Chaucer the Comedian
(An Analysis of Chaucer’s use of Satire to Obtain His Intended Audience) From generation to generation there have always been people who want to drastically change the way the human system has been set up. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 50’s and 60’s with civil rights; or Christ himself about 2000 years ago, they wanted to change the way we a human's looked at the world. Geoffrey Chaucer, commonly referred to as the “Father of English Literature” because he was the first poet to write in vernacular english instead of Anglo-Saxton or Latin. He is also referred to as iconoclastic for the ways he attacks most of 1300 Europe and the way it has operated for hundreds of years. In his story The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer writes of
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In the story, Chaucer acts as a journalist to write down these grotesque and obscene stories he uses to bash these ideas. He doesn’t attack the church as a whole, just the selling of indulgences and paying to look at relics. He comes up with the story, “The Pardoner's Tale,” and starts off with a prologue to introduce themselves. The Pardoner basically says I love women and money, a horrible thing for being a pardoner. In “The Pardoner's Prologue,” on lines 19-20 the pardoner says, “Is all my sermons, for it frees the pelf. Out to come the pence, and specially for myself.” Meaning, he love to take people’s money for himself. This outcome of the Pardoner has a negative impact towards making the church look like robbers. He continues on lines 24-25 in the prologues stating, “Once dead what matter how their souls fare? The can go blackberrying, for all I care!” The Pardoner uses his stories to empty people’s pelfs because of his cupidity or greed for money. The line in simple terms say after they die I don’t care where they go to Hell blackberry picking for all he cares. This is the first iconoclastic idea Chaucer will bash
Chaucer was "not a reformer" or "satirist" whose goal is to reform the church. He merely wished to use different characters to tell his stories. Kittredge also mentions how the pardoner is not drunk when telling his tale, as only one draught of ale was consumed, not nearly enough to intoxicate a seasoned drinker like the pardoner. Through his reasoning, Kittredge concludes that the pardoner's foolish confession, in fact, has a purpose for the story. While the pardoner may seem foolish to reveal his sins and hypocrisies, there is reasoning behind this madness.
He must be a sailor As critical as he was of ecclesiastical abuse, Chaucer was, nevertheless, Christian. I am a Christian. As impressive and complex as it is, even the Pardoner's. self-awareness has its limits. If the relationship between the teller and his tale is consistent with the other tellers and their tales, we can assume that Chaucer is suggesting that the Pardoner quite.
The Pardoner is the best representation of an allegorical character in “The Prologue” of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner is the perfect personification of fraudulence. He shows this in three basic ways: his appearance, speech, and actions. If one just glances through the reading of the Pardoner than one will think that he is a good religious man, but if one look further into it than he will find the small double meanings that he is the exact opposite. Chaucer likes to use an allegorical style to add some comedy and sophistication to his writings.
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.
The Pardoner’s Prologue/Tale begins with a sort of introduction, hence the title “Prologue”. It is here that we learn of the reaction that the Host gives after hearing the Physician’s Tale previously. The Host seems to be so shocked at the death of the young Roman girl in the tale that he asks the Pardoner to tell the group a merrier, more farcical tale. After some time, the Pardoner is ready to present his tale, including both moral interjection and a merrier tone. The Pardoner begins by describing a group of young Flemish people who spend their time drinking and indulging themselves in all forms of excess. He continues to tell the tale, in which the people eventually end up drinking posioned wine and all die. As is, there are more details in the tale that we did not go over there are some key elements that help us to better understand the Pardoner upon hearing his tale. First of all, we know from The General Prologue that the Pardoner is just as bad or corrupt as others in his “profession”. However, after hearing his tale it is quite shocking about his frankness about his own hypocrisy. We know that he bluntly accuses himself of fraud, avarice, and gluttony all things that he preaches against throughout this tale. It is in lines, 432-433 that the Pardoner states, “But that is nat my principal entente;/ I preche nothyng but for coveitise.” It is here that we truly begin to learn that The Pardoner’s Tale is merely an example of a story that is often used by preachers to emphasize a moral point to their audience. That is why, this tale in particular helps to comprehend Chaucer’s own opinions, and how he used satire to display
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.
