Geoffrey Chaucer's Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

Chaucer’s Use of Satire

An Analysis of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Use of Satire in The Canterbury Tales Every author has a set agenda before writing their piece of literature. Without an agenda, there is no motivation to write such piece of literature. This holds true with Geoffrey Chaucer. In the 14th century, Chaucer read Boccaccio’s Decameron, and was inspired to write his own version of the Decameron essentially. Therefore, Chaucer came up with The Canterbury Tales. Although The Canterbury Tales is very controversial, it was widely famous at the time Chaucer wrote it. Not only was it popular because Chaucer decided to write The Canterbury Tales in “the people’s language,” but he also spoke for many people at the time who shared the same opinions

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

During Chaucer’s time, there were major issues of class, nobility, and money. During 1350, there was a very rigid class structure. During this time, people who had more money were considered of higher value. Also, people who were poor were not considered of great value. During the Wife of Bath’s Tale, the old woman challenges the young knight about nobility. She argues that men who are of nobility are supposed to be gentlemen, or are a nice guy. Also, she says that men cannot be born a gentleman, just because you are born to a particular family doesn’t mean that you are a nice guy. She says this in the poem by saying, “but gentleness, as you will recognize, is not annexed in nature to possessions, men fail in living up to their professions; but fire never ceases to be fire. God knows you’ll often find, if you enquire some lording full of villainy and shame. If you would be esteemed for the mere name of having been by birth a gentleman and stemming from some virtuous, noble clan, and do not live yourself by gentle deed or take your fathers’ noble code and creed, you are no gentleman, thought duke or earl. Vice and bad manners are what make a churl,” page 147. She says in the quote that just because your parents are nice people, doesn’t mean that you are a nice person, or vice versa. The old woman also challenges the knight by saying later on that if he was a