Essays on The Canterbury Tales

Discussion Board Posts

What is the miracle of Caedmon’s hymn? Consider the poem itself as well as Bede’s account of its genesis The miracle of Caedmon’s Hymn according to the Venerable Bede is that while Bede had always known Caedmon as a great poet of unmatched skill. He did not always possess such a talent. Bede contended that the gift of song that Caedmon had could have only come from God. The reason for this was so Caedmon could bring the people that come to listen to him away from evil. For much of Caedmon’s life he had ...

Nature is an important element in many of the early texts. Both Beowulf and Canterbury Tales, written in very early English, use and personify Nature. It can be useful, therefore, to discuss the persona and action of nature in both texts, in an exploration of the use of nature in early fiction. This paper will, therefore, compare and contrast nature in the works of Beowulf and Canterbury Tales. The imagery in the opening prologue of the Canterbury Tales is expressly related to nature. It describes the rebirth of spring, but the verbiage, specifically, that is used by Chaucer to ...

Chaucer sets The Canterbury Tales in a period of economic evolution in England, so it is unsurprising that social strata is an important theme. It is perhaps most significant in the representations of members of the new middle class. A central question this new social grouping rears is what constitutes power in society, especially within the context of their specific community. As seen in The Tales, wealth isn’t the only factor influencing power struggle among the classes. The late 1380s and early 1390s England experienced a period of significant social turmoil. The plague was responsible for the deaths ...

“The Canterbury Tales” is a story well placed in its very setting and story-telling environment. It is, in itself, an actual microcosm of the medieval world of its day. It fits well within the uncharted and creative medieval times in which it was written, adding harmony. Shakespeare the playwright compares to Shakespeare the poet in his witty sense of realistic situational writing. As playwright and poet, both of his traits involve works of writing, which place certain characters in unusual settings, at the most unusual of times.allowing for the most extraordinary of outcomes! In Shakespeare’s plays, his poems ...

[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 ...

Introduction

The objective of this paper is to compare and contrast two tales that are available in the Canterbury Tales. There were some twenty four titles to choose from and the two tales chosen were The Knight’s Tale and the Cook’s Tale.

Comparison Proper

In the Knight’s tale, the setting was in Greece at a time when the knights’ battle against Creon was just finished. It focused on the story of knighthood. There were two knights in the story named Palamon and Arcite. Knights have been known for their various typical aspects such as respect, morals, ethics, chivalry, piety, ...

[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. All the representatives went into the journey, and right from the Prologue each participant starts to tell the stories that show all the ...

The European renaissance was a time for people to rediscover philosophies from the Greek and Roman culture. These influences changed aspects to the English literature for the better. During the medieval times, dramas consisted of focusing on religious themes but with the rebirth the renaissance brought tragedies and comedies became the norm for stories and plays. Authors, such as William Shakespeare and Chaucer, began creating works that the held their beliefs on what the world and life were like. This paved the way for many other authors to base their literary works off of what they believed instead of ...

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 is a collection of stories which were written in the Middle English at the end of the 14th Century by Geoffrey Chaucer. Most of the tales are in verses though some of them are also in prose form. The Canterbury stories were part of the story telling contest by a small group of pilgrims who travelled together on a journey from Southwark to Saint Thomas Becket where their shrine was located. Chaucer used the tales and the descriptions of his characters to paint a very critical and ironic paint of the English Community at the time in particular the church ...

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 ...

Aristotle is considered to be on one of the greatest philosophers that ever lived. He is referred to as the teacher of metaphysics ethics and logic. One of the most famous medieval fable stories concerning this great philosopher is titled “Phyllis et Aristotle” which when translated means Aristotle and Phyllis. This story is about how the great Aristotle, at the time living at the residence of one of his greatest disciples, Alexander the Great seeks to separate the powerful ruler from his wife, Phyllis whom Aristotle considered to be absorbing all his energy and time leading him to neglecting ...

The Battle between the Sexes in the middle Ages

1.0 The battle of sexes which started out in the Middle Ages favored men greatly when compared to women. However, women on their part did not take this subject silently. These paper aims at showing how men and women have perceived women in writing in the medieval ages and even today. The discussion follows preempted questions according to their numbering in the assignment. 2.0 During the medieval times, male writers portrayed women in less than positive lights, with their perceived character and structural flaws exaggerated for the reader. This meant that women were often, presented in less ...

Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” is a selection of stories that pilgrims use to tell stories that occurred as they traveled to a holy shrine in Canterbury. At first reading, “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Knight’s Tale” appear inconsistent and incomparable. Nevertheless, a closer reading of the two stories shows that the both stories are similar. The elements in the “The Miller’s Tale” reflects those in “The Knight’s Tale”. Arguably, the characters’ identities are different, yet the romance in both tales remains the same to an extent. In essence, the characters are basically the same in the two ...

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 ...

Many of the stories in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are bawdy or tragic tales of love in some form; characters are always falling in love, getting married, being tricked into getting married, sleeping with married people, and many other permutations of that central theme. In The Canterbury Tales the storytellers seem to focus on love and marriage but their perception of love and marriage seems to be different. For the most part, while love is the domain of men (n terms of the pursuit of amorous or courtly love), marriage is the domain of women (as they use ...

Themes are elements that give more meaning and direction to a literary piece. In the story “The Canterbury Tales”, several themes emerged and all of these brought more meaning to the legendary masterpiece. Geoffrey Chaucer highlighted the significance of women in the community. This is evident in the way Chaucer discovers the possible subtleties of marriage between a man and a woman. During the middle Ages, feminism was not as emphasized as it is now; nonetheless, equality for women were not at all uncommon. As a whole, there is also a sense of religiosity that existed in the story especially during a pilgrimage; however, ...

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 ...

Geoffrey Chaucer is certainly known to be someone who knew how to write a good story and especially in the Nunn Priests Tale and other similar recounts he espouses on the subject of love quite often. However he tended to see love rather lightly and in some cases, there is also an element of bawdiness and eroticism in his works especially where women are concerned. The Parliament of Fools is also an important work in the Chaucer canon as it shows how he would be treating politicians who are of the ilk full of stupidity. This compares well with ...

. The poem could be seen to be a description of the endless conflict between nature and chivalry. Other analysts have described the poem as a critique of the values of Christianity where the zeal to eliminate all traces of paganism leaves the court of King Arthur without any semblance of humanity. The manner in which the Knights are dressed is also important demonstrating the way the girdle is used since this is the only element of clothing which is discussed at length in the poem. This girdle returns as a leitmotif several times especially when one has to consider that it reappears ...

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 ...

The Pardoner Tale is among the tales of The Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury tales were written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Pardoner is given initiated by the Host’s longing to have something that is positive following the depressing story. The Pardoner prompts his prologue to show up the different evils associated with tricking people. After the evil deeds to the people he goes ahead and brings into context a moral tale. Originating from the Pardoner’s prologue and story, he is displayed as the most evil of the pilgrims. However, the pardoner is the most modern and intriguing character. Among ...

Canterbury Tales

Introduction The Canterbury tales are a set of short stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in Middle English by the end of the 14th century. The Canterbury tales are a set of stories told in a pilgrimage to the pilgrims. This makes them very interesting as the analysis of each of the characters helps explore the culture and way of life in the 14th century. It also gives an insight into the feelings, emotions and social structure of the life of the English in the 14th century (Linne R. Mooney, 2006).

Character analysis

The four characters chosen for analysis include the knight, the wife ...

The General Prologue is the first and most important part of the Canterbury tales. It establishes the framework of the entire stories in the Canterbury tales collections. Chaucer is the narrator in the prologue and introduces the readers to the travelers going to the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The prologue introduces the characters from the major characters to the minor ones describing their traits in details. Furthermore, the characters are described one by one in organized manner and how they are related to each other with their duties. Chaucer First introduces the Knight, his son the Squire and their ...

Introduction

Feminism is a social and political movement aimed at establishing equality for women in the society (Klein 12). From the feminist perspective, the Canterbury Tales expresses some critics of Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson who argued that it is hard to ignore the difference between how people viewed women in the past and today. In addition, males who mostly advocate for anti-feminism composed most stories found in the Caterbury Tales. This essay has deeply touches on the bad and good attributes assigned to women in the Canterbury Tales. Some of the bad attributed discussed included denial of rights to enter ...

