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Geoffrey chaucer use of satire
Geoffrey chaucer use of satire
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Chaucer’s Use of Satire
(An in depth analysis into the General Prologue, Pardoner 's Tale, and the Wife of Bath)
What does it mean for literature to be characterized as a type of satire? According to Oxford Dictionaries, “Satire, is the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.” There are countless examples of how satire has enabled great writers a way to achieve their ultimate goals. In fact, many of the modern stories and works of literature that we study, have, in one way or another some type of satire. For instance, if you look at many of our current plays or even movies you can see that most
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 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.
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.
In the beginning of The Pardoners Tale he talks about his qualifications and what he does, talking to several people. The pardoner tries to use his story to get the audience to give him money for their greedy sins. Then he tells a story about three young men who find an old man and they talk about age, the younger kids say the don’t want to grow old like the old man. The old guy tells the kids that they can find death by a tree. Excited to see death, the kids go to the tree and discover a pile of gold coins instead. Excited they decide to draw lots to decide which one would go down to the store, and who gets to stay with the money. The one who lost would have to go down to a store and buy some bread and wine that is later poisoned. Meanwhile, back at the gold, the other two conspire to kill the guy that is walking to the store by stabbing him to death, so instead of splitting the money three ways there would be more money apiece by splitting it two ways between them. So when they guy who walked to the sore gets back they stab him (he dies). Then the two drink the poisoned wine afterwards and they died from the poisoned wine.
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 comedy is most heavily used in the Pardoner’s description than in any other part of The Canterbury Tales. For example (page 135, line 712) “There was no pardoner of equal grace/ For in his trunk he had a pillow case.” When the words “no pardoner of equal grace” are used you are lead to believe that the Pardoner is a great man, but if you look back in the reading you will find totally different things. He is a dirty, immoral man that really does not have much grace. Another example of the sarcastic comedy is (page 135, line 727) “In church he was a noble ecclesiast. How well he read a lesson or told a story! But best of all he sang an Offertory, For well he knew that when that song was sung He’d have to preach and tune his honey-tongue That’s why he sang so merrily and loud.” Again the text seems to be saying he is a “noble ecclesiast” and that he likes to preach the word of God to others. If one looks at it closer one will find out that calling him a noble ecclesiast is a joke and that he only preaches and sings so that he can take the tithes for himself.
The pardoner was a proud man. While others were not as educated as he was, the pardoner spoke in Latin to show off his linguistic ability. His failure to practice what he preached made him a model of hypocrisy and deceit. The pardoner was such a bragger that he boasted of the sins that he had done. "I spit out my venom under the color of holiness, to seem holy and true"(page 343). The pardoner admitted to his astonishing behavior and confessed to his immorality. His shameless confession indicated that he was guilty of foolishness: I preach, as you have just heard, and tell a hundred other falsehoods...my intention is to win money, not at all to cast out sins (page 343).
"The Wife of Bath's Prologue." The Canterbury Tales. New York: Viking, 2009. . Web. Jan. & Feb. 2012.
Use of Satire in Canterbury Tales, Pride and Prejudice and The Rape of the Lock
Through the Prologue to the Pardoner's tale, the character of the Pardoner is revealed. Although the Pardoner displays many important traits, the most prevalent is his greed. Throughout the prologue, the Pardoner displays his greed and even admits that the only thing he cares about is money: "I preach nothing except for gain" ("Pardoner's Tale", Line 105). This avarice is seen strongly in the Pardoner's tale as well. In the Pardoner's tale, three friends begin a journey in order to murder Death. On their journey, though, an old man leads them to a great deal of treasure. At this point, all three of the friends in the tale display a greed similar to the Pardoner's. The three friends decide that someone should bring bread and wine for a celebration. As the youngest of the friends leaves to go buy wine, the other two greedily plot to kill him so they can split the treasure only two ways. Even the youngest decides to "put it in his mind to buy poison / With which he might kill his two companions" (383, 384). The greed, which is evident in the character of the Pardoner, is also clearly seen in the tale.
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.
Satire is a genre of literature that many authors have written in, particularly when writing in or about the Victorian time period. Authors would write satirical novels with the intent to provide constructive social criticism, to draw attention to issues in their society, and to shame individuals, corporations, governments, and society, in general, into improvement. Two writers who successfully use satire in their works are Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf. Both writers satirize gender roles and social status in their respective works of The Importance of Being Earnest and Between the Acts. In his play, Wilde utilizes the techniques of inversion and puns to get his satire across, which work together to form a specific critique of marriage and social status in a Victorian society, and those that enforce these rules. Woolf, on the other hand, uses both parody and irony to create a more relatable and less direct viewpoint on society and the people who fit into it. Both Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf use satire to criticize gender roles and social status in a Victorian society, but through different techniques direct their satire at different audiences.
Satire is used in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen to show the deficiencies in morals and ethics of the characters that Austen disapproves of. Satire is used to "attack" characters and to bring about change. The different characters types she satirizes are "suck-ups," hierarchical, and/or ignorant.
The Canterbury Tales is a very popular and well known set of stories, written by Geoffrey Chaucer. This collection of stories is great entertainment and some even provide very good moral lessons; most of these stories show the contempt Chaucer had for the Church of England which had control at the time over most of England. Chaucer’s bias towards the corruption of the Church is best demonstrated in the Pardoner’s Prologue, in contradiction with the Parson’s Tale, and the level of power within the Church structure. These are two of the stories of the many that are in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a high level leader who is corrupt and yet enables him to convert the sinners even if he does it for personal gain. While the Parson is of lower standing in the Church, he is not corrupt, and gives the message to the pilgrims so that they might be forgiven.
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,
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.