The Canterbury Tales In The Canterbury Tales By Geoffrey Chaucer

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer can be understood as a text that criticizes glossing and those who gloss. In this case, glossing a text is the comments, explanations, and interpretations one infers from reading the piece of literature and the understanding that can be taken away from it; this is different for every individual who reads the written word. I believe Chaucer wrote some of these tales as a critique of certain figures in his society. The question one should ask when reading, or being read to, is what is the meaning behind the text and where does the meaning lie. When, directly, reading a text one can determine the meaning of the author through one’s own interpretation. When one is being read to, they are being given the information in a biased form; this prevents one from being able to interpret the text for oneself and leads to the audience being glossed, as well as the text, and Chaucer criticizes the crowd’s contentedness to be glossed at and to.

The Miller's Tale" is the story of a carpenter, his lovely wife, and the two clerks (students) who are eager to get her into bed. The carpenter, John, lives in Oxford with his much younger wife, Alisoun, who is something of a local beauty. To make a bit of extra money, John rents out a room in his house to a poor but clever scholar named Nicholas, who has taken a liking to Alisoun. Another scholar in the town, Absolon the parish clerk, also has his eye on Alisoun.

To begin his tale, the Miller interjects after the Knight, interrupting the Monk. The Miller then apologizes in advance for what he is about to say; he is very drunk and may say some inappropriate things. After his short prologue, the Miller tells the story of a wild love affair between a woman named Alisoun and three men pining after her. The three men, Alisoun’s carpenter husband named John, a scholar name Nicholas, and a parish clerk called Absolon all take an almost obsessive interest in this eighteen-year-old woman. Although Alisoun is married to the carpenter, she quickly becomes secretly devoted to Nicholas after a short

In The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, the life of the nobility compared to that of the poor proves to be a much harder life to live because of the many obligations and responsibilities. Chaucer ironically portrays this notion in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, contrasting the easy life of the widow, who is poor, with Chanticleer, a rich rooster. The widow’s life is much easier because she does not have to worry about keeping up with the societal expectations of the rich. Whereas, Chanticleer, the rooster, role and responsibilities in life, which he is very proud of, make his life much more difficult. Because of the way the rich live their lives, Chaucer, in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, ironically implies that living the life of the poor is much easier than living the life of the rich, who have many obligations and responsibilities.

The Miller also matches with his story "After the Knight's story, the Host calls upon the Monk to tell a story that will rival the Knight's tale for nobility of purpose. But the Miller, who is very drunk, announces that he will tell a story about a carpenter"(Prologue). The Miller is a loud, drunk man and obviously society's view of a wrong person and his tale follows his appearance, showing archetypes for wrong people "John, an old and very jealous carpenter who is married to an 18-year-old girl named Alison, rents a room to a young astrology student name Nicholas ... Alison also has another admirer - Absalon, an effeminate incense swinger at the church. Very dainty and fastidious..."(Prologue).

In his novel The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer presents the corruption of the Catholic Church through several of his characters. Chaucer lived in a time of controversial indulgences, a way to pay off sins. Chaucer’s tales show his opposition to these sinful behaviors that he believed were common among the clergy. In order to protest against sinful behavior and religious corruption, Chaucer uses characters such as the pardoner, the friar, the summoner, and the prioress to show the lack of morality and faith among the clergy, and presents the parson as an example of how to correct corruption of the Catholic Church.

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer consists of frame narratives were a group of pilgrims that are traveling from Southwark to the shire of St. Becker in the Canterbury Cathedral, tell each other to pass time until they arrive at their destination. During The Canterbury Tales the reader is exposed to many characters that represent all of the social classes of medieval England and the reader gets to know them from the general prologue to each individual tale. One of these characters is the Pardoner, when the Pardoners is introduced he is described as the stereotypical pardoner of the Fourteen Century. The pardoner is describe as a crafty and a corrupt individual that will do anything to sell his pardons and relics. Nevertheless one of the most important characteristics that the Pardoner exhibits is his frankness about his own hypocrisy and sins. The pardoner accuses himself of fraud, avarice, and gluttony (the very things that he preaches against). During the Pardoners prologue, but most noticeable during his tale, the pardoners preach about how “Greed is the root of all evil”, and how our sins can lead cause our dismay.

In The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, each character, such as the Pardoner, Wife of Bath, and the Franklin, epitomizes their spirit and reputation through the tales they tell. The Pardoner uses his tale as a gimmick to make money, because he is a greedy man. The way his tale illustrates each sin, every listener can relate to the three brothers and feel their guilt. The Wife of Bath’s Tale expresses her own values in the way the Knight is given a second chance after raping the young virgin. This greatly undermines her idea of the value of women. Because the Wife of Bath is so sexual, and lacks respect for her self, the Knight’s actions and forgiveness represent her own attitude on men versus women. Lastly, The

The Canterbury Tales is a piece of literary work written by Geoffrey Chaucer that involves the stories of a group of pilgrims on their pilgrimage journey. Throughout the book, each pilgrim tells a story in order to win the best story telling contest. The Host, who thought that this contest would be a fun way to pass the time of the pilgrimage, created the contest. He told all of the other Pilgrims the rules of the contest, as well as the reward, which was free dinner in the tavern. According to the book, due to all the pilgrims agreeing to partake in the contest, the reward was an important one to them; many wanted to win, therefore told the best stories that they had.

Noted earlier, the Miller’s tale is enjoyable due to its qualities of both entertainment and the idea of learning a lesson. In the prologue, the miller is defined as a filterless, rowdy drunk who speaks whatever comes to his mind. Because of this, he is portrayed as very vulgar and a nuisance since he easily offends others. The Reeve introduces the Miller at the beginning of the story as a drunk, impulsive, bully as he

Throughout the semester in class, we read a lot of short stories, and poems. One of the stories that stuck out to me the most to me, is The Canterbury Tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer. This tale is based on the millers, which is the topic of my paper. When it comes to the millers, there is a lot to know such as who they are, what they do, how the mills worked, their role in the Feudal system, how they make a living, what they ate, where they lived, what kind of clothing they wore, how the millers are able to assure they can continue to make enough money to live on, and so much more.

Before The Miller’s Tale, The Host encourages him not to go, because he is too drunk, and will not be able to clearly tell a good story. He tells him, “‘Now hold on, Robin, dear old brother;/ We’ll get some better man to tell another;/ You wait a bit. Let’s have some common sense.’” (21-23). The Miller responds to this angrily, saying “‘God’s soul,

The woman was fair skinned and her body was slim. She wore a stripped silken

Literature in the Middle Ages is very different from the literature today, most stories back then were written in a style called Medieval Romance and were often about chivalry and morals. These stories were also written as poems and often had rhymes within the text. One story written back then was The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, it’s about a group of people on a journey to Canterbury and along the way each character tells a story, each with its own moral. Although these tales were written back in the 14th Century, many of its morals still hold up to this day, specifically the “Pardoner’s Tale”, the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale”, and the “Manciple's Tale”.

All three articles have several things in common but also have several thing which distincts them from the others. Lawrence, Pratt, and Meyer-Lee all share a different idea of how the tales in the canterbury tales were written. They all have different arguments on how the ordering and the editing of the tales were. Some of them Along with that they also argue about the manuscripts and the order that the manuscripts can be in due not knowing dates on when it was written. Furthermore, they also introduce the idea of having discussions of the tales because they don’t just want their audience to read the tales, but they also want hear assumptions and open more discussion.