Powerful Satire in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Essay

I agree with what Condren’s view on Chaucer. Chaucer shows in the story Chaucer talks about how dynamic life is and how different the people are. Life is a crazy thing but Chaucer makes it really different. He makes everything “fascinating” with everything he talks about has to have a story behind it and the people have stories behind them. He makes the people “fascinating” he talks about how they have rashes and have nasty eyebrows and the way they dress. Nothing is boring with them.

There were three “estates” in medieval England society: the nobility, the church, and everyone else. According to The Norton Anthology, the role of the nobility was to rule over society. The nobility were composed of a very small group of society. The church’s responsibility to society was to “look after the spiritual welfare” of society. The last class in society, everyone else, was the large mass of common people who worked to provide the physical needs of society. In The Canterbury Tale, the priest belongs to the church, the rooster, Chanticleer belongs to nobility, and the widow belongs to the everyone else estate. Chaucer, being the son of a

    Chaucer's view of the clergy class is not as positive as his view of the ruling class.  For example, Chaucer describes the Prioress/Nun using a great amount of satire.  He speaks of how the nun has excellent etiquette and manners.  She tries so hard to be respected and viewed as one with higher status.  Her character is best described in the quote:

Chaucer used writing stories as a tool into helping express how he felt about the society problems. In these stories they show multiple examples about the society problems that were occurring. These are reoccurring problem throughout generations that I think may never end.

It is clear that Geoffrey Chaucer primarily uses satire throughout The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer even explains in the work, as a disclaimer to the audience, that a lot of what is stated is a joke. Even so, the “General Prologue” of The Canterbury Tales still provides the audience with the opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding of each character before they tell their stories.. This provides the audience with an idea of what common stereotypes are present during Chaucer’s time due to his work being a fabliau. Chaucer implements a significant amount of religious figures and it is made evident through Chaucer’s choice of when he implements satirical language amongst these characters what he wishes to criticize without being deemed heretical for speaking negatively against the

Most of us might know that Chaucer's version of The Canterbury Tales is an old story but his version may just be the most famous. Chaucer has this problem with how things are done and the hypocrisy. ¨The love of money is the root to all evil.¨ According to the French the people in England always smelled. They were poor in sanitation and even when talking in German their breath would stink. He wrote this story in the language of the street. The Pardoner's Tale will not only show us greed and irony but it will also show us what someone can become capable of doing just to get money, even to their own blood. Chaucer will criticize the church hypocrisy.

We cannot read the CT as an honest criticism of 14th century English society without examining the entire picture - and this picture includes Chaucer's ideological contradiction. To better understand Chaucer's real message - criticizing the Three Estates system in order to encourage acceptance of his own Estate, the merchant or middle class - I will briefly discuss the Three Estates system and Chaucer's role in the system's shift to include a Fourth Estate (and how this shift influenced the CT). Then I will examine four stories from the CT (The Wife of Bath's Prologue, The Friar's Tale, The Summoner's Tale, and The Pardoner's Tale) in which Chaucer seems to denounce elements of the social paradigm. I will then examine four stories from the CT (The Knight's Tale, The Man of Law's Tale, The Second Nun's Tale, and The Parson's Tale) in which Chaucer contradicts his criticism of his society. Finally, I will discuss how the dominant social paradigm influenced Chaucer's view of the lower classes, and how the classist structure led to ideological contradictions within the CT. Before we discuss Chaucer's ideological contradictions, however, we must first examine the system he was attempting to change, the Three Estate system.

Let’s start with Chaucer’s attack against the hierarchy. The hierarchy is the church and its maltreatment was trying to get the people to give the people running the church more money with false advertising. What would happen is that the people from the church would go out and tell people that they have sinned and needed to be blessed. The people would go to the church, give the church’s people money, and then be “blessed.” It was obvious which churches were pulling this stunt. Chaucer made two (three technically, but two only need to be pointed out.) characters that are from churches. There is the pardoner, that basically confess to pulling this stunt, and the monk, which was actually giving up the

In terms of literary quality, Chaucer went great lengths to give all elements a bit of attention. The work is primarily about a knight who is pardoned from a rape on the condition that he acquires the answer to one of life’s

