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The role of women in the "canterbury tales
The role of women in the "canterbury tales
Female roles in the Canterbury tales
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The tales I chose were the Knights tale and the Millers tale. I chose the Knight’s tale because I was in the mood to hear a love story and I chose the Miller’s because I thought it was pretty funny. Disturbing, but funny. The story I chose to win was the knights tale because it speaks of love and chivalry, it’s also appropriate, and I think the Host would appreciate his story.
In the prologue it talks about how The Host was like I want someone who is gonna have a nice tale to go next and the Miller who is always drunk said that he would go and The Host said no, so the Miller offered to leave. The Host being the nice guy that he is, said he could go so he wouldn’t leave. In the Knights tale he tells the story of a king named Theseus who ruled the city of Athens. One day these four women came Theseus’s kingdom and knelt in front of him and started weeping. The oldest women looked up at the king with tears in her eyes telling him about the loss of their husbands who were killed at the city of Thebes. The lord of Thebes Creon, dishonored them by refusing to cremate them or even bury them. Theseus goes to Thebes and conquers him and after he does so he takes the bones of the four dead husbands to their wives.
Theseus found two of Thebe’s soldiers on the battlefield nearing death. Instead of killing them he fixed them all up and placed them in prison. The enemy soldiers are relatives, they were in the prison for several years. One of the prisoners falls in love with Theseus’s sister-in-law, and is heartbroken that he can’t see her. The other prisoner also falls in love with her, they both argue over here, but realize there s no point because they both are in prison.
Later on Mercury comes to the Theseus’s prison and tells Arcite(...
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...e won because it is a story of people sticking up for one another and about how other’s are falling in love and would do anything for the love of a special women. The Miller’s story is about a rude Carpenter and his wife who sleeps around on him. It’s about how his wife sleeps with Him, their roommate Nicholas and some Clerk that always buys her things and gives her money. I think the Carpenters wife is just getting whatever she can get out of any man. From the Carpenter she gets a house and a hard working man. Out of Nicholas she gets the excitement of sneaking around and the love of a strong young man. From the Clerk she gets gifts and money. I think that all of these men just need to drop this women and move on with their lives. So i would say they Knight won because his story was appropriate, and wasn’t about sleeping around and he wasn’t drunk when he told it.
In the Canterbury Tales, the Knight begins the tale-telling. Although straws were picked, and the order left to "aventure," or "cas," Harry Bailey seems to have pushed fate. The Knight represents the highest caste in the social hierarchy of the fourteenth century, those who rule, those who pray, and those who work. Assuming that the worldly knight would tell the most entertaining and understandable story (that would shorten their pilgrimage to St. Thomas Becket), Harry tells the Knight to begin.
Chaucer's "The Miller's Tale" should be tragic, because a lot of horrible things happen to the characters. The carpenter's wife is disloyal to him, sleeping with others and making fun of him with Nicholas. Also, he is depicted as a fool. However, readers get a humorous feeling from the story, rather than feeling sorry for the carpenter's unfair life. Chaucer makes the whole story come across as comic rather than tragic. This humor is created by the Miller's narration, the use of irony, the cartoon-like characters, and the twists of plot. These elements combine to produce an emotional distance which enhances the comic effect.
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.
Before we begin to answer who was more sympathetically depicted in the story or whether it seemed to be at all important to the plot or overall meaning, let’s take a look at the gender relations within the story. Specifically, the depiction of women within the story.
In the first part of the play Egeus has asked the Duke of Athens, Theseus, to rule in favor of his parental rights to have his daughter Hermia marry the suitor he has chosen, Demetrius, or for her to be punished. Lysander, who is desperately in love with Hermia, pleads with Egeus and Theseus for the maiden’s hand, but Theseus’, who obviously believes that women do not have a choice in the matter of their own marriage, sides with Egeus, and tells Hermia she must either consent to marrying Demetrius, be killed, or enter a nunnery. In order to escape from the tragic dilemma facing Hermia, Lysander devises a plan for him and his love to meet the next evening and run-off to Lysander’s aunt’s home and be wed, and Hermia agrees to the plan. It is at this point in the story that the plot becomes intriguing, as the reader becomes somewhat emotionally “attached’’ to the young lovers and sympathetic of their plight. However, when the couple enters the forest, en route to Lysander’s aunt’s, it is other mischievous characters that take the story into a whole new realm of humorous entertainment...
