A Little Help From
Shmoop.com, Sparknotes.com,
And E-Notes
Universal Themes
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Social class
Authority
Knowledge/education
Rebellion/subversion
Marriage/love/lust/fidelity
Chivalry
Human nature
Religious virtue/martyrdom vs. religious corruption/hypocrisy
Justice
Revenge
Redemption/salvation/damnation
Divine power/the supernatural
Fate/fortune
Gender roles
Motif
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 A recurring pattern or a repeated action, element, or idea in
a work of literature.
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Money/gold
Animals
Agricultural imagery
The unfaithful wife
The old man with a young wife
The scholar vs. the tradesman
The trickster that gets tricked himself
The greedy, hypocritical clergyman
Women as gossips
Books (classical and religious literary allusions)
Violence
Superstition
Dreams
Rhyme and Meter
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 A couplet is two lines of metered verse. In a
rhyming couplet, the final words of the lines rhyme.
 A heroic couplet is a rhyming couplet in iambic
pentameter. Most of The Canterbury Tales is written in
heroic couplets.
When in April the sweet showers fall
And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all
Rhyme Scheme
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 A rhyme scheme is denoted by assigning an alphabet
letter to each line of rhyming verse. Lines that rhyme are
assigned the same letter. The rhyming couplets of The
Wife of Bath’s Tale would be,
chronologically, aa, bb, cc, dd, etc.
If there were no authority on earth a
Except experience, mine, for what it’s worth, a
And that’s enough for me, all goes to show b
That marriage is a misery and a woe; b
For let me say, if I may make so bold c
My lords, since when I was but twelve years old, c
Iambic Pentameter
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 An iamb is a pair of syllables, the first unstressed
and the second stressed. Iambic pentameter consists
of five iambs (ten syllables) per line. Iambic meter is
common in English verse because the unstressedstressed rhythm occurs naturally in spoken English.
The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue &
Frame Story Summary
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 The action begins at a tavern just outside of London,
circa 1390, where a group of pilgrims have gathered
in preparation for their journey to visit the shrine of
St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury. The narrator,
Chaucer, encounters them there and becomes one of
their company. Chaucer describes all of the pilgrims
in delightful, and often grotesque, detail.
The Canterbury Tales
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The Canterbury Tales: Rules of the game
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 The pilgrims go to dinner, during which the owner
of the tavern, or Host, makes a proposal to the
group: on the way to Canterbury, says the Host, each
pilgrim will tell two tales, followed by two on the
way back. The Host will accompany the group and
serve as a judge of their tales.
 The pilgrim who tells the best tale wins a free dinner
at the tavern at the journey's end.
 Should anyone question the Host's judgment,
moreover, he has to foot the bill for the entire
pilgrimage.
The Canterbury Tales: The game in play
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 Almost immediately, a pilgrim challenges the Host's
authority. After the first tale, the Host asks the Monk
to tell a tale, but the drunken Miller interrupts him
and announces that he will speak next or leave the
company.
The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue &
Frame Story Summary
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 The pilgrims tell lots of different kinds of tales on
their journey: comedies and tragedies, romances and
dirty stories, and sermons and saints' lives, to name a
few.
 Some pilgrims tell stories where a character with
another pilgrim's occupation is humiliated in the
course of the tale, which leads to trouble.
The Canterbury Tales: The Ending
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 The Canterbury Tales end after only 24 tales, a far
cry short of the planned 120. We never get to see the
pilgrims reach Canterbury, nor do we learn who
wins the competition.
 It's likely that Chaucer ran out of time or energy.
 The Canterbury Tales as we know them end with the
Parson's sermon on sin and repentance, followed by
Chaucer's retraction.
The Wife of Bath
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The Wife of Bath’s: Prologue
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 •At this point, the Wife of Bath delivers a long,
proto-feminist (or anti-feminist, depending on your
point of view) diatribe.
 (For more about this, see Shmoop's guides to the
"Wife of Bath's Prologue" and the "Wife of Bath's
Tale.")
Wife of Bath’s Tale
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 Geoffrey Chaucer 's "Wife of Bath's Tale," found in
The Canterbury Tales, is sometimes identified as a
Breton lai, a genre of romance that originated in the
region of Brittany in northwestern France. These lais
were short narrative poems involving knights,
ladies, and supernatural creatures and events.
Feminism
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 The events in "The Wife of Bath's Tale" are inspired by the
Celtic folklore motif of the "loathly lady," in which a
young knight must kiss or marry an ugly old woman,
upon which she transforms into a more desirable form.
 Sometimes the point of the loathly lady story is to
emphasize the importance of inner, rather than outer,
beauty. "The Wife of Bath's Tale" nods to this in the
loathly lady's long speech about the origin of gentility
being within oneself rather than a result of one's lineage.
 The main point of the Wife's Tale is that women desire
and should be granted sovereignty over their own bodies
and minds.
What is it about?
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 In the long speech, she muses about poverty, age,
and the origins of gentility.
 In fact, the loathly lady is probably meant as an alterego of the Wife of Bath. Like the Wife's relationship
with her young husband Jankyn, the loath lady is an
older woman who supposedly becomes delightful
once her husband has yielded power to her.
The Pardoner
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The Pardoner’s Tale: Prologue
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 The Host asks the Pardoner to tell a tale of happiness or jokes.
 The Pardoner agrees, but says that first he will stop at a tavern
by the roadside to eat cake and drink beer.
 The nobles in the company, afraid that the Pardoner's ingestion
of alcohol will cause him to tell an R-rated tale, object and ask
the Pardoner to speak about virtue and not sex.
 The Pardoner agrees, but says he must consider such a tale
while he drinks.
The Pardoner’s Tale
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 The Pardoner describes a group of young Flemish people who
spend their time drinking and reveling, indulging in all forms of
excess.
 After commenting on their lifestyle of debauchery, the Pardoner
enters into a tirade against the vices that they practice.
 First and foremost is gluttony, which he identifies as the sin that
first caused the fall of mankind in Eden.
 Next, he attacks drunkenness, which makes a man seem mad and
witless.
 Next is gambling, the temptation that ruins men of power and
wealth.
 Finally, he denounces swearing. He argues that it so offends God
that he forbade swearing in the Second Commandment—placing it
higher up on the list than homicide.
Assignment
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 Two groups will study The Wife of Bath’s Tale
 Two groups will study The Pardoner’s Tale
 Groups will have three class periods to:
 Read the text, complete a reading guide, and plan a
way to retell the story to the class…making sure that
all of the main points are covered AND making sure
that each person in the group speaks.
 75 points:
 25 points for reading, 25 points for answering the guide,
and 25 points for retelling the story!