Corruption in the Canturbury Tales by Gefforey Chaucer

1015 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Social classes in chaucer's canterbury tales

The Canterbury Tales, penned by Geoffrey Chaucer gives its audiences insight on the corruption that exists to this day in humanity. As you read through the chapters Chaucer reveals the dark sides to supposedly respectable people such as the Summoner, along with people he favors like the Knight, the Wife of Bath, and women in general. His comical descriptions and stories that coincide with each character express his thoughts on real people in his society.
My perception of the Summoner’s tale moral is that greed is the root of all evil. The Summoners tale introduces us to a greedy Friar who only begs at the homes of the rich. Instead of praying for the people he meets the Friar erases their names from his tablet after taking advantage of their accommodations and stealing their money. When the greedy Friar makes a stop at Thomas’ home he is greeted by his troubled wife who had recently lost her child, the Friar sees the wife’s vulnerability as an opportunity to make more money and tells her he had a vision of her son in heaven. This leads to Thomas’s wife reaching out to the Friar about her dieing husband being in a nasty mood. Thomas sees the Friars transparency so he questions him about his health “God knows” said Thomas, I feel no benefit therefrom. So help me, Christ, in the few years I have spent many a pound on all sorts of Friars, yet I never get better. Truly, I have almost used up my money. Farewell by gold it is all gone!” (Page 192-193)The Friar then turns the tables on Thomas and blames his illness on him giving money to other friars “Why does a man who has a perfect physician need to seek other doctors in the town? Your infidelity has ruined you. Do you think that it insufficient that I, or rather our group, should pra...

... middle of paper ...

...d fair, And take your chance on those who will repair To your house now and then because of me (Or to some other place, it may well be). Choose for yourself the one you'd rather try." (Pages 1119-1125) The Knight seems to have learned his lesson for he leaves the decision up to the old woman, the story ends with the Knight living happily ever after with is beautiful and faithful wife. This story reflects on how strongly Chaucer believed in women’s rights because it reveals women’s desires and opinions.
In conclusion, The Canterbury Tales reflects Geoffrey Chaucer’s view on medieval society. From his writings we are able to visualize and learn about different social classes’ from an honest point of view. The Knight, the Wife of Bath, and women character we greatly favored throughout the tales while others were highly unlikeable.

Works Cited

the cantubury tales

Show More
Related

  • Human or Husk: Female Agency in The Knight's Tale and The Miller's Tale

    1702 Words  | 4 Pages

    Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are filled with many entertaining tales from a variety of characters of different social classes and background. The first two tales told, by the knight and the miller, articulate very different perspectives of medieval life. Primarily, The tales of both the knight and the miller bring strikingly different views on the idea of female agency, and as we will discover, Chaucer himself leaves hints that he supports the more involved, independent Alison, over the paper-thin character of Emily.

    Read More

  • The Canterbury Tales And The Wife Of Bath's Tale

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    Some say women can get the worst out of a man, but in The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1485, proves it. The tales were originally written as a collection of twenty four tales, but has been narrowed down to three short tales for high school readers. The three tales consist of “The Miller”, “The Knight”, and “The Wife of Bath” along with their respective prologues. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer shows the weak but strong role of women throughout the “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to contrast different human characteristics and stereotypes on the spectrum of people.

    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

  • The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales

    1572 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Virtue of Men and Women in The Canterbury Tales People never change. In every town you will always be able to find the "rich guy," the "smart guy," the "thief," and the "chief." It has been that way since the first man was swindled out of his lunch. Throughout his life, Geoffrey Chaucer encountered every kind of person and brought them to life for us in "The Canterbury Tales," a collection of short stories written in the 1300's. There are tales of saints, tales of promiscuity, tales of fraud, and tales of love.

    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

  • 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

  • Chivalry In The Knight's Tale Essay

    1744 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the tale, The Knight’s Tale, Chaucer made sure not to deviate away from what he saw during his time because some qualities emerged as prominent figures. The Knight’s Tale made sure to exemplify the idea of courtly love and what it truly means to be a knight who follows the code of chivalry. Some of the qualities of being chivalrous is being generous, honest, courageous, and supporting the notion of justice, which the readers can see that Chaucer understood the significance of the noble behavior and how that affected people at that time. Furthermore, the article, “The Canterbury Tales for Poetry of Students” highlighted how the noble life of the chivalry was a momentous part of the tale since the tale was “a comment on the possibilities

    Read More

  • The Tale of the Pardoner in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

    1940 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Role of Women in The Canterbery Tales

    2003 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Pardoner's Prologue And Tale

    1340 Words  | 3 Pages

    He also shows through the Pardoner that perhaps immoral people cannot guide people to morality, through subtle lines such as “For though myself be a full vicious man,/ A moral tale yit I you telle can” (GP 171-172). Through Chaucer’s portrayal of the Pardoner in this tale, the audience is able to see that the Pardoner is a self-absorbed, greedy man that mirrors what the author thinks of the Church, and that the Pardoner is the exact opposite of what he preaches, which also points towards the supposed corruption of the Church. The irony found throughout this work serves the important purpose of bringing attention to the dishonesty and fraud Chaucer believes can be found in the Roman Catholic Church at this time.

    Read More

  • Corruption and Greed in The Canterbury Tales

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Chaucer's Society in Canterbury Tales

    824 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Canterbury Tales

    607 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is great concern presented in Chaucer’s Wife of Bath story that women are painted in a negative light as a result of men having written these classic stories; it is argued that women would have authored these stories differently and in such a way that women would be perceived in a different light. The purpose of this paper is to review The Knight’s Tale as it is found in the Canterbury Tales and establish whether Hippolyta is portrayed in a negative, positive, or neutral light.

    Read More

  • Chaucer's Views on Women: Griselda and the Wife of Bath's the Loathly Lady

    3022 Words  | 7 Pages

    As a man fascinated with the role of women during the 14th Century, or most commonly known as the Middle Ages, Chaucer makes conclusive evaluations and remarks concerning how women were viewed during this time period. Determined to show that women were not weak and humble because of the male dominance surrounding them, Chaucer sets out to prove that women were a powerful and strong-willed gender. In order to defend this argument, the following characters and their tales will be examined: Griselda from the Clerk's Tale, and the Wife of Bath, narrator to the Wife of Bath's Tale. Using the role of gender within the genres of the Canterbury Tales, exploring each woman's participation in the outcomes of their tales, and comparing and contrasting these two heroines, we will find out how Chaucer broke the mold on medievalist attitudes toward women.

    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 Corruption in the Canturbury Tales by Gefforey Chaucer

Open Document