humorous with some common female stereotypes regarding deception that have persisted into present day culture.

    Read More

  • Chaucer and Shakespeare

    2011 Words  | 5 Pages

    Two of the greatest masters of British literature, Shakespeare and Chaucer, tended to look to the classics when searching for inspiration. A lesser-known example of this lies in an ancient tale from Greece about two star-crossed lovers. There are many variations on the names of these lovers, but for the purpose of solidarity, they shall henceforth be referred to as “Troilus and Criseyde” for Chaucer and “Troilus and Cressida” for Shakespeare. Chaucer’s “Troilus and Criseyde” offers up a classic tale of love that is doomed, whereas Shakespeare’s “Troilus and Cressida” is not only tragic but also biting in its judgment and representation of characters. This difference may be due to the differences in time periods for the two authors, or their own personal dispositions, but there can be no denying the many deviations from Chaucer’s work that Shakespeare employs. Shakespeare’s work, by making the characters and situations more relatable, builds upon Chaucer’s original work, rather than improving it or shattering it.

    Read More

  • Chaucer's Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

    530 Words  | 2 Pages

    Geoffrey Chaucer was a on a mission when he wrote The Canterbury Tales. That mission was to create a satire that attacked three major institutions. Raphel displays, “Medieval society was divided into three estates: the Church (those who prayed), the Nobility (those who fought), and the Patriarchy. The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is an estates satire.” Chaucer wanted to shed light on the institutions that were taking advantage of the everyday man. Chaucer does this by making up tales about certain people that she light to the undercover world of the institutions. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses satire to attack the Church, the Patriarchy, and the Nobility.

    Read More

More about Chaucer: Satire And Humor

Open Document