Preview

Sub--Chaucer art of characterization as found in prologue of Canterbury by marufa sultana.

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
2933 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Sub--Chaucer art of characterization as found in prologue of Canterbury by marufa sultana.
Chaucer begins the Prologue with a beautiful announcement of spring. This introduction is the voice of the Poet, polished, elegant, and finished. He tells us that just as Nature has a predictable course through the seasons, so does human nature follow a seasonal pattern, which causes people to want to break out of winter's confinement and go traveling in the spring.

Thus the stage is set for Chaucer, who is the Narrator of this poem. Twenty-nine travelers meet at the Tabard Inn in London before undertaking a journey to the Shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The group is assembling as Chaucer arrives and, as he observes the group and interacts with some of them, he decides that he will join their party. From his vantage point as anonymous Narrator, Chaucer describes the scene and the pilgrims as they arrive.

In the prologue, The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer is about the pilgrimage of many different characters to Canterbury. Chaucer writes about the characters' personalities and their place on the social ladder.

In discussing Chaucer's collection of stories called The Canterbury Tales, an interesting picture or illustration of the Medieval Christian Church is presented. However, while people demanded more voice in the affairs of government, the church became corrupt -- this corruption also led to a more crooked society. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as just church history; this is because the church can never be studied in isolation, simply because it has always related to the social, economic and political context of the day. In history then, there is a two way process where the church has an influence on the rest of society and of course, society influences the church. This is naturally because it is the people from a society who make up the church.... Moreover, those same people became the personalities that created these tales of a pilgrimage to Canterbury.

The Host: He is the proprietor of the Tabard Inn where the pilgrims to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the early Sixteenth Century the Church was an integral part of the European society and the Church’s’ power was virtually absolute. The church stood for justice, supposedly, but many historians argue the Church was corrupt and exploited the people’s religious faith to increase its own wealth.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a unique collection of tales from a virous group of individuals on a spiritual pilgrimage. Each person in the collection comes from all walks of life. For example Hubert the friar who knows the taverns in just about every town better than a poor house, a young man given the name The Clerk who spends every last cent he has on books, and a Doctor who is good at what he does and made a lot of money during the Plague. Every person is different in their own way but read carefully people of today could relate to one or more or even a bit of each one, whether it be their personalities, their looks or their beliefs. Whatever their reason, everyone on the pilgrimage have one thing in common. They are there to find…

    • 144 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Canterbury Tales is about a man named Geoffrey Chaucer who’s going on an adventure to Canterbury with a group of people and Chaucer describes the people who they are, about them. The people are very interesting in many ways that I myself would never expect from people now or then so it’s very interesting to think of people and to think oh hey I’m sure there’s people like this now days. The way they dressed then is different it looks like they’re wearing leggings and the dresses with different pieces of material just randomly sewed onto it.…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chaucer's “The Canterbury Tales” is a satirical comedy about corruption in the Church during the 14th century. During the time period in which the Canterbury Tales was written the Church was extremely prevalent in almost all aspects of a person’s life and was prone to corruption. Christianity was not only the primary religion of Europe, but it was also one of the primary authorities as well. However, after the Black Death, many Europeans became more skeptical of the authority of the church. This is expressed in the text, “The Tales reflect diverse views of the Church in Chaucer's England. After the Black Death, many Europeans began to question the authority of the established Church. Some turned to lollardy, while others chose less extreme…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the journey of Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer paints a vivid image of the medieval world. He brings forth three prominent concepts in the General Prologue, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale, and The Wife of Bath’s Tale. All tales satirically drenched with persuasive ideas, most would agree that his iconoclastic stories are dangerous for introducing aloud a different view on the church, gender relations and economic divisions. Creating doubt against the morals and true intentions of the church, bringing to light the inequality between genders and proposing a division between economic classes.…

    • 794 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Over a century prior to Luther’s “blasphemous” reformation, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in his Canterbury Tales rhetoric warranting excommunication by the Catholic Church. Specifically, “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” interprets certain church practices as inherently immoral, a notion insinuating that the most influential organization in Europe was flawed. However, the pardoner’s characterization had merit; the Medieval Period saw the corruption of the papacy through indulgences, a practice catalyzed by a religious fervor in the wake of the Black Death.…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the 14th century in The Canterbury Tales the General Prologue, Chaucer writes about how corrupt the medieval society is and the different social levels at this time period. Chaucer meets new people which were twenty five pilgrims including himself and on their journey they decide to tell four stories each . Chaucer writes a hundred and twenty stories on the way to and on the way back.…

    • 216 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chaucer Cantebury

    • 2079 Words
    • 9 Pages

    5. In “The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the pilgrimage primarily as a device to:…

    • 2079 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    tale, three friends begin a journey in order to murder Death. On their journey, though, an…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Authors often have an agenda when creating their works. These authors create their work with a specific agenda in mind to serve the purpose of making their own personal views apparent to readers. The Canterbury Tales--a collection of tales told by various people throughout a pilgrimage to Canterbury--serves as Geoffrey Chaucer’s own lament about the corruption of the Catholic Church in 14th century Europe. The pilgrims taking part in this pilgrimage are not necessarily the most pious pilgrims in the world: for many of the travelers, this pilgrimage is a tourist expedition rather than a devout religious quest. Chaucer utilizes this anthology of works to develop his ideas about the imperfections of the Catholic Church and how many people viewed…

    • 871 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Geoffrey Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, felt that the Church's turmoil experienced during the fourteenth century contributed to the a declining trust of clergy and left the people spiritually devastated. The repeated epidemics that the European Church experienced weakened the church by highlighting the clergy's inability to face adversity. The clergy's inability to provide relief for the people during a period of suffering did not turn people away from the church, but it did cause the people to question the value of the Church's traditional practices. People looked for ways to gain greater control over their own spiritual destines and altered their perception of the clergy, who were too weak to bring the people complete salvation. (Bisson51-52) "The times are out of joint, the light of faith grows dim; the clergy are mostly ignorant, quarrelsome, idle, and unchaste, and the prelates do not correct them because they themselves are no better." (Coulton 296) In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer makes us highly aware of the clergy's obvious and hidden intensions. Chaucer shows his awareness of the shortcomings of the Church in his portrayal of those who exercise spiritual authority during the pilgrimage. (Bisson 51-52)…

    • 1153 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Medieval Church

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Lingberg and Duffy have a different look on The Medieval Church in the middle Ages. Unfortunately though, the church is often regarded as the capital of corruption, evil, and worldliness. An overview of the crisis concerned with farming, famine and the Black Death.…

    • 998 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is an account of a pilgrimage of diverse people traveling together to Canterbury. The pilgrims go to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Beckett to thank God for allowing them to survive the winter. But before the thirty pilgrims leave, meet Harry Bailey, the owner of the Tabard Inn, who proposes they have a contest where each pilgrim will tell four tales on their journey. The winner of this journey will win a free dinner at the Tabard Inn. In this poem it is clear how Chaucer creates a corrupt image of the Church.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Church Corruption

    • 635 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Many of the religious characters in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer have traits that are different than what is traditionally expected of them. This is due to the Catholic Church, which ruled most of Europe during the Fourteenth Century, being extremely wealthy. While the people suffered from proverty and disease, extravagant cathedrals were built in every big city. As a result of this contrast between the wealth of the church and misery of the people, church corruption in a recurring theme throughout The Canterbury Tales.…

    • 635 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Chaucer's Life and Works

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages

    His famous work The Canterbury Tales is a masterpiece for all the time. This book, which was left unfinished when the author died, depicts a pilgrimage by some 30 people, who are going on a spring day in April to the…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics