Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales from the view of a pilgrim journeying with many other travelers who all had tales to tell. I believe that the stories told by the characters in Chaucer's book gives us insight into the individual spinning the tale as well as Chaucer as the inventor of these characters and author of their stories. There are three main characters whose stories I will be using as examples: The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Tale.
The knight told a tale of love, bravery, chivalry, justice, romance, and adventure. His story included two cousins and sworn brothers, Palamon and Arcite, who were both enraptured by the love of one woman, Emily. Emily was related to king Theseus who had the two friends imprisoned in a tower. It was from this tower that the two knights spotted the female embodiment of beauty and goodness. Palamon and Arcite each decided he could not live without her love and would die to have it. After a long while, the two meet up and are about to fight to the death for the love of Emily when Theseus comes upon them. He decides that these two former friends and prisoners will have a duel wherewith it will be decided who may win Emily's hand. Arcite and Palamon each pray to a different god to grant his victory. Arcite wins, but he dies before getting to claim Emily as his wife. She is later married to Palamon.
What does this fantastic story tell us about the knight's character and beliefs? This tale gives us insight into the Knight's sense of romance, passion, courage, loyalty and justice or fortune. Firstly, it shows us his ideal of one true, romantic love. He is virtuous and passionate, especially in his love-life. There was only one woman to be ...
... middle of paper ...
...te and analyze these characters to relay stories that would reflect their personalities. He conducted the interaction and relationships of these characters like Mozart would a symphony. He gave all of the characters their solos, but all of them interacted melodically. If nothing else, he was a humanist in the sense that he had concern for the needs and interests of other people. One may even call him a sociologist, or an observer of relationships between people of different classes. He gave a voice to many different types of people and had them all exchanging ideas and interacting. I wonder only if he had any idea that his stories were a window into his own personality.
Works Cited
The Canterbury Tales: The Knight's Tale, The Miller's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Translated by: Coghill, Neville. London: Penguin Books Ltd., 1951.
The role of storytelling is significant since it highlights the personalities and traits specific to important characters. Storytelling can also drive the plot, as seen in Homer’s The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid. These epics are based on the telling of the protagonist’s journey. However Grendel, written by John Gardner, utilizes storytelling in a different manner. The main character bases his self-understanding off of the storytelling done by the Shaper, a blind bard telling historical tales. The purpose of storytelling in Gardner’s, Homer’s and Virgil’s works is to personify the protagonist in what he does to truly define himself.
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 Knight's tale of love, loyalty, and battle is placed in the chivalric romance genre. The courtly romance concerns the mythical kingdom of Theseus, wealthy rulers, and pagan (mythical) gods. Throughout the tale, the Knight and the other characters refer to the concept of the "wheel of fortune." In the beginning of the tale, weeping, broken women plead to Theseus to help them avenge their husbands. Although impoverished, they tell Theseus that they were all at one point wealthy and of high rank. Even though Theseus is glorified and powerful now, the goddess will spin the "wheel of fortune" and he will one day be low. The concept of destiny and the wheel of fortune represents the Knight's acceptance of an incomprehensible world. His inclusion of the mythical gods, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Diana furthers this idea. Emily, Arcite, and Palamon each pray to a diety, asking for help and their unattainable wish. In the end, father Saturn decrees Arcite's death. Thus, paradoxical human emotions and senseless tragedy are safely distanced; they are attributed to the will of the pagan gods. Similarly the love triangle between Arcite, Palamon, and Emily stresses tha...
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.
Chaucer gives us a description of the structure of The Canterbury Tales within the text. In The Merchant’s Tale, the narrator states,
Geoffrey Chaucer was born around 1340, in London, Great Britain. He was a court writer during the rule of Edward III and Richard II. He had many acquaintances within nobles of that time. During his job, court writer, he observed the immoralities in the court, and as a reaction wrote his works. His purpose of his works was to entertain, and he mostly used the English language in order to deliver his work to as many people (to both noble, and not noble people) as possible, because French was the noble language, and English was a speaking language. Chaucer uses different kinds of people as his character, to deliver a real story. The Canterbury Tales is the most famous work of the Geoffrey Chaucer. It consists of the tales
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue.” The Canterbury Tales. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2000. 87-98.
In "The Knight's Tale", the love between the two knights and Emelye is intensely powerful. The love that Palomon and Arcite feel towards Emelye is so strong that the two knights feel that it is worth more than their own lives. At one point, Palomon tells Arcite that he shall either have Emelye or he shall die. The love that Palomon feels for Emelye is so overwhelming that he is willing to take on an armed man, in mortal combat, just for the love of a woman. Perhaps he feels that without her, he will surely die, so why not die trying to win her? The ironic fact about the relationship between each knight and Emelye is the fact that Emelye does not wish to marry either of the knights. She is aware that she is just a prized possession, one that is not fully known, because she has never exchanged a single word with either gentleman. However, in that time period, she could not easily express her feelings, and if she were able to, those feelings would most likely be ignored.
The knight comes across a beautiful lady one day and rapes her. The court is disgusted by this and says he should get the death penalty. King Arthur and the queen decide that he should not be killed, and they make a deal with the knight. The queen says that if he can find within a year what most women want, he can keep his life. He finally meets the Wife of Bath, and she says that most women want to be secretive. She argues with this though, because women cannot keep a secret. Later on, the knight meets and ugly old woman and she claims that she can save his life. Judgment day has come, and he tells the queen that most women desire to be in charge of their husbands and lovers. The women in the court agree, and the queen spares
From the beginning of the tale the Knight shows us examples of disorder. These examples are two recent wars that were fought and won by Theseus, the mighty ruler of Athens. Theseus is shown as the person of honor, noble, wisdom, justice and reason and who likes order in everything that is under his rule. The first war was fought with the Amazons, women warriors, who were ruled by Hippolyta, a female ruler. The second war was with Creon, the ruler of Thebes, and who was full of "cruel tyranny" (25). Both societies represent disorder in one or another way.
First the queen who gets to decide the knight’s fate. “He gave the queen the case And granted her his life, and she could choose Whether to show him mercy or refuse.”(line 72-74) Then the old hag who will tell him the answer to the queen’s question if he will marry her, and who he lets make the choice in which kind of wife he would rather have. ““My lady and my love, my dearest wife, I leave the matter to your wise decision.”(line 406-407) The point of her story is the only way a man can be happy is if his wife is happy, and for her to be happy she must be in
The Knight’s first story is one of valor, romance, and justice. The story was told in a narrative where the Knight talks about everyone’s feelings, while at times not conveying everything to a hidden part. This story is about Palamon and Arcite who were knights that loved each other like brothers. They are captured by King Theseus and thrown in jail for being associated with a ruthless
This diverse view he had of all aspects of life, gave him the opportunity to be able to become an amazing writer as he could honestly write of a non bias view of each kind of people in life and have others able to relate. In his most known story of Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer creates himself as a narrator and character into his own story of many different people coming together on a pilgrimage where
The Canterbury Tales, written in the late fourteenth century by Geoffrey Chaucer, are a group of stories about an assortment of diverse characters whose personas existed during that period in time. The stories cover a wide variety of individuals, ranging from the Wife of Bath, the Pardoner, and the Reeve. Although the majority of the stories were all clearly fictional, the problems seen in each story were true; the author mentions the real-world issues that the members of his society had to experience and endure. Most of the messages found in Chaucer’s literature from the fourteenth century are still applicable today, in the twenty-first century, like the message found in The Reeve’s Tale. One of the concepts found in The Reeve’s Tale was the
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.