...Because Chaucer included such a wide array of pilgrims in the Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, it is difficult to make a general statement that applies to every single person. It is, however, possible to note a couple of traits that apply to most of the pilgrims, even if there are a few exceptions. First and foremost, it is clear that the vast majority of the religious pilgrims are either corrupt or lack true religious convictions. The Pardoner, for example, takes advantage of poor parish priests through "double talk and tricks," convincing them to buy religious relics of extremely questionable origin. The Monk, similarly, uses his position enrich himself, exchanging religious services for money or gifts. The Monk, the narrator notes, "was an easy man in giving shrift, when sure of getting a substantial gift." With few exceptions (the notes at the end of the chapter notes that the Knight, Parson, and Ploughman are the only exemplary pilgrims), the pilgrims are generally unlikeable and immoral. While the speaker gives long descriptions of many of his fellow pilgrims, he does not spend much time speaking about himself. When he remarks that he is describing the other pilgrims "as they appear to him," he is doing a couple of things. First, he is informing the reader that his observations include personal biases; the descriptions are not absolute truth coming from an omniscient narrator but rather are filtered through the lens of a character in the story. Second, the narrator is...
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...The play “Everyman” is about a complacent Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end. The play shows the hero’s progression from despair and fear of death to a “Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption.” Throughout the play Everyman is deserted by things that he thought were of great importance portrayed by characters that take the names of the things they represent. Throughout the play Everyman asks the characters to accompany him on his journey to death. He starts with Fellowship, his friends, who promises to go with him until they are informed of the destination. They desert Everyman at that point. He calls upon people who are closer to him, Kindred and Cousin, his kinsmen. They also promise to “live and die together,” but, when asked to accompany Everyman, they remind of the things he never did for them and desert him. Everyman then calls upon Goods, his material possessions. Goods explains to him that they cannot go on the journey with him, so he is once again deserted. Good Deeds then gets called upon. They say that even though they want to go on the journey, they are unable to at the moment. They advise Everyman to speak to Knowledge. Knowledge is the one that brings Everyman on the journey to cleanse himself. They first go to Confession, which gives him a penance. Once he does his penance, Good Deeds is able to rise from the ground. They then call upon Discretion, Strength, Five Wits, and Beauty. At first they follow him on his journey...
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...Death is treated and perceived in many societies as the taker of human life. Death is loathed treated with fear and is cruel and unforgiving. Similarly I think of death in the same line because it takes away our loved ones from us, it cannot be stopped, is inevitable and brings pain, grieve and sorrow in people's life's .Death always casts a dark shadow over peoples life. Death is treated as all gloom since an individual is severed from the living. The interpretation of death lies in one belief about death and life. The interpretation of death is relative depending on a persons view point on the same. In the biblical and Christian interpretation the death of a person is defined either as being good or bad depending on the kind of life the person lived. Thus for a person who lived a good life thus his death is good unlike one who led a wicked and bad life. From a Christian perspective those who die in sin will live in eternal pain and suffering in a world of fire and brimstone. However for the righteous they hope for greater and wonderful things in the next life. Theirs will be a life of singing and dancing sharing n the glory of God. To them they will head to paradise. Thus death can not be classified as bad and cruel if one has lived a righteous and good life. This is so because such a person always plans to move a better place in the future. Thus death is only a stepping stone or means of transition to a better life hoped for. This is a natural part of a person's life, in...
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...likes to antagonize others, everyone seems to recognize that particular person and his faults. Well in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales that role is filled by the Miller. He is rude and disrespectful drunk who aggravates the rest of the pilgrims. Throughout Chaucer’s frame tell narrative, the Miller is never seen in a good light. He invokes crude humor into his tale which distinguishes it from all other tales. The Miller is a multifaceted character in this tale, who begets conflict on the pilgrimage to Canterbury. The Miller’s physical appearance deeply reflects his personality. His fiery red hair is much like his outlandish personality. Much like his hair, he is a very noticeable member of the pilgrimage, but unfortunately for all the wrong reasons. The Miller does not hold back in conversation and speaks his mind to the point of cruelty. He has a brawny physic that parallels to his intense and over-bearing persona. The Miller overwhelms conversations and stories told throughout the pilgrimage. He consistently interrupts others and takes advantage of those not willing to stand up to him. An obscene wart on his nose with red hairs protruding out of it, demonstrates the Miller’s human characteristic of annoyance. His wart was so repugnant that one could not stop staring at it. His personality has connection to this thought by the way that the Miller was so out there that one was forced to be aware of his presence. He is constantly harassing people by way of story telling, snotty...
