Comparing The Friar And The Chaucer In The Canterbury Tales

In the late 1300s Geoffrey Chaucer began wrote The Canterbury Tales, a story which follows the religious journey of twenty-nine people, who represent many aspects of Medieval society, to the Canterbury Cathedral in southeast England. While on the pilgrimage the host of the tavern, where all the pilgrims meet, suggests that the pilgrims each tell a story for the group’s entertainment. Chaucer intended for all the voyagers to tell two stories, but he unfortunately died before he could finish the book and only got to write one story apiece. However, the goal of the storytelling contest is to tell the most moral story possible, and the one who wins receives a free meal, which the rest of the pilgrims will pay for. Although some of the other stories have good moral messages, “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” are on different ends of the moral spectrum. “The Pardoner’s Tale” focuses on a pardoner who preaches against greed. While “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” exemplifies what all women want in their relationships: power. Although both “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” demonstrate the value of the opinion of elders, the stories differ in their moral values and their storyteller’s values.

There is a specific reason that Chaucer gets the Summoner to tell that tale that he shares with the group. The Summoner is angry after hearing the Friar’s tale. He then sarcastically suggests that the Friar told a well-documented story since friars and fiends are always good friends (Chaucer, Geoffrey). The Summoner then makes a point about Friars in general telling a story of how twenty thousand Friars came from under Satan’s tail and that not all Friars are holy (Chaucer, Geoffrey). The Summoner then tells a tale of how a Friar goes around promising prayer for items people would give him, and then never sends the prayers (Chaucer, Geoffrey). The Friar then goes on to tell that the Friar fondles a sick elder man’s wife and kisses her on the cheek, then proceeds to tell the sic man that anger is not the way to go about things (Chaucer,

Adapting to someone’s piece of art like this is like taking a craft, and altering it or to build off it to produce a new piece of art. Sometimes adaptation mimics the original piece. Other times the resemblance is so slight that it can be considered completely stray from the plot and theme.

After the Friar’s offensive tale, the Summoner “rose in wrath against the Friar”(303). As a bitter response to The Friar’s Tale, the Summoner tells a tale that mocks the Friar. Before his tale, the Summoner mocks the Friar in his prologue. In his prologue, a friar goes to hell with an and he is surprised that of all the friars “none ever come into this place?”(304). The angel then shows the friar “some twenty thousand friars...crept into his (the Devil’s) arse”(304). After his funny prologue, the Summoner then tells his even funnier tale.In The Summoner’s Tale , the tale includes acts of perversion of office committed by the friar. These perversions are mainly related to the Friar’s vow of poverty such as “pretence of praying”(308) for “those who gave him offerings or food”(305).

The Canterbury Tales is a poem written by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1392. In this poem each character tells four stories, two on the way there and two on the way home, to provide entertainment for the people on the pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. One part of Chaucer’s tales that truly stands out is the character prologue where he introduces all of the characters on the pilgrimage and conveys the narrator’s opinions of them using satire and other literary devices. Of characters that Chaucer’s narrator describes, two are the Parson and the Friar. Both of the characters share similarities in their social status and job position however greatly contrast in morals and character. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses contrasting characteristics to convey an idea that teaches that power does not always lead to corruption.

Literature can be described and used as a portal to the past. The historical context written into the many different works of authors showcase social workings of a culture in a specific time period. The Canterbury Tales, which include “The Monk’s Tale” written by Geoffrey Chaucer is no exception to this. “The Monk’s Tale” are a collection of short stories classified as parables, and showcase what readers would consider sinful acts in the 14th century. Most of the passages have reoccuring sinful acts that appear story to story and include greed, desire for power, and a much too high trust in Fortune.