Question1

The Knight’s Tale is one of the books in Geoffrey Chaucer’s story collection, The Canterbury Tales. The story is about two knights who are attracted to the same woman. The woman is a princess named Emily. Because the two knights had sworn to always support one another in all their endeavors, their attraction towards the same woman does not definitely go well. Chivalry was actually a system of duties, behaviors and rituals that every knight ought to follow if he desired to behave honorably. Religious devotion was one of the most adhered to virtue of chivalry by the knights. ...

Classic English Literature

The character of the Knight in the Canterbury Tales is clearly the ideal and perfect knight with the best description. At the beginning of the story, the Knight had just arrived from his expeditions. The Knight was described as a man who had a beautiful horse and dressed in a tunic that bears bloodstains from his last battle. At that time, the horses were only being used to transport the Knight in the battlefield rather than being use for fighting (Hodgson 77). The Knight is bestowed with chivalry qualities and idealism. Based on the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales which states that “ ...

Discuss the fourteenth century as a period of transition from the medieval to early modern culture (Renaissance). Include historical events, literature, and art.

Introduction:

The 14th century was an extremely important phase in the history of art and culture since it brought about major historical changes both in the way society changed but also in the way which art was perceived and how this was distributed amongst the population in general. Several events also affected the development of the general population but most notably one has to list The Black Death, the Hundred Years War as well as the decline of ...

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. ...

PART-I: CHARACTER SKETCH OF “THE WIFE OF BATH”

In the Prologue to The Wife of Bath Tale, we come across a woman, who in medieval times was regarded as a “wicked Woman” because she had married five times. She gives an account of her five marriages out of which three husbands were good and two were bad. She has been presented as a woman who does not care about what the world says about her character. She lives life on her own rules and if someone criticizes her on her five marriages she rebukes by saying that the holy figures like Jacob and Abraham married so many times so why ...

Introduction

It is a million dollar question. What makes a good piece of literature? What makes a memorable piece of music? The question applies to every medium of art in factwhat makes the work of a human worth seeing, worth reading, listening, feeling or watching, studying. And the answer too is simple enough. Any work of art that conveys an idea in its purity and freshness no matter where the looking glass is aimed at, from whichever perspective, is worthy of note. Literature can transmit ideas from ages past, to demographics wide, mould itself into fashions and traditions and yet mean something different to ...

What is love? Explain Chaucer? s attitude toward love. Although we have read only a few of his works so far, we have read several substantial pieces, enough to take a stab at this important and that you may now tackle this central and recurring theme in Chaucer’ s works. You’ll want to look at The Parlement of Foules, of course, and compare it to the treatment of love in The Canterbury Tales we have read so far, bearing in mind Chaucer’ s love for irony (which may appear in any of his works) and the possible interference that Chaucer’ ...

Chaucer’s attitude to the Church was ambivalent: it depended on the individual employed by the church. For example, in The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, he displays enormous admiration for the piety and Christian lifestyle of the poor Parson who will do anything for his parishioners. This character is an exception, however. In his portraits of the Monk, the Prioress and the Friar, Chaucer mocks them for their failure to lead a Christian lifestyle, fitting to their role in society. The monk is harmless enough, but is more interested in hunting than in doing God’s work; the ...

Dante’s Inferno presents the reader with a series of ‘circles’ that depict different layers of hell – each designed for a different sort of sinner. These circles are designed to hold and punish particular types of people for eternity. In this essay, I will choose three literary characters and discuss which circle of Dante’s hell is pertinent to them. The characters I have chosen are Okonkwo from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, who I believe belongs in the first layer of Dante’s hell – ‘limbo’ – because he does not accept Christ as his personal saviour and, whilst he is ...

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 ...

Based on your reading of The General Prologue, what do you believe are some of the predominant aspects of English society that Chaucer intends to write about in The Canterbury Tales? Chaucer’s opening 12 lines are a celebration of spring and new life, so we might expect the Tales which follow to show the variety and sheer vitality of different human experiences.

Am important aspect of English society at the time was the class system and this is shown in The General Prologue. Chaucer begins his descriptions of his fellow pilgrims with a description of the Knight (becauae he ...