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the fourteenth century, The Canterbury Tales and more specifically it’s prologue, shed a great deal of light on the rising middle class in (fourteenth century) England. Despite the fact that some readers may not know a lot about the time period today, Chaucer’s writing in the prologue elaborates on topics such as occupations, wealth, education, and political power. Scholar Barbara Nolan writes of the prologue, “it is more complex than most…It raises expectations in just the areas the handbooks propose, promising to take up important matters of natural and social order, moral character, and religion and outlining the organization the work will follow” (Nolan 154). In other words, while noting the

The CT uses a new, broader approach to address all these issues. In Chaucer, Aers states "Chaucer's writing is marked by an openness to many contradictory [social] forces the General Prologue alludes to traditional ideology on the Three Estates through the figures of the Knight, Priest, and Ploughman Peasant. But it does so in a context which dissolves the Estate ideology" (15-17). Further, Strohm states, in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, "Through juxtaposition of statements on themes like genteelness, sovereignty, and authority, he [Chaucer] shows his audience that the truth about a subject is not unitary or closed, but is open and additive and can best be approached by entertaining a variety of points of view that existing orders of decorum and procedure must remain open to modification. Chaucer provides a formal analogue for the readjustments of perception which follow when new classes invade and modify traditional social orders (35). Canterbury Tales presented a challenge to the three estates system because of the use of rhetoric advocating to change, which motivated the intent to further the recognition, and the success, of the emerging middle class! Chaucer paints his characters skillfully. Without examinating Chaucer's social background and political intentions, you might not even pay attention to

Geoffrey Chaucer lived from thirteen-forty-three to fourteen-hundred. “Chaucer is one of the most interesting writers in English literature because he straddles two worlds: the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” (Collin 1). He wrote his poems in middle-English, which is called Vernacular. “Geoffrey Chaucer chose to write his poetry in the Vernacular – the everyday language – of his time and place” (Chaucer et al. 18). Perhaps one of Chaucer’s most important literary works, “The Canterbury Tales,” sets the stage for a more in depth understanding of the feudal systems and classes of the Middle Ages.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales was written during a time of societal change, away from the stability of feudalism and towards an individualistic, mercantile economy. Feudalism consisted of a static, rural economy where every member had a duty to serve those above them. They valued the greater good and were not focused on gaining economically for their own personal benefit. An era of change, however, began as events such as the Crusades opened up trading opportunities which would eventually cause a shift in England, as the economy went from being land-based to money-based. A mercantile class was on the rise as well as capitalism. People were no longer driven to work by a sense of personal duty for the common good, but rather for their own social and economic gain. Corruption of the Church during this time as well increased, as church members were affected negatively by this changing economy. Many were driven by greed as well and took on immoral approaches towards their church positions. Vows and church teachings were disregarded as indulgences and materialism became the main focus of many in the clergy. Through his satirical portrayal of his characters in Canterbury Tales, Chaucer explores issues such as the changing economy and corruption of the church in order to expose and criticize the wrongdoings and values of his shifting society caused by the end of feudalism during this time.

The Canterbury Tales, the most famous and revolutionary work of Geoffrey Chaucer, is a collection of twenty-four tales presented in the form of a story-telling contest by pilgrims who are traveling from London to Canterbury. In my viewpoint, The Canterbury Tales can be understood as a representation of the English society at Chaucer's time as it documents several of the social tensions of life in the late Middle Age. The choice of setting the tales as part of a pilgrimage allowed the author to cover a wide range of social roles with varying hierarchical positions and occupations. Therefore, the tales depict a number of the evolving themes by that time in many segments of the society, such as the ones presented in The Wife of Bath tale: the

The aim of any true satirical work is to poke fun at a certain aspect of society, while also inspiring reform to that very same aspect in one way or another. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chaucer satirizes the Medieval Church and those associated with the church. Medieval society was centered largely around the Church. Ideally, the people were expected to understand that earthly possessions were meaningless when compared to the prospect of closeness with God. Man was expected to work until he died, at which time he would receive eternal salvation. This eternal salvation was achieved by obeying God's commandments. This theory, however, was becoming progressively corrupted as hypocrisy began to pollute the Church, particularly at the higher