Each pilgrim claims to have a tale good enough to match, or "quite," the previous tale told. The constant presence of competition in the tales—which often takes on an odd tone, as the combatants treat it more as a debate over whom the gods will or should choose to support and guide to victory— is echoed by the "route" of travellers telling them. And yet, as each character boasts of his or her tale, they constantly hedge their own bets, warning of the possibility that they might err in some way as they tell their story, and asking their company to absolve them of their flaws in advance. The most striking example of this is the Miller. The drunk, boorish Miller interrupts the pecking order, leaping over "better" men such as the Monk and the Man of Law in order to share a tale with which he plans to "quite the Knightes tale." When told by the Host to know his place, he threatens to leave the company unless he is permitted to tell his tale, and has to this point come across as brash and very confident in his abilities. However, when the Host relents and allows the Miller to have the floor, he backtracks: "But first I make a protestacioun, That I am dronke--- I knowe it by my soun." While the Pagans in the Knight 's tale blame failures on Fortune, the Miller, far more plain and earthly than the Knight or any of his characters, has a more practical scapegoat in mind: the
Back in the late 1300’s, Geoffrey Chaucer, a famous English poet, wrote a book called The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury was about a man named Chaucer and a group of his close friends that were traveling to the city Canterbury and had time to kill so each person started multiple short stories and made a competition out of it. As a result as to who won the story telling competition, the rest of the people in the trip had to pay for one of their meals. Boring rides to the destination might be boring but not when Chaucer is around. The Canterbury Tales shows crime, punishment and justice medieval style. Through Chaucer’s various tales he demonstrates corruption, deception, and karma.
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.
... beloved wife has made the decision for him. After going through this incredible journey of his, not only did he study women but he had to explain what women most desired to the queen. Otherwise he would have been beheaded, but was spared because of his looks. Was this justice? Indeed it would have been justice back in the 1300’s because if you were beautiful you could be spared and do a noble deed for the king/queen as they asked. If you did not complete it who knows what could have happened. But for the knight, he completed what he was told to do and in fact after he raped the woman and he was being prosecuted, the journey of his made him find the true knight inside of him. The old woman choice that was offer to the knight demonstrated that he learned his lesson through his sufficient punishment and redemption for his crime.
Society is portrayed differently now than the medieval period. Women are stereotyped of as the overly sensitive while men lack. In The Miller's Tale, the roles were exchanged. It was a popular thought that courtly love was more common during Chaucer's time but he shows a different approach and a "behind the scenes" look at middle class people. A fairy tale has a moral that is clear and concise, however, The Miller's Tale has a moral but it's more discrete and indefinite.
...ad the Knight tell this long, drawn out, overly chivalric tale as a contrast to the Knight's personality. The Knight is an subtly un-chivalrous person who tells a story so full of chivalry that it basically parodies itself. I think that the Knight is making up for his own un-chivalrous behavior by telling a very chivalrous story, as if to show the other pilgrims that he knew how to be honorable.
An interesting aspect of the famous literary work, "The Canterbury Tales," is the contrast of realistic and exaggerated qualities that Chaucer entitles to each of his characters. When viewed more closely, one can determine whether each of the characters is convincing or questionable based on their personalities. This essay will analyze the characteristics and personalities of the Knight, Squire, Monk, Plowman, Miller, and Parson of Chaucer's tale.
Chaucer's society represents every social class. In doing so, it shows what it takes to actually make a society function. The different people carry different stories to share. These stories carry lessons learned in hopes of sharing them with others so that they may not end up in the same predicaments. After all, that is the main point of sharing stories, isn't it?
And happed that, allone as he was born,/ He saugh a mayde walkynge hym biforn,/ Of which mayde anon, maugree hir heed,/ By verray force he rafte hir maydenhed” (lines 885-888). The knight only gets to hold this power for a short amount of time before he is caught. For his crime, he presents himself in front of a court full of women who must decide his punishment. We can see why The Wife chose this story in just the fact that an unjust man must plead for his life in front of a court of powerful women. The head of the court, the queen, decides to show him mercy if the knight can find out what it is that women truly desire. The queen and her ladies decide to give him one year to find the answer to her question, if he does not find the answer then the knight will be killed. Not only do the women have power over the knight in this situation, but they have now extended their power over him for an entire year. His life is now dedicated to finding out what exactly women
This is implied when it is said that he had only seen "some service with the