Geoffrey Chaucer
AP English/NAEL
ALLARI
Fall 2009
The Canterbury Tales
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Genre of estates satire; literary portraiture and catalog.
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Theme: what makes a community or society?
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The social contract (ritual/Ceremony)
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Note: where is the representative of the very poor population?
The General Prologue:
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A catalog of portraits
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Social Variety
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Degrees of Satire
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Various genre, style, topics and fun
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Fabliau, romance, apologia, etc..
The Pilgrimage:
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Annual journey of spiritual and physical rebirth;
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Cyclical nature of life; juxtaposed with the world “of chance and human agreement”
(Archimedes 90-91).
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Reflections the status of literature;
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The Literary Competition for “comfort,” “sentence,” and “solace.”
Portraits in CT: ideal and Satiric
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Characters of the Knight, the Parson, and the Plowman establish a standard:
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All of the other characters are measured against these three.
Portraits can be sympathetic, critical, or conventional
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(ex: the prioress doesn’t fit the role of Mother Superior and thus her
portrait of “simple and coy” and “mouth…softe and reede” is a
convention of medieval romance)
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Note the group portraits (the Monk, the Friar, and the Prioress)—subject to “regula”
(Archimedes 91), or rules—the abuses become more flagrant and serious, and the
satire “increasingly sharp” (91).
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The Pardoner: sells indulgences for “donations” and sells fake relics---this abuse of
religion helped lead to the Protestant Reformation. (Juxtaposes with the
Summoner).
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Terms: abstraction, “iconographical attributes,” verisimilitude, allegory, symbolism.
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Social Comedy: the pilgrims assert their social identities in their tales. Offenses and
clashes occur, as seen with the Wife and the Pardoner.
The Wife of Bath
Concerns addressed in the Prologue are:
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Sexual Ideology
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Economic Independence
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Marital Power
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The Wife “refuses to let herself be exploited by a society where
women have no education and few liberties under the law…where rich
old men acquire young girls as property” (94).
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Husband Five: anti-feminist
A controversial character:
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She is mocked, patronized, (prologue, the Pardoner, the Clerk, the
Friar.); she is seen as an intellectual, audacious character—what do
you think?
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GENRE: Is this an antifeminist satire, or a critique of antifeminist
satire?
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STYLE: verse form of rhyming, pentameter couplets.
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Sections to review:
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(1-168) defense of multiple marriages
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(199-508) how she exploited her first four spouses
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(509-834) narration of marriage five—she loves him and that
makes her vulnerable.
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THEME: addresses the woe and “intense competitiveness
of marriage” (95).
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STYLE: use of learned language, and the urban language
of the fabliaux.
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Is the wife one such as those in Jankyn’s books of wicked
wives?
The Tale:
An elegant romance/folk tale.
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The motif of the fairy bride and the “inversion of gender roles that are important in
Lanval…” (96).
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The long sermon on the topic of “gentilesse”
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(nobility, upper class niceness, and qualifying to be upper class).
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GENRE: the Breton lay
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STYLE: loose, iambic pentameter couplets—the first half is in
public, the second in private
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Romance
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Didactic sermon
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TOPICS: marriage, what makes a good marriage, what
makes beauty.
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What do the knight and the lady learn?
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In this tale, what kind of crime is rape? (compare to the tale of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
The Pardoner
He is a vice character, one who is a confidence man. In his monologue, he will reveal his tricks
(the exemplum) as a literary confession; however, he is not repentant.
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Note the Liar’s Paradox”: can a liar tell the truth (97)?
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CHAUCER: does satire’s portrayal of vice cause us to reform, or teach us to do
worse?
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Speech as a revelation of self.
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Botanical imagery in this tale: “sins of the mouth” are gluttony,
gambling, and false oaths.
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DISGUST is an element Chaucer uses in this tale.
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“How does the Pardoner’s speech have the power to fleece his audience?”
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GENRE: literary confession; sermon with exempla; sales pitch, monologue;
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Anti-clerical satire
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Biblical allusions
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THEME: preaching against the sins of the mouth
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Rhetoric Term: Apostrophe
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STYLE: quick, “ordinary” speech
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Questions;
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What is the relation between the Prologue and the Tale?
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What perversions or “weirdness” are seen in Chaucer’s
characterization of the Pardoner?
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Do you recoil, or are you, as a reader, drawn to him?
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What is significant about the old man in the tale?