...fourteenth century Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales. The Canterbury Tales included several fictitious pilgrims, each having a prologue to describe them and a story to tell. The Pardoner, Chaucer's final pilgrim, acts and looks in a way deplorable to the rest of the travelers. The Pardoner is "man" most notable for his greed, physical abnormalities, and denial of the fictitious. His tale condemns his own nature, and shows the effects of alcohol on the human superego. Chaucer's description of the Pardoner is crucial to an understanding of his tale. The Pardoner's prologue although short, introduces the pardoner as a greedy man, who is willing to take advantage of others to get his fortune. His primary role as a pardoner is to...
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...The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer is an iconic work of British literature representative of the Middle Ages. In it, a group of travelers tells twenty-four different stories, which each reveal something about their storyteller and audience. Throughout the poem, these revelations provide commentary on the social class system in England of Chaucer’s time; Chaucer’s creativity in “The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale” allows him to demonstrate several viewpoints of these interactions between the clergy and the commoners. Before examining these viewpoints, it is important to consider the historical context of the text; without it, the significance of Chaucer’s work cannot fully be grasped. Chaucer lived between approximately the years 1343 and...
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...Miranda Coker Mrs. Ashley Coker English IV Honors 9 January 2015 The Corruption of the Medieval Catholic Church in The Canterbury Tales In the Fourteenth Century, the Catholic Church took over Ireland, England, and almost all of Europe. Through a number of Crusades, which spanned about two hundred years, the church acquired a great amount of wealth. As a result of this tremendous accumulation of wealth, as well as an over emphasis on lavish places of worship, cathedrals were built in all of the larger cities. However, the communities of the middle and lower class in society suffered from poverty, resulting in sickness and death (“Greed and Corruption in The Canterbury Tales” 1). Why sit back, turn a deaf ear, and watch the people suffer and die while spending a fortune on places of worship? This is most likely the reason why Geoffrey Chaucer portrays some characters in The Canterbury Tales, such as the Pardoner, Friar, and Monk, as being greedy and often hypocritical. The Pardoner is a perfect example of this corruption. His work in the church is to hear the confessions of wrong-doers and pardon them of their sins. As he travels, he confesses to using a particular tale to manipulate his audiences. The Pardoner explains that he pushes guilt into the people by telling them that greed is the root of all evil, in order to coax them into giving him offerings. These offerings go directly into his greedy hands. Hardly a man of God, he demonstrates or reveals his self-centered...
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...Betrayal In The Pardoner, the betrayal happen when the old man tells the three men to go over to the tree and they go over there and find like seven or eight bags of gold and then they draw like a straw and they make the shortest go get food a wine ,but then they kill him and finally they separate the gold and finally the other two drink the wine and they end up all dying in the end. The readers learn that greed can lead to violence and ultimately lead to death. The reader learns about the way gold can lead to bad things. All of the guys betray each other and die in The Pardoner. In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales , Betrayal is shown through The Pardoner and The Summoner . The theme for it is I judge he was a gelding or a mare means not everyone is equal (Chaucer 161).The Squire is the motif because he is very different because of his social standing compare to his dad the knight. The literary elements for The Pardoner is iambic pentameter because in a few sentences it shows a stressed syllable followed by one that is not stressed . Another theme for The Pardoner's is The Pardoner in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is dishonest. The Pardoner often preaches about how money is the root of all evil. Money is the root of all evil...