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...| Custom Perceptions and Treatment of Death in Everyman essay paper writing serviceSample Essays > Religion > Perceptions and Treatment of Death in Everyman > Buy an essay ← Womens Rights | Contemporary Issues in Eastern Religion → | Buy Perceptions and Treatment of Death in Everyman essay paper onlineDeath is treated and perceived in many societies as the taker of human life. Death is loathed treated with fear and is cruel and unforgiving. Similarly I think of death in the same line because it takes away our loved ones from us, it cannot be stopped, is inevitable and brings pain, grieve and sorrow in people's life's .Death always casts a dark shadow over peoples life. Death is treated as all gloom since an individual is severed from the living. The interpretation of death lies in one belief about death and life. The interpretation of death is relative depending on a persons view point on the same. In the biblical and Christian interpretation the death of a person is defined either as being good or bad depending on the kind of life the person lived. Thus for a person who lived a good life thus his death is good unlike one who led a wicked and bad life. From a Christian perspective those who die in sin will live in eternal pain and suffering in a world of fire and brimstone. However for the righteous they hope for greater and wonderful things in the next life. Theirs will be a life of singing and dancing sharing n the glory of God. To them they will head to paradise.Thus...
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...She is perhaps Chaucer's most attracted character. She is an obsessive seamstress. She is somewhat deaf. She is forever first at the offering at the mass, and if an important goes ahead of her, she feels depressed. She wears head coverings to the mass which the narrator thinks weighs 10 pounds. She has taken three pilgrimages to Jerusalem and has had five husbands. She has also been to Rome, Cologne and other pilgrimage sites. Her teeth have gaps between them. She is cheerful and talkative, and she gives good love recommendation since she has had a lot of knowledge. She is vain, bossy and immoral, a character typically portrayed by woman hating writers. But Chaucer's portrayal is so sensible and caring that it is hard to believe that he wanted to show her as a satire of a dreadful woman. She has married 5 times and maintains that Christ has never preached that people should be satisfied with one marriage. She affirms that Jesus had stressed that one should go ahead and enjoy bodily pleasures. Her first three husbands were quiet polite while the last two were awful. The first three were wealthy old and impotent. They handed over all their possessions to her in return for physical favours. She used her body at will to extract what she wished from these men. She deliberately used to start quarreling with these men by hurling a handful of grievances and abject lies of their alleged affairs so that she could cover up her follies with young men. She used these means to control...
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...Pilgrimages The definition of a pilgrimage is, a long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance. Usually a religious pilgrimage is one in which the pilgrim seeks to strengthen or expand their faiths and beliefs. The Christian faith has a long tradition of pilgrimage, the most popular destination for English pilgrims before the reformation was Canterbury Cathedral and its shrine to Thomas Beckett, martyred in 1170, and made famous in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. Modern day Christians (particularly Roman Catholics) make pilgrimages to Lourdes, in the belief that the waters are responsible for numerous medical miracles. Of the five million people who visit each year, most are sick or disabled and seeking a cure for their condition. Globally the most well-known pilgrimage is the Muslim Hajj. The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam and is a religious duty of every able bodied Muslim who can afford to travel to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, at least once in his or her lifetime. In contrast to a religious pilgrimage a “modern” pilgrimage is no less of a transformative experience but tends not to have organised religion as its motivation. An example of a modern pilgrimage is, visiting ground zero in New York, the site were the world trade towers stood, which attracted five million visitors, who paid their respects to the dead in 2011, the tenth anniversary of the attacks. It is common to refer to “pilgrimages” to sporting arenas by fans of that team...