He delights in his skill and success, and he is pleased with the personal business he has created for himself (1). The Pardoner is a condescending man, who deceives poor folk for his own benefit (1). In the General Prologue, Chaucer states, “In church he was a noble ecclesiast. / How well he read a lesson or told a story!” (22). The Pardoner is able to hold an audience because he is very bold in his behavior, and is introduced by Chaucer as a man of intelligence (Howard 2). In addition, the Pardoner serves the lowest rank of the clergymen of this Medieval society. Chaucer talks of the Pardoner,
He views almost all of them as corrupt members of the Church who do nothing but care for themselves instead of others. Whether it is to fill ones one pockets with coin, or to fill one’s own heart with worldly desires. It is even worse since these clergy people have devoted their live to God, only to be completely against the ideology of the Church. Chaucer’s cynicism against the Church is because of people of the cloth have abused the name of God for their own selfish purposes. Whether with “relics” or “indulgences” the Church did what it could to make a quick buck.
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.
There is fued between the Pardoner and his good moral. He has a thing that the people have to pay him so he can get rid of their “sins”. In all reality he's just lying for reason that are said in the tale. I will tell you why and what he dos that causes Chaucer’s attack on the church's hypocrisy. There will always be a feud in every story which that have a reasoning to it so it would make sense to read it all the way.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is a collection of stories by a group of pilgrims who are heading to Canterbury Cathedral. In this book, the pardoner and the reeve show antipodal characters in many ways. The pardoner is beautiful blonde hair man who is being loved by everyone. However he is very corrupted and smart and sells fake religious stuff to people saying very good compliment. On the other hand, the reeve is very serious and honest business man. He is very smart enough to know what criminals think and do. The pardoner story-tells a great example (or tale?) of seven deadly sins and reeve’s story is mocking of the miller. These very different characteristic men tell story telling that human beings are always punished for being greedy. The crooked pardoner and the honest reeve have different purposes for telling their tales, but their stories have the same major theme; sins deserve punishment.
The monk receives some scathing sarcasm in Chaucer’s judgment of his new world ways and the garments he wears “With fur of grey, the finest in the land; Also, to fasten hood beneath his chin, He had of good wrought gold a curious pin: A love-knot in the larger end there was.” (194-197, Chaucer). The Friar is described as being full of gossip and willing to accept money to absolve sins, quite the opposite of what a servant of God should be like. Chaucer further describes the friar as being a frequenter of bars and intimate in his knowledge of bar maids and nobles alike. The friar seems to be the character that Chaucer dislikes the most, he describes him as everything he should not be based on his profession. The Pardoner as well seems to draw special attention from Chaucer who describes him as a man selling falsities in the hopes of turning a profit “But with these relics, when he came upon Some simple parson, then this paragon In that one day more money stood to gain Than the poor dupe in two months could attain.” (703-706, Chaucer). Chaucer’s description of the pardoner paints the image of a somewhat “sleazy” individual “This pardoner had hair as yellow as wax, But lank it hung as does a strike of flax; In wisps hung down such locks as he 'd on head, And with them he his shoulders overspread; But thin they dropped, and stringy, one by one.” (677-681,
In "The Pardoners Tale," all the characters seek out Death, and the Pardoner describes Death like a person, an evil person. During the fourteenth century death was commonplace. The plague was the biggest killer of all and nobody knew what caused it therefore it was considered a mysterious and evil occurrence. In this particular tale death is personified, and all the characters in the tale who seek him out either die or kill each other when they get close to him. The point Chaucer makes through the words of the Pardoner is that the evil traits like greed, avarice and corruption lead to death. Of course the Pardoner himself is a hypocrite and embodies all of these traits. In the end of the tale he tries to sell his relics to the people to make money which shows that he, as an official of the church, is just as evil and corrupt as the Summoner in "The Friar's Tale."
The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales is a masterpiece of satire due to the frequent use of verbal irony and insults towards the characters and their roles in society. A major source of Irony is Chaucer’s representation of the Church. He uses the Prioress, the Monk and the Friar, who are all supposed to be holy virtuous people to represent the Church. In his writing he suggests that they are actually corrupt, break their vows and in no way model the “holiness” of Christianity.
The Church is the first institution that Chaucer attacks using satire in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer wants to attack the church’s hypocrisy. Chaucer decides to create the character of the pardoner to prove his point. Cawthorne conveys, “His Canterbury Tales collects together 24 narratives with a General Prologue and an epilogue or Retraction.” Chaucer describes the character before telling their tale. The Pardoner is a man who steals from the poor. Chaucer says on page 127 line 77, “For though I am a wholly vicious man don’t think I can’t tell moral tales.” The pardoner knows what he does is wrong, but he continues to do it anyway.