Things are not always what they seem: In The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, it is frequently those who at first glance are characterized as “those who pray” that struggle to overcome sin. For example, the Friar and the Summoner are both involved with the church but use their tales to insult each other. In the Friar’s story, the Summoner is described as one who greedily take money from an old widowed woman and works with the Devil so closely that he is pulled into Hell. In the Summoner’s story, the Friar is an excessive beggar who, upon asking for donations from a citizen named Thomas, receives a fart as a gift and is expected to divide it amongst twelve other Friars. This story serves to embarrass the Friar and to be a counterattack to the Friar’s tale. The two men cannot look past the corruption that each one suspects of the other, and this overtakes their morals through the storytelling. The Wife of Bath is

There is many similarities through the tales in the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer. All of the tales can easily be related to another tale through characters, symbolism, the plot, or morals. Some examples of these relations can be found in The Millers Relating to the Knights tales with almost Identical Characters. And The Franklin's Tale is similar to the Pardoner's Tale with Greed. And, The Knights Tale, The Miller’s Tale, and The Pardoners tale are similar in many different aspects. The tales in The Canterbury Tales can all be related to one another, find a unique match, making each tale be a pair or even a triple with another story.

of the poor outfit of the Knight. Instead he attempts to point out that the

    The Friar was the least moral of all the other pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales. The Friar breaks all four of the moral rules. Poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability.

the Wife of Bath says that "thus the apostle Paul has told it me, and bade

The Friar is a man of many traits, but trickery is one of his best traits. The Friar is a character in the poem The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Friar was in a religious Order, and he was loved by many people. He is a character that appears to be graceful and elegant, but he abuses his power as a clergyman, which was a common theme in the church during this time. The author, Geoffrey Chaucer, uses this poem to inform his audience of the practices in the Middle Ages. He uses the characters of the stories to show some of these practices. The Friar is one of the characters in which Geoffrey Chaucer shows the corruption of the church during the Middle Ages. The Friar is a prime example of one who used his position to get

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer comments on moral corruption within the Roman Catholic Church. He criticizes many high-ranking members of the Church and describes a lack of morality in medieval society; yet in the “Retraction,” Chaucer recants much of his work and pledges to be true to Christianity. Seemingly opposite views exist within the “Retraction” and The Canterbury Tales. However, this contradiction does not weaken Chaucer’s social commentary. Rather, the “Retraction” emphasizes Chaucer’s criticism of the Church and society in The Canterbury Tales by reinforcing the risk inherent in doing so.

This Canterbury tale is a detailed story of a summoner, told by The Friar. The Friar regards the summoner in this tale as a horrible and dishonest extortionist. The Friar spoke about a summoner manipulating prostitutes into giving him the men that they have seen, to then blackmail them. The summoner would supposedly do this by threatening these prostitutes and their johns with incarceration. You know from the get go that this is just the Friar trying to make the job of The Summoner look bad. The devil at the end of the story dragging the summoner to hell is supposed to describe a summoner’s job as evil. After reading the tale, you can assume that the Friar is jealous of The Summoner’s kind and fair nature.

Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare are two extremely famous English writers. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer’s best known work. Chaucer had initially planned to have each character tell four stories, two on their way to Canterbury and two on their way back. In actuality, The Canterbury Tales is only made up of twenty four tales and ends before the characters make it to Canterbury. It is also often under debate whether the tales were in the correct order as the tales are varied in order. Despite these uncertainties, The Canterbury Tales is known for its beautiful rhythm and Chaucer’s clever use of satire. Geoffrey Chaucer then died October 25th, 1400 of unknown causes at sixty years of age (www.biography.com). Shakespeare then began to write around the year 1590, and over two decades he wrote almost forty plays revolving around several main themes: histories, tragedies, comedies and tragicomedies. The Tempest was one of Shakespeare’s famous comedies and is thought to be his last play even though it is known that he wrote other plays before he died in approximately 1616 (www.biography.com). Within The Canterbury Tales, there is a character called the Wife of Bath who is an exaggeration of a certain archetype of a woman, she is sexual, liberated and certainly not coy. Whereas, within the Tempest there is a woman named Miranda who could be seen as the opposite, she is chaste and does what she is told. Although the character of the Wife of Bath is the forerunner of the