Chaucer's Tales essay topics
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Knight's Tale Of A Love
2,045 wordsChaucer's opinion of women and his views on love are very prominently featured in his poetry. Focusing on women, one must first examine the popular views concerning women during Chaucer's time. Arlen Diamond writes of Chaucer that, '... he accepts uneasily the medieval view of women as either better or worse than men, but never quite the same. ' (Green 3) This is evident in Chaucer's portrayal of women in such poems as 'The Wife of Bath' and 'The Clerk's Tale' which assault the reader with antit...
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Associates Griselda With Christian Patience
3,150 wordsMy students grimace at Griselda. And, quite frankly, why shouldn't they. By any contemporary standards of behavior her actions are reprehensible; not only does she relinquish all semblances of personal volition, she deserts all duties of maternal guardianship as she forfeits her daughter and son to the -- in so far as she knows -- murderous intent of her husband. Regardless of what we think of her personal subservience to Walter, the surrendering of her children is a hard point to get around. Ev...
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Tale Of The Prioress
796 wordsAll Things Are Subject to Love: Pride Versus Love In the description of the Prioress found in the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts this woman as one who would appear to on-lookers as being mannerly, becoming, and pleasant. The phrase where Chaucer wrote "She was a great delight, and always tried, To imitate court ways, and had her pride" would indicate that not only did the Prioress place a great deal of importance on her outward appearance but that she also took pride in it as ...
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Geoffrey Chaucer's Use Of Sarcasm To Describe His Characters
1,828 wordsGeoffrey Chaucers use of sarcasm to describe his characters. Geoffrey Chaucer used sarcasm to describe his characters in "The Canterbury Tales". It will point out details that are seen in the book that help explain how he used this sarcasm to prove a point and to teach life lessons sometimes. I will also point out how this sarcasm was aimed at telling the reader his point of view about how corrupt the Catholic Church was. Chaucer uses an abundance of sarcasm, as opposed to seriousness, to descri...
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Franklin's Tale
2,153 wordsWHEN PIGS FLY! Throughout the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, participants of the pilgrimage tell stories to entertain one another. These stories, while amusing, tend to have an underlying message, one being the Franklin's Tale. The Franklin's Tale is the most moral tale that has been read. It is not told to make the other pilgrims laugh, rather to explain an extremely important lesson. Throughout life, people say many things that are meant to be taken with a grain of salt and not literall...
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Good Side Of The Church And Chaucer
414 wordsIn the poem, The Canterbury Tales, there were two characters that were completely from each other. The two characters were two parts of a whole which is a dichotomy, for example there were a ying and a yang. The parson was the light side, which is the ying and the friar represents the yang. The parson is a good man who is poor, but he is rich in holy thoughts and works. He was satisfied with himself for knowing he had very little, and he was also very benign, and was also ready to give his poor ...
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Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Of The Fourteenth Century
1,006 wordsA person can almost wholly learn the history of the world though literature that has been written. This is because the people and times have such a great influence on the writers and their work. Authors did not simply grab ideas from the sky. These ideas came from their mind; they wrote about what they knew. And what they knew is what surrounds them, whether it be war, peace, or a time of transition. In the early centuries, religion ruled the land and people. The first rulers came about from the...
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Carpenter's Wife
1,437 wordsSummary of The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories set within a framing story of a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, the shrine of Saint Thomas 'a Becket. The poet joins a band of pilgrims, vividly described in the General Prologue, who assemble at the Tabard Inn outside London for the journey to Canterbury. Ranging in status from a Knight to a humble Plowman, they are a microcosm of 14th- century English society. The Host proposes a storytelling contest to pass th...
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Thompson's Presentation Of Boccaccio
1,420 wordsN.S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio, and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996; 354 pp. ; Nigel Thompson's book resists alignment with current concerns in late-medieval studies: he has little or nothing to say about manuscripts and their dissemination; about the audiences, reception, and imitation of the works he treats; about gender and its representation; about contemporary social and political developments and how these works ...
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Women Through Their Roles In His Tales
2,075 wordsMost of the Canterbury tales emphasize men and women and the roles that they play. Specifically in marriage, Geoffrey Chaucer has etched out a tradition of literary brilliance. He has taken it upon himself to reverse roles and give women favor over the men. In this way, Chaucer is considered as a pioneer. In several of his tales women are aggressive, self-willed, and powerful. Some of Chaucer's male characters are against tradition too. Men in the Chaucer's tales are passive, na ve, and weak. No...
