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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer had a difficult time with the hypocrisy he so often saw in the Roman Catholic Church during the medieval period. Priests who were to be celibate, taking a vow of poverty, often kept women...
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The Canterbury Tales
Readers are told in the prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales that the pilgrims are gathering for their journey in April. The first day of spring occurs in the later half of the month...
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The Canterbury Tales
One thing we know about the Wife of Bath from the General Prologue is that she's very much a woman ahead of her time. Married five times and actively on the lookout for husband number six, she's a...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer idealizes the following pilgrims: the knight, the parson, and the plowman. The knight is idealized as a “true, a perfect gentle knight.” Chaucer lists his accomplishments for us,...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Knight's Tale and The Miller's Tale (both of which are in Group A of The Canterbury Tales) share only one meaningful similarity--they are both told by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. The...
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The Canterbury Tales
In the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes The Miller as a large man known for his ability to wrestle and open doors with his head. The large pilgrim is described as having a bright...
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The Canterbury Tales
First, The Canterbury Tales are the most extensive example of Middle English literature in existence. At the time Chaucer wrote the tales, most literature in Britain was written in French. This was...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer is commenting here about the narrow rules and confines women had to live by within a male-dominated society. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that men were born with the "higher" human...
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The Canterbury Tales
At the time that Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, the plague had killed many people, and the society began to change as there was much conflict and social upheaval, with a middle class arising...
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The Canterbury Tales
In the prologue, Chaucer satirizes the prioress by having the narrator praise characteristics that are not representative of nuns. When we think of nuns, we think of women who have taken vows of...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer included many religious figures in The Canterbury Tales, including a friar, a nun, a priest, and a pardoner, among others. It’s important to note before discussing the commentary about...
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The Canterbury Tales
All of the tales on The Canterbury Tales are indicative of their tellers' social class, worldview, and eccentricities. "The Miller's Tale" is bawdy and irreverent, much like the Miller himself. The...
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The Canterbury Tales
"The Nun's Priest's Tale" is one of the many stories told by pilgrims on their way to worship at the shrine of Thomas A. Becket in Canterbury. As this pilgrimage is religious in nature, this tale...
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The Canterbury Tales
It is perhaps never possible for anyone, including the author, to say exactly why any book was written. George Orwell observes: Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout...
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The Canterbury Tales
Both tales are strongly moralistic in tone, albeit with different messages to convey. This is perhaps related to the differences in character between the two narrators. The Wife of Bath is a...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath makes no secret of her desire for sex. She has been married five times and is looking for another husband. She claims that God has created people to be good at different things,...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer uses a character's appearance consistently to tell us something about that person. For example, the Wife of Bath has wide hips, wears red stockings, and is gap-toothed, all which say...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer mocks the Catholic Church. This can be seen in both The Prologue and in the tales. Although he mocks the church and its practices, he is respectful of religion itself. First, he uses the...
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The Canterbury Tales
To identify celebrities who are similar to characters within Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, one must be able to characterize them (the characters). Once characterized, one will be able to...
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The Canterbury Tales
An estate satire is a work from the Medieval period which attempts to satirize and therefore criticize the social and class systems of the time. The three primary classes of society were the...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath is interrupted several times during the Prologue to her story. The first time she is interrupted by the Pardoner, who wants to know why in the world he would marry at all after...
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The Canterbury Tales
All of the pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales have a public identity that defines them in the eyes of society. The Knight, for example, is a brave, noble warrior; the Prioress, head of a religious...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer uses satire in the descriptions of the pilgrims in the "General Prologue" of The Canterbury Tales to reveal corruption in the Church that was prevalent in society. Many members of the...
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The Canterbury Tales
At the end of the prologue, Harry Barry proposes that “whose story is best told/That is to say who gives the fullest measure/ Of good morality and general pleasure” (lines 816-819) will get a...
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The Canterbury Tales
I'm not sure which edition of the Tales you have, so I can't give you exact lines, but the Pardoner's prologue is actually an excellent place to look for situational irony. Situational irony is...
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The Canterbury Tales
The cleric is described as "nat right fat," or, in modern English, "not too fat." He is also described as "holwe," meaning hollow, and his clothes are described as "thredbare." This physical...