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...Culture The Land of the Howling... Culture is the totality of people’s lifestyles and life stories. It summarizes one’s place’s history and reflects its civilization. It is an identity. There is no place without culture; there is no society without culture. Without it, there is no existence; no stories to share to future generations. Catanduanes, a small kidney-shaped island in the Pacific, abounds with a conglomeration of folkways and mores which constitute its rich culture. Some of these stories are commendable while others are dishonourable to some extent. Catanduanes has been known as the “Land of the Howling Winds” because of the many strong tropical cyclones that visit it every year and leave it devastated and desolated like a lover forsaken by a beloved. But aside from this epithet affixed to our province which implies its geographical condition and location, are there still other words we can attach to the phrase “Land of the Howling...” which in one way or another will help other people imagine and understand what our province really is? Well, maybe we just need to try. Land of the Howling Pigs and Drunkards Percy Bysshe Shelley in his “Ode to the West Wind” wrote, “O trumpet of the Prophecy, If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’. Cirilo Bautista, that celebrated Filipino poet, wrote in one of his essays, “If summer comes, can teacher seminars be far behind?”. I, on the other hand ask, “If summer comes, can fiestas be far behind?” This is the summer...
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...December, 1170. Bucket was not keen to follow the king's orders blindly, this angered the king. The pilgrimage was important in the middle age because a pilgrimage is a journey of great moral or spiritual significance. In the middle ages, the pilgrimage was important since it was believed that if you prayed at the shrines you might be forgiven your sins and had more chance to heaven. Pilgrims visit Becket's shrine because it was rumored that when people were touched by his cloth they got cured from a variety of illnesses such as epilepsy, leprosy and blindness. The type of people who would have been pilgrims are those who have undertaken a physical journey often a very long and difficult one to a distant sacred place, for example, like the shrine. Going on a pilgrimage in the middle ages was a long and difficult journey. The costs involved were dependent on one pilgrimage, where one was going to stay and type of travel. Some of the Pilgrim routes were specific roads that pilgrims travelled on, where the road itself was a thing to experience for religious reasons. The route from London to the Becket Shrine in Canterbury was of this type, as was the Way of St. James. Long distance travelling in general was quite a dangerous activity, since cases of people being robbed along the highways were high. The pilgrims would travel in groups to enhance security. People that are pilgrimage would usually only carry what they needed, and would share with those who had little to...
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...Pilgrimages have taken place since the earliest days of the Church, by those who set out to see the places where Jesus had once resided and preached. Looking at pilgrimages through a religious aspect, a pilgrimage is a journey one initiates to a sacred place to ask for the Lord’s blessing, or to inquire healing. In the Middle Ages the church strongly urged people to voyage to holy places labeled shrines. It was believed that if you prayed at these shrines there was a possibility you could be forgiven for your sins, and have more of a chance to be accepted into Heaven (Spartacus Edu 1). King of Kent, known as King Ethelbert handed over an undersized church in Canterbury to Augustine. Augustine transformed the churches’ architecture and it soon...
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...Byronic Hero Romantic poet Lord Byron (George Gordon) is credited with the development of prototypical anti-hero, referred to as the Byronic hero. Like Childe Harold in Byron’s popular Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, the Byronic hero is a larger-than-life, but flawed character who would be considered, by traditional standards, to be a rebel. Typically, the Byronic hero: * Exhibits conflicting emotions and excessive moodiness; * Is passionate about a particular issue; * Can be introspective and critical of himself; * Struggles with his own sense of integrity; * Operates largely within his own set of rules; * Rejects accepted codes and norms of society; * Is fiercely independent and strongly individual; * Is a loner (whether imposed by society or self-imposed); * Displays a respect for rank and privilege; * Has a troubled or mysterious past; * Can be cynical, demanding, and arrogant; * Exhibits self-destructive tendencies and behavior; This hyper-sensitive loner, obsessively following a quest – which, being a Romantic Quest, is doomed to failure – usually ends up dead at the end of his story, either as the unintended consequence of the hero’s own choices and actions, or as a conscious choice. Gatsby’s quest for Daisy, the uncertainty surrounding how he amassed so vast a fortune so quickly, his aloofness around everyone except the Object of his Quest, the fact that it is not enough that Daisy love him but that she must also declare...
