THE SHIPMAN’S TALE Geoffrey Chaucer used many different tactics in order to prove his point. With every compelling story told on the journey to Canterbury in order to visit the shrine of Thomas Becket, many moral lessons are revealed. Geoffrey Chaucer uses the motifs of wit and the value of entertainment in “The Shipman’s Tale” in order to convey the various ways to use power in relationships. The monetary power held by the Merchant, his wife uses her sexual power, and Sir. John uses his social power. The monetary power held by the merchant is the power that drives all the relationships within the Shipman’s tale. The way money controls the people in this tale is more deceitful than it is helpful. The merchant’s wife had always adored wearing expensive clothes in order to show her wealth. She took 100 francs from her husband and was forced to repay the money when he returned from his trip. She had no way to repay him because she did not work, so she asked his cousin, the monk, Sir. …show more content…
Sir. John does not tell her the money he is lending her came from her husband because he only wants her body. The power she uses against the two men only puts her into a deeper hole. The monk, Sir. John, tells the merchant he gave the money to his wife and when she is confronted about it, she reveals to him she spent the money on clothes, yet offers her body in return:. “Do not be angry, let us laugh and play. You’ll have my sweet body as pledge instead;...”(Chaucer,405). She uses her sexual power in order to win over both men because of the trouble she got into because of money. The monetary, social, and sexual power used in the relationships in the Shipman’s tale conveys the dynamics in which Chaucer wrote his characters. Wielding power against people can only cause trouble in the long run. Chaucer uses the monk, the merchant, and his wife to show the power dynamics within
In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer demonstrates many themes such as lust, greed, and poverty. During the Canterbury tales the travelers the author himself is in the tale and he describes every character in detail. Most importantly in The Wife of Bath there is numerous examples of poverty. Thought out the tale Chaucer introduces to us a man who couldn’t control himself because of lust. As a result, he gets punished by the queen.
The Merchant's revealed nature, however, combats the very destruction of creation and individual that he tried to attain. As the Merchant tries to subsume the reality of marriage, love, and relationship under his own enviously blind view, Chaucer shows us another individual, significant and important in his own way. Instead of acting as a totalizing discourse, Chaucer uses the Merchant's tale to reveal his depraved envy and to reveal him as no more than a wanton cynic. Thus, Chaucer provides the very perspective that the Merchant tries to steal from his audience.
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.
The dominance of men in the Middle Ages is unethical, irrational, and dangerous; women are given few rights and the opportunity to earn rights is non-existent. The dictates to the dominance is formed by the internal combination of man’s personal desire and religious interference. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, the combined perspectives’ on a haughty Pardoner and non-subservient wife is the stronghold of separation in moral roles. The moral roles between men and women are exemplified in the rankings of religious hierarchy for men are at the top and women towards the bottom. Even prestigious women, ones with noble connections, are subservient to men, but contradictorily have religious affiliations. The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” is a perfect example of defying man’s dominance and the “Pardoner’s Tale”, a problematic reasoning of why selfishness connects moreover to the manipulation. The frailties of religious reasoning however, will cause The Pardoner and the Wife of Bath to be separated from society’s morals.
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.
The Shipman’s Tale, one of the many tales in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is exactly suited to the Shipman’s personality and profession as given in “The Prologue.” The shipman is described by Chaucer in the prologue as very sneaky, deceitful, and even pirate-like. The Shipman’s tale matches his personality and profession because The Shipman’s Tale is one of trickery and con. The monk in the tale tricks both the merchant and the merchant’s wife out of their money. He also uses his relationship with the merchant to his advantage, because he knows the merchant would never suspect him of having sex with his wife. The shipman is also portrayed in the prologue to have no sense of remorse or feelings of sorrow.
“The life so short, the craft so long to learn” (Famous Quotes). The Canterbury Tales is enriched with humanistic merit that allows the reader to sharpen his or her own craft of life. Specifically, “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Clerk’s Tale” are embodied with multiple struggles of life that pertain to life in the present. Despite seven centuries of society constantly evolving, the two stories’ plots can still be further analyzed through similar themes about relationships that pertain to modern society and how rhetorical strategy allows the audience to relate to the narrative characters.
“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”.
Using the rich monk to her advantage, she spent all the money that he gave her, soon realizing the money he gave her was money that he borrowed from her husband. With no remorse of spending the money that would free her husband of his debt, she said “He gave me a sum of money… I spent it in a way of pretty clothes; it didn't go to waste… don't be angry” (Chaucer 168). Leading him to think his debt disappeared/ was gone forever, he soon found out she spent his entire savings on things she claimed he never gave her. This shows how materialistic she is to pick pretty clothes and expensive gifts for herself over the fact of having a happy relationship, without having the decency to tell him, but forcing him to find out on his own. The Merchant's wife is not the only women that corrupted her relationship. In the Death of King Arthur, the king finds out the Queen has been having an affair with their noblest knight, Lancelot, making him rethink his whole marriage. The king thought “ My lady, she wanted to be my wife or my lover. How could I allow her to be either? Love must spring from a loving heart. It cannot come
The love of money is the root of all evil, a statement that has proved itself true through the centuries. Loving money traps us, as human beings. It is not a bad thing to enjoy what money can do; however, the love of money is a wasted effort that can put all in grave peril. It is at our advantage that we have the ability to choose whether we ‘want’ to fall into that trap. Unfortunately, that choice is difficult since society associates one’s character with wealth and financial management. The mishaps, deaths, and hardships that occur from the beginning of the tale are the result of deliberate deception for personal gain. In Treasure Island, greed sends the characters on a voyage. Robert Louis Stevenson makes a social commentary on the role that money has come to play in our society.
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.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, (written c. 1387), is a richly varied compilation of fictional stories as told by a group of twenty-nine persons involved in a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury, England during the fourteenth century. This journey is to take those travelers who desire religious catharsis to the shrine of the holy martyr St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The device of a springtime pilgrimage provided Chaucer with a diverse range of characters and experiences, with him being both a narrator and an observer. Written in Middle English, each tale depicts parables from each traveler.
Chaucer identifies a pardoner as his main character for the story and utilizes the situational and verbal irony found in the pardoner’s interactions and deplorable personality to demonstrate his belief in the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church during this time. Chaucer first begins his sly jab at the Church’s motives through the description of the Pardoner’s physical appearance and attitude in his “Canterbury Tales.” Chaucer uses the Pardoner as a representation of the Church as a whole, and by describing the Pardoner and his defects, is able to show what he thinks of the Roman Catholic Church. All people present in the “Canterbury Tales” must tell a tale as a part of a story-telling contest, and the pilgrim Chaucer, the character in the story Chaucer uses to portray himself, writes down the tales as they are told, as well as the story teller. The description of the Pardoner hints at the relationship and similarity between the Pardoner and the Church as a whole, as well as marks the beginning of the irony to be observed throughout the “Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale.”
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 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.