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The Canterbury Tales
Well, Geoffrey Chaucer gives no answer to this question in Canterbury Tales. There are 30 pilgrims and each one is supposed to tell two stories on the way and two stories after coming back from the...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Monk is described quite well in "The Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales and is a member of the clerical/ecclesiastical class in that he is a member of the clergy. Generally, the Monk is...
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The Canterbury Tales
Since Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales as an estate satire, he pokes fun at certain people belonging to the three estates in England: (First Estate) the clergy, (Second Estate) the...
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The Canterbury Tales
All of the pilgrims would be participants in the feudal system, as society was feudal at the time, and this system describes a hierarchy of allegiance that spans from the sovereign (King) down to...
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The Canterbury Tales
Everything we know about the Squire suggests that he is a vain, romantic, chivalrous, and lusty young man with one thing on his mind: the ladies. He dresses well, sits his horse with pride, and...
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The Canterbury Tales
Class and status are deeply important in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and certainly deserve a discussion. In many ways, The Canterbury Tales was very revolutionary for its time, even though it is...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Knight's Tale, as well as all of the other Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, is full of subtle satire. The best examples of satire in this tale come from the knight's story of Palomon and...
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The Canterbury Tales
At the very beginning of the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, we find that the narrator is present at the Tabard inn, which is located at a place called as Southwark in...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Man of Law, or Sergeant of the Law as he is called in some texts, is not particularly distinctive in appearance. He is dressed in "modest," or simple and plain, clothes; his coat is held closed...
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The Canterbury Tales
It is pretty clear (assuming that you are asking about the General Prologue) that Chaucer does not really approve of the Miller. He thinks he is a cheat and something of a ruffian. You can tell he...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are remarkable for (among other things) their use of vernacular. Voices and vocabularies change from character to character depending on the speaker's social standing and...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales are partially satirical, and he pokes fun at or critiques just about every facet of medieval society. The clergy are no exception. Generally, Chaucer seems to think...
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The Canterbury Tales
“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” takes place during the time of King Arthur. Under his rule, a Knight raped a young maiden, and King Arthur demanded the Knight be brought to justice. He is captured,...
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The Canterbury Tales
Though not the first narrative work to be completed in English, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (written between 1387 and 1400) marked the popularization of English as a language for storytelling....
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The Canterbury Tales
The Wife of Bath defends marriage strongly because she sees it as a vehicle rather than a status. Being married five times, she has experienced lust, love, death, need, riches, everything. She said...
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The Canterbury Tales
In her story, the Wife of Bath tells of a knight that has to find the correct answer to the question: What do women really want? After a lot of wondering and looking for the correct answer, the...
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The Canterbury Tales
In "The Wife of Bath's Prologue", a knight has committed a crime and been sentenced to death. The knight is offered a reprieve by the Queen: if he can determine something that all women desire, he...
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The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer is the anonymous narrator of the story. Chaucer is not specifically named as the narrator, but it is assumed that he is. He uses examples from his life to create the stories in The...
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The Canterbury Tales
They are different in terms of social standing: The pardoner works for the Pope (remember the time of the story and the importance of the clergy) whereas the Reeve would be deemed a "commoner" b/c...
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The Canterbury Tales
The doctor, or physician, in the Canterbury Tales is listed as the finest doctor; however, the details our narrator gives us leads the reader to question ability. Instead of having a medical...
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The Canterbury Tales
The second paragraph of the prologue records that there are originally 30 pilgrims who make their way to Canterbury. This includes the 29 pilgrims that the narrator meets at the Tabard Inn plus...
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The Canterbury Tales
The main characters in "The Wife of Bath's Tale" are the knight (who rapes a woman at the beginning of the story and, therefore, is given the option of finding out what women most desire or...
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The Canterbury Tales
The Pardoner, despite his many other faults, has an admirable ability to preach. The narrator informs the reader about the Pardoner's oratory skills in "The Prologue": He was, in church, a fine...
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The Canterbury Tales
Technically, this poem was originally part of Geoffrey Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer's style is usually iambic pentameter, meaning ten syllables or five metric "feet" of a...
