Written by Geoffrey Chaucer who served in various court positions throughout his life Follows the format of The Decameron by Boccacio Incorporates characters from most social classes mixing together ID: 688009
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Slide1
The Canterbury TalesSlide2
The Tales
Written by Geoffrey Chaucer, who served in various court positions throughout his life
Follows the format of
The
Decameron
by
Boccacio
Incorporates characters from most social classes, mixing together
Excludes the very poor and the serfs
Written in vernacular: Middle English
First artistic literary work to do thisSlide3
The General Prologue
Opens with a description of the effects Spring has on the world and on people
The story occurs at the Tabard Inn, just south of London
The poet falls in with a group of 29 travelers on pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, to the shrine of St. Thomas á Becket
A list and description of the pilgrims is givenSlide4
The General Prologue
Knight: highest social standing, Crusader, in armor
Squire: his son, wants to impress ladies, very fashionable
Yeoman: works for knight, heavily armed
Prioress: Eglantine (wild rose), fashionable convent, highly refined, knows she’s pretty
Nun: companion to Prioress
Priest: chaplain to Prioress
Monk: finds excuses to leave monastery, loves good food, wine, and horses, very worldly
Friar: lives by begging, panders to the rich, gives light penance for moneySlide5
The General Prologue
Merchant: likes to talk about his prosperity, worried about profits and pirates
Clerk: religious scholar, totally unworldly, devoted to God and learning
Sergeant of the Law: high-ranking lawyer, “seemed busier than he was”
Franklin: wealthy country gentleman, likes to share good food and wine with others
Shipman: ship’s captain, sometimes pirate, doesn’t take prisoners in a fightSlide6
The General Prologue
Tradesmen (Haberdasher, Carpenter, Webber, Dyer,
Tapiser
): members of a prosperous trade guild, traveling together
Cook: hired by Tradesmen
Doctor: good at his job, makes a good living
Wife: from city of Bath, widowed 5 times
Parson: poor rural clergy, perfect in his morality
Plowman: brother of Parson, also very good
Miller: dishonest in his weights, likes to break down doors and tell dirty storiesSlide7
The General Prologue
Manciple
: buys provisions for a group of lawyers in London but cheats them
Reeve: manages a country estate dishonestly, ill- tempered
Summoner
: an official of church courts, calls people to answer charges, takes bribes
Pardoner: even more corrupt than
Summoner
The Poet: recounts the whole affair
The Host: Harry
Bailley
, suggests the contestSlide8
The General Prologue
Each traveler will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and two stories on the way home
The host will judge the best story
The winner will be treated to dinner at the Tabard by the other travelers upon returning from the pilgrimage
They all agree and set out the next morningSlide9
The Pardoner
A pardoner is someone who sells religious pardons or relics
It’s a church practice based on the idea of penance: you repent of your sins and then atone for them by doing acts of charity or by giving to the Church
This idea became distorted: you could skip the repentance and the penance by just giving money
This practice will become a major focus of the Protestant ReformationSlide10
The Pardoner
He manipulates gullible people by taking advantage of their religious beliefs, superstitions, and sense of guilt
He admits to “stir[ring] the people unto devotion” so that they will give him money
The relics he sells are fakes but the people believe them to be realSlide11
The Pardoner
Repulsive physical description
He has thin, scraggly hair, but is vain
He has no beard and a high voice, suggesting that he’s not manly (“a gelding or a mare”)
Travels with the
Summoner
who is his singing partner
The General Prologue suggests that they might be loversSlide12
The Pardoner’s Tale
basically a sermon, aimed at educating his listeners about the sin of greed
Exemplum
: a story told within a sermon to illustrate a point
Pardoners were well-known for using lewd exempla in their sermons
At the end of the tale, he goes into a sales pitch for his relicsSlide13
The Wife of Bath
Alison, a widow from the city of Bath
Everything about her is larger than life:
Her body and her clothes
Her mouth (figuratively and literally)
Her number of marriages and her zeal for sex
(five dead husbands, looking for #6)
Her love of power in relationshipsSlide14
The Wife of Bath
One of three women on the pilgrimage, and the only one who hasn’t taken religious orders
The Prologue is about her own story, especially her marriages
She firmly believes that male/female relationships should be controlled by the woman and everybody would be happySlide15
The Wife of Bath
She begins by defending the idea of multiple marriages, saying that holy men in the Bible had more than one wife and God doesn’t require chastity
Marriage isn’t for everyone but it is for her
Her first three husbands were elderly, rich, and easy for her to manipulate
She nagged, complained, accused them of imaginary crimes, used sex as a weaponSlide16
The Wife of Bath
Fourth husband cheated but she got revenge by cheating on him too
She married her fifth husband for love
He controlled her and was abusive
She always has the next husband lined up before the death of the previous
Her tale reinforces her idea of female dominanceSlide17
The Nun’s Priest
There is no introduction or physical description of him in the General Prologue
We just know that he is a chaplain to the Prioress
He seems to be meek and humble, dressed modestly and riding an old nag
Narrator seems to be neutral in his opinion of this priest
He is asked to tell a happy story to make the company merry againSlide18
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
Animal/beast tale: a fictional oral narrative in which animals perform the principal plot actions.
Involve two main characters and one main plot: One deceives or tricks the other and then there’s a sudden ending.
Main conflicting ideas:
Weakness of body combined with cunning vs. physical strength combined with stupidity
Wild animals vs. domesticated animals
Not a fable, because there isn’t a clear moral
Slide19