The Miller’s Prologue and Tale, one of the stories told in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Second Shepherd’s Play, authored by the unknown Wakefield Master, were both written in the same general time period in England and therefore share a lot of social context. The works both have a self-aware tone, and both works deal heavily with both Christian religion and humor. The two works also have many differences, including a difference in how personal their tone is and in the way both works use humor. However, the defining difference in regards to religion between the two works is that The Miller’s Tale seems to use religion to create humor and drive plot, while The Second Shepherd’s Play uses humor and plot to relay a religious
Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales seem more interested in exploring the social class system of the time than religion by itself. In this time period, there were three main classes: people who fought, people who prayed, and people who worked. In Chaucer’s time, however, these social classes were becoming divided into subsections, and a middle class was growing out of the “people who work” category. It could be argued that Chaucer is much more interested in exploring these social changes than religion. Undoubtedly, religion was a huge part of society and culture, but it seems that Chaucer only dealt with religion as it related to social class. This is evidenced by the way he set up The Canterbury Tales, with a member of several social classes being tasked to tell a story. On the other hand, The Miller’s Tale deals directly with religion, and a religious message may be interpreted depending on the
However, the most easily made observation when comparing the two is the immediately obvious difference in their level of commitment to creating a religious message. While The Second Shepherd’s Play is obvious in its religious message, The Miller’s Tale is far more ambiguous, and in fact may not contain a religious message at all. This reflects the different focus of the authors – while The Wakefield Master wrote his play specifically to educate commoners on religions matters, Chaucer seemed more interested in exploring the changing social climate of his
The Merchant's Prologue and Tale presents the darkest side of Chaucer's discussion on marriage. Playing off both the satire of the moral philosopher, the Clerk, and the marital stage set by the Wyf of Bathe, the Merchant comes forth with his angry disgust about his own marital fate. Disillusioned and depraved, the Merchant crafts a tale with a main character who parallels his own prevarication and blind reductionism while he simultaneously tries to validate his own wanton life by selling his belief to the other pilgrims. As both pervert reality through pecuniary evaluations on different levels, however, both are exposed to be blind fools, subject to the very forces that they exert on others. As this reversal happens and the Merchant satirizes Januarie blindness, Chaucer reveals the Merchant's blindness, giving him the very significance that he had spent his whole tale trying to deny.
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.
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.
“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”.
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
When reading The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale, Hamlet and The Wife of Bath’s prologue and Tale it is apparent that religion is a very influential theme. For centuries religion has been the main topic of most conversations, yet at the same time the main subject of discussion. I am almost sure that at one point or another you have had conversations about what was right and what was wrong in society, in way or another your input on the subject was determined by your religious belief. Religion during the time these plays were written was very important and you are able to notice since all three plays mention the Bible, different sins or praying and all of these made up a religion. Even if both, Shakespeare and Chaucer were not alive during the same time period they did share the same country of birth and probably the same views on religion. In the Pardoners Prologue, the pardoner benefits from the need of people to seek forgiveness, in Hamlet, Hamlet changed his mind of killing his uncle when he saw him praying, and in The Wife of Bath’s Prologue she turns to the bible attempting to justify herself, all three plays make religion a major part of the development of the story line.
In both the Miller’s Tale and the Wife of Bath’s Tale, Chaucer uses his characters and stories in order to project various stereotypes to the reader. Although varying a tad bit throughout the book, the tone that seems to be drawn from the stories is that women are manipulating, sinful, and power hungry, while men are considered gullible and rash. Its through understand and analyzing these stereotypes that we can fully understand what Chaucer’s stories are trying to convey to us.
Though Chaucer showed multiple tales of various characters in The Canterbury Tales, the Miller’s and Wife of Bath’s tale surpassed them all on their concept of marriage and love. Both allow the reader to understand where they are coming from and their perception. While one does not seem to believe too much in love, the other does. However, both clearly believe that women control the game of love in their own respective ways.
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 class system. Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Trans. R. M. Lumiansky.
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.
The characters introduced in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales each represent a stereotype of a kind of person that Chaucer would have been familiar with in 14th Century England. Each character is unique, yet embodies many physical and behavioral traits that would have been common for someone in their profession. In preparing the reader for the tales, Chaucer first sets the mood by providing an overall idea of the type of character who is telling the tale, then allows that character to introduce themselves through a personal prologue and finally, the pilgrim tells their tale. Through providing the reader with insight about the physical and personal traits of the pilgrim and then allowing that person to come to life and tell an animated story, the reader is more prepared for the story as well as able to relate the physical description to the telling of the story. The physical and personal descriptions of the Miller, the Wife of Bath and the Merchant all aid in the telling of their tales. Chaucer was able to create tales that were perfectly suited for the characters that are presenting them. In having each tale told by someone who has a personal reason or motivation for telling that specific tale, Chaucer creates more of a reaction from the reader as well as provides the entire work with structure.
...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.
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.
we see how Chaucer the pilgrim has been swayed and convinced by what the other pilgrims tell him. So much so that he reports qualities that are often the opposite of the true personalities of the characters he is describing. This ambiguity reveals a very clever sort of irony on behalf of the writer - while Chaucer the pilgrim is easily drawn in by their deliberate misrepresentations, it is up to the readers to see how wrong he is and draw their own, more accurate, conclusions. It shows many of the pilgrims to be very different people than those symbolised by the ideal qualities they want others to see.