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...they should be.’[1] (Medwin, Nov 1821- Mar 1822 (Cf. Ideality of Art)) p. 195 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was Lord George Gordon Byron’s first composition which he begun in 1809 and finally completed in 1818. The structure of the poem follows a young promising knight through his journey around Europe. The poem is autobiographical: Byron uses Childe Harold as a fictional figure to respond to, and comment on, life and experiences around Europe whilst Byron was undertaking his own ‘Tour’. The Grand Tour ‘became the fashionable way for young male aristocrats to complete an education whose foundation was classical Greek and Roman history, rhetoric, philosophy, and poetry.’[2] As a Romantic poet, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Byron uses the depiction of nature as a way to express his opinions of place. Childe Harold is full of images and motifs which takes its reader on a journey, or a pilgrimage, of self-discovery and through foreign lands in the truly beautiful Byronic style. Politics have dominated the critical analysis of Childe Harold in the past, centred on the response of the Battle of Waterloo in Canto III and IV. Nonetheless, Byron’s presentation of the women in the text offers the reader a fresh understanding of the different countries visited by Childe Harold of which I shall concentrate on Spain, Greece and the City of Rome. Spain is described in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage as a ‘splendid sight to see/ (For one who hath no...
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...Everyman, like other morality plays, seeks to present a religious lesson through allegorical figures representing abstract characteristics. The play centers on the life of everyman, a wealthy man, who is suddenly called by death to appear before God for judgment. On his journey to meet God, he seeks assistance from lifelong companions Fellowship (Friends), kindred and cousins (family), and Goods (material wealth), but all abandoned him. Because he has neglected her in life, good deed is too weak to accompany everyman on his journey. She advises him to call on knowledge (awareness of sin). Knowledge escorts everyman to confession, who directs him to do penance. In the process of everyman’s penance, good deed is strengthened and is finally able to accompany everyman to his final reckoning. Everyman, now wearing the garment of contrition, continues his journey. Until now it was a quest for spiritual health but increasingly it is showing the qualities of a pilgrimage to salvation. Everyman, knowledge, and good deeds are joined on the journey by beauty, strength, disgretion, and five wits. After donating his wealth to charity, Everyman follows the advice of knowledge and five wits and receives the sacraments of communion and extreme unction. Meanwhile, knowledge and five wits converse on the subject of corrupt priests in the church. Approaching his grave, Everyman is again deserted by all his companions except knowledge and good deeds. As the story closes, knowledge remains...
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...In Everyman and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the protagonists are faced with their judgment day and presented with an account of their lives. Everyman is a man wealthy materialistically, while Faustus is wealthy in arts such as logic, medicine, law, and divinity. Everyman represents the men in society who are fixed in their material lives and lose sight of Christ. He befriends men who abandon him while on a pilgrimage to Christ, learning that what he once valued, his wealth, is useless to him when he has to account for his lack of good deeds. Faustus unlimited intelligence, yet he is dissatisfied with his gift; he would prefer experiment with black magic. Faustus gives his soul to the devil in exchange for the power to perform black magic, but he is ultimately damned to hell because of his decision and failure to recognize his fault. Faustus and Everyman fail to recognize Christ and their afterlife is left at stake. On the road to salvation, death serves as a groundbreaking event in the life of mortal men. Throughout their quest, Everyman and Faustus struggle to prove themselves worthy of greater afterlife through misusage of their mortal lives. Everyman is approached by the devil with a pilgrimage which he must partake, one where he will not come back alive. He seeks help in that those who befriend and abandon him during his lifetime such as: beauty, goods, and knowledge cannot help him on his journey. Good Deeds is the only character that could assist everyman, but...
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...Everyman by anonymous The time of death is uncertain for everyman. An anonymous author in the late fifteenth century wrote this morality play that shows how a single character handles the news of his death and how he prepares for it. The main character referred to as “Everyman” is visited by death. God is grieved by the unrighteousness of man so he sends death to send Everyman on a pilgrimage (Gyamfi & Schmidt, 2011). Everyman is also required to bring with him a reckoning of his days on earth. In the play, Everyman expresses that he needs more time to gather up his things and organize his book of reckoning but death informs Everyman that there is no second chance (Gyamfi & Schmidt, 2011). Everyman calls on his goods to go with him on the journey to death and Goods rejects the offer because he belongs in the world and no one truly owns goods. Everyman is distraught by the news and searches for other people and things to go accompany him to his death. Fellowship, cousin, kinsmen sympathize with everyman on his demise but they are unable to go on such a dreadful journey. Everyman turns to his good deeds to accompany him on this journey but good deeds is weak because Everyman did not do many good works in his life time. Everyman was more focused on his material things rather than taking care of others (Gyamfi & Schmidt, 2011 p 277). Good deeds refers everyman to knowledge because knowledge can lead everyman to a place of forgiveness. Through forgiveness and confession, Everyman...
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