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Chaucer's Prioress
1,279 wordsBitter Scorn During the later half of the fourteenth century, the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church were forced to contend with the public's increasing dissatisfaction with the church. This discontent was rooted in the corruption that the common person of Europe was beginning to see. Among the few authors able to show the hypocrisy and dishonesty within the church to the public was Geoffrey Chaucer. In the Prologue of Chaucer's collection of sardonic poems, The Canterbury Tales, he pokes fun a...
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Funny Passage Becuase Alisoun
613 words"The Miller's Tale", a short story by Geoffrey Chaucer, deals frankly with sexual and bodily subjects. Chaucer is never obscene, he allows the reader to use his imagination to determine what some of the events actually mean. the tale is a "fabliau", which is a short story in verse that deals satirically and humorously about sexual or monetary deception. When Chaucer describes the characters, he creates a unique theme for each person that helps the reader determine their role in the story. For ex...
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Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Until Geoffrey Chaucer
2,806 wordsThe Satire and Humor In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Until Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales, he was primarily know for being the writer of love poems, such as The Parliament of Fowls, narratives of doomed passion, and stories of women wronged by their lovers. These works are nothing short of being breath taking, but they do not posses the raw power that the Canterbury Tales do. This unfinished poem, which is about 17,000 lines, is one of the most brilliant works in all of literature. Th...
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Specific Mention Of Characters From The Bible
1,362 wordsTo formulate any type of argument using the Bible as a reference is challenging, since the Bible is diversely perceived from person to person. These varied perceptions can be results of different translations of the Bible, the cultural background of the reader, or quite simply, a vagueness with which the Bible can lend itself to multiple interpretations. Nevertheless, there are certain topics which are void of much gray area, which are explicitly and consistently outlined by the authors of the v...
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Physician's Tale
814 wordsBad Medicine Before the age of television shows, movies, and the Internet people entertained one another with vibrant and exaggerated tales. Geoffrey Chaucer's, The Canterbury Tales, is a good example of this form of entertainment. The novel details the journey of a band of pilgrims, who engaged in a storytelling competition, as they travel toward the shrine of Thomas Becket. These Middle Age storytellers varied as much as the stories, and consisted of a knight, physician, monk, and many more. I...
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Historical Background Of The Canterbury Tales
1,177 wordsHistorical and Literary Background of the Canterbury Tales During the Medieval age (or Middle Ages as it is known as today), there were two main factors in the community. These groups were small but powerful forces that were backed by the labor of a vast numbers of peasants. After the arrival of the "plague" or "the death" as it was commonly called, in the medieval times, was the downfall of both of the powerful groups. The Church and the Aristocracy began to demolish after the coming of the Bla...
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Januarie Views Marriage
1,557 wordsIt is difficult for the modern reader to enjoy a tale that is consistently hostile to women'? Many writings during the middle-ages were anti-feminist and these beliefs were often based on the biblical story of Eve being tempted in the garden of eden, causing mankind to be banished from paradise. Women were commonly believed, during these medieval times, to be deceitful, unduly emotional and unfaithful. Anti-feminist writings would highlight the lack of rights of women in contrast to the superior...
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Ovid's Metamorphoses And Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
402 wordsIn a Midsummer Night's Dream, as well as in his other works, Shakespeare has referred to several classical sources. Through this process of rewriting and "modernization", the classics are kept alive. In this particular work, the four main stories can be tied together by works such as Ovid's Metamorphoses and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The story of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairies can be linked to the romances of the four youths, Lysander, Demetrius, Herm...
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Ideal Medieval Wife Through Dorigen
1,341 wordsOne of the main functions of literature written during the Middle Ages is to represent the value system and culture of that time period. With The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer does just this. Through the various tales told by the travelers on their pilgrimage to and from the tomb of Thomas a 'Becket, the reader gets insight on the social theory, class boundaries, and value systems of the age in which it is set. One issue that Chaucer deals frequently with is the idea of what an ideal wife s...
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Beginning Of The Prioress's Tale
834 wordsThe Character of the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales is a multifaceted one. It seems almost as though her description is self-contradictory on many occasions. Every time the persona created by Chaucer makes a complimentary statement about the Prioress, a subtle opinion hinted by Chaucer the author takes it back. Overall, the conflict between the critical author and the benign persona are a stalemate, and the Prioress is portrayed neutrally. The portrait of the Prioress begins in the general pro...
