Essays on Geoffrey Chaucer

In this paper I will look at the character of Alyson, the Wife of Bath from the Canterbury Tales. She is a very wealthy, well-traveled woman as she has traveled around Europe and she has traveled on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem a total of three times Alyson is a very talkative, brash and sexual woman, who is a seamstress by vocation. Throughout her prologue she brags about the number of affairs and marriages that she has had. She has been married a total of five times and her current husband is half of her age. Besides her affinity for ...

[Client’s name] Discuss how the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and one of the tales themselves could function as a criticism of the three estates of medieval culture; that is, the social hierarchy of the 14th century. How do Chaucer’s descriptions of the pilgrims in the prologue contribute to this? In the Medieval Culture there were three estates of the society. There were those, who prayed, those who fought and those who worked. In Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer the representatives of each estate go into the journey, and right from the Prologue each participant starts ...

The Canterbury Tales is one of the greatest pieces of literature because of Chaucer’s story-telling techniques. He weaves together various stories and characters to create this memorable tale that continues to be studied and examined throughout the ages. However, some of the pilgrim’s tales are more engaging to the readers than other ones. For instance, the Knight’s Tale is filled with courtly love, jousting and war scenes, as well as the time honored knight’s code. It can be considered a tale of courtly love as well as an epic due to its writing style. Despite ...

In the Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath is a character designed to be more like the modern woman. Unlike what is expected of other women to behave at the time (which is to be submissive and obedient to their husbands, to have only one husband, to turn to nunnery when widowed, and to be virginal and pure), the Wife of Bath actively uses sex as a tool to get what she wishes. She demands complete sovereignty from her multiple husbands, and the freedom to do as she wishes in any aspect of her life. Geoffrey Chaucer designed the ...

English literature spanning various centuries reveals idiosyncratic trends and ideals of British history, which allows students and scholars to examine and assess successive literary periods. Indeed, literature can be situated within its historical context because literature cannot be separated from the context in which it as written. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales underscores societal concerns with regards to corruption. Moreover, it provides a window into the historical ideals with regards to gender and how women were expected to behave and comport themselves according to their class. In a similar fashion, Beowulf, a classic in old English literature, reflects the ...

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is one of the most famous works not only of the 14th century English literature but of the history of Literature in general. It is the literary creation which is of high importance to the studies of literary criticism as its author managed to create a piece of art which at his time could be understood by all social classes. Actually it was Chaucer’s main aim and we should admit that he did succeed. All the tales from the above mentioned cycle are quite original and interesting but we will try to analyze a ...

Literature

Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer Introduction: Geoffrey Chaucer had skillfully adapted the methodology of frame within frame story telling was a process of storytelling that had only begun to evolve during those times. This method involved the putting together of stories of a number of people. In the main story there is the gripping tale of a group of pilgrims who have taken on the perilous journey together to a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Among all the story tellers there are a wide variety among which some are of noble birth and a large number who are mere common folk. The more interesting ...

Introduction

The Canterbury tales are a compilation of 20 stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The tales cover different themes written in the Middle English language of the 14th century. Most of the tales were written in parts. The manner in which Geoffrey Chaucer describes the characters as well as the incorporation of elements such as sarcasm and irony portrays a critic of the English society, specifically the church (Ackroyd, Peter & Chaucer 2). This essay explores two of the Canterbury tales: “The Clerks Tale” and “The Franklin’s Tale”. The aim of the essay is to provide the similarities and the differences between ...

Research paper

Exploring identity of national cultures and their interaction has recently attracted the interest of scientists in various fields. Although the study of the features of different cultures is very high , however the impact and breaking borrowed national and cultural realities (such as literary works of art ) on a national- cultural soil can not attract special attention of the researcher. Possibility or impossibility of transferring foreign cultural ideas and its embodiment in a different region with its own, unique to this region national features , remains very challenging and interesting problem. The present study was to review and comparative characterization of " The ...

The Canterbury tales is an anthology of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The stories are written in verse and some in prose and are told by a group of pilgrims on their way to Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. They were contesting for a prize with the stories they tell. The prize of the winner was a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their way back. They stopped at the Tabard Inn where they decided to tell stories on their way to Canterbury. The host of the Inn decided that, each pilgrim was ...

Hierarchy and social status are two of the major aspects of the Middle Ages, and two of the major themes embodied in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In fact, what makes The Canterbury Tales is such an outstanding literary work is that Chaucer as depicted an extensive range of characters and occupations from the 14th century. The Canterbury Tales, of course, contains characters of both genders, from the various prominent social classes of the time, from the common to the aristocrat, the poor to the wealthy, the secular to the saintly, etc., and focuses on their interactions and relationships. ...

The great plague that devastated England in the mid-14th century wiped out entire villages and filled the streets of London with cartloads of bloated corpses. The relevant statistics are difficult to gauge accurately, but estimates are that from a population of about 6 million people in 1300, as many as four million are thought to have died from the outbreak of bubonic plague that hit England in the 1340s (Borsch, 2005). All of Europe was similarly affected, with as much as 45 percent of the continent’s population dying from the Black Death in less than a decade (Borsch). There were ...