The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey Chaucer

Although a contextual shift may result in changed values and attitudes, some traits are inherent in the human condition and transcend time. This is explored in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale (TPT) and Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (ASP),...

To the heedless reader, Dante’s Inferno and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are generally interpreted as mere works of fiction designed and created for the sole purpose of entertainment. To fully glean the authors’ intended message, though, one...

Musical symbolism pervades the works of renaissance and medieval literature―used as a tool by authors to emphasize persona, atmosphere, tone, or simply to drive the plot forward. Instruments, singing, and moreover music in general are abundant...

The Miller and the Reeve in The Canterbury Tales are two characters who hold similar views regarding marriage and love but are different in both mental and physical conditions. The relationship between the Miller and the Reeve, as well as the...

Medieval British women had few choices in regards to how they chose to spend their life: marriage to a man or marriage to God through joining a convent. The limitations set upon them by society, even in only this example, show a societal female...

Consciously and unconsciously, we are shaped by the world we live in. The events, people, ideology, and lifestyle of our era affect our thoughts, behavior, and how we express ourselves, be it verbal such as speech or nonverbal such as writing....

When reading Geoffrey Chaucer's The Legend of Good Women, readers will notice that none of these good women are granted satisfying lives or happy endings. Nearly all of them meet tragic, even gruesome, ends––these women are betrayed, abandoned,...

In both The Merchant’s Tale and A Doll’s House, sexual relationships are symbolic of power imbalances, the exploitation of others, and the strenuous relationship between men and women in societies continually determined by gender relations. Sexual...

Chaucer and Wilde, although writing 500 years apart, both present power as an intrinsic aspect of marital life in Medieval and Victorian patriarchal societies. January sexually dominates May in ‘The Merchant’s Tale’, while in ‘An Ideal Husband’ it...

Humor makes life bearable. It brings joy to the vagrancies of humanity. Without humor, life would be hard to cope with. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is a perfect example of how humor can make life a joy to live and remind us that in this life,...

In both ‘Tis Pity’ and ‘The Wife of Bath’ many character abandon reason, and tend to replace reason with their own desires, making them, in T.S Eliot’s words “Monsters of egotism”. Fundamentally, in ‘Tis Pity’, when characters do not listen to...

The Wife of Bath by Geoffrey Chaucer was written in the late Middle Ages, a time in which women possessed little agency and were perceived as inferior individuals. However, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath presents a female character that is vibrant and...

By bringing such a wide spectrum of people together, Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales reveals a tremendous amount about basic human behavior. Characters ranging from the noble knight to the corrupt pardoner reveal tidbits of how life was in...

“Queer[ness] functions to undermine normativity.” (TISON PUGH)

Before introducing the critical debate surrounding Chaucer’s use of queerness and establishing the main argument of this essay, it is important to initially define the meaning of the...

Composed in a time of severe patriarchy and a society based on a strict social hierarchy, it is anticipated that medieval literature mirrors society’s judgement of a woman’s worth, in that representation of female authority is inextricably linked...

In Ichot aburde in a bour ase beryl so bryht and The Miller’s Tale, both authors use figurative language to convey their belief that women serve to please and nurture men. As demonstrated by the jewels, birds, sweets, and medicine they’re...

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is an anthology of tales told by characters within the greater work. While taking a pilgrimage, the characters within the anthology begin to competitively tell stories as a way to pass the time. Many of...

The poems in the Ellesmere manuscript facsimile of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales are accompanied by a portrait of the storyteller. Based on the miniatures’ attire, accessories, and horse trappings, the pilgrims can be classified into...