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...The pardoner speaks of three men that lost their lives due to greed. This leaves the reader with the knowledge that money is the root of all evil. Another aspect to consider is the greed of the pardoner. The pardoner seeks a commission from his audience for his tales. He himself is also one that is overtaken by money. Does he sincerely care about the condition of one's soul or is he just out for a quick buck? On page 9, the pardoner comments that his "holy pardon cures and will suffice/ So that it bring me gold, or silver brings/ Or else, I care not- brooches, spoons, or rings." Personally, I believe that the pardoner is willing to tell just about anything to receive money for himself. The story also portrays the effects that greed has on one's life. The tale of the three men overtaken with greed relates to this present decade of people. "Show me the money" has been the theme of this generation. Everyone is caught up in his or her own battle of gaining their share of the riches. This is very similar to the tale of the three men that struck gold under the oak tree. The men were concerned with how to travel with the money without looking like robbers as noted when they stated, "For men would say that we were robbers strong/ and we'd, for our own treasure, hang ere long" (p 7). They were not concerned about whose money they were stealing they cared only about their personal statue. They did not want to appear as robbers, so they planned to travel at night as seen in this quote on...
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...The church in England in the fourteenth century was a dominating presence in the life of nearly every citizen. Though the church presented certain advantageous and exploitive opportunities for some, the presence of religion was to others much more burdensome. Chaucer expresses the interruptive aspect of the church through the various characters and situations he creates within his writing. In the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer utilizes rhyme scheme and detailed imagery of both physical traits and personality traits in his description of the Prioress and the Pardoner to satirize the fourteenth-century practice of sending individuals who lack any ecclesiastical tendencies to work in the church. While the Pardoner represents...
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...MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORT OF UKRAINE IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LVIV THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES LINGUISTIC MEANS OF POTRAYING MAIN CHARACTERS IN “THE CANTERBURY TALES” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER COURSE PAPER PRESENTED BY LILIA YAREMA a fourth year student of the English department SUPERVISED BY SPODARYK O. V. an assistant professor of the English department LVIV 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 3-4 CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS…… 5-16 1.1 Linguistic analysis……………………………………………… 5-8 1.2 Discourse and Text analyses….…………….………………….. 9-11 1.3 Stylistic analysis ………………………………………………… 12-16 CHAPTER II. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S CHARACTERS 17-28 2.1 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” ……………………………………… 18-22 2.2 “The Pardoner’s Tale” ………………………………………….. 23-28 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………. 29-30 REFERENCES...… ………………………………………………………….. 31-32 INTRODUCTION The theme of the course paper is “Linguistic means of portraying main characters in “The Canterbury tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer”. This paper intends to make an analysis of the language in the collection of stories “The Canterbury Tales”, written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of 14th century. We will analyze the language used to describe characters. It was based on the idea that every choice made by the author of a sentence is meaningful. Therefore, once we understand the choices...
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...TITLE · The Canterbury Tales AUTHOR · Geoffrey Chaucer TYPE OF WORK · Poetry (two tales are in prose: the Tale of Melibee and the Parson’s Tale) GENRES · Narrative collection of poems; character portraits; parody; estates satire; romance; fabliau LANGUAGE · Middle English TIME AND PLACE WRITTEN · Around 1386–1395, England DATE OF FIRST PUBLICATION · Sometime in the early fifteenth century PUBLISHER · Originally circulated in hand-copied manuscripts NARRATOR · The primary narrator is an anonymous, naïve member of the pilgrimage, who is not described. The other pilgrims narrate most of the tales. POINT OF VIEW · In the General Prologue, the narrator speaks in the first person, describing each of the pilgrims as they appeared to him. Though narrated by different pilgrims, each of the tales is told from an omniscient third-person point of view, providing the reader with the thoughts as well as actions of the characters. TONE · The Canterbury Tales incorporates an impressive range of attitudes toward life and literature. The tales are by turns satirical, elevated, pious, earthy, bawdy, and comical. The reader should not accept the naïve narrator’s point of view as Chaucer’s. TENSE · Past SETTING (TIME) · The late fourteenth century, after 1381 SETTING (PLACE) · The Tabard Inn; the road to Canterbury PROTAGONISTS · Each individual tale has protagonists, but Chaucer’s plan is to make none of his storytellers superior to others; it is an equal company. In the Knight’s Tale, the...
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...Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Image you lived in a world where living in the middle class made you a well respected citizen, well this is the world imagined in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. This was a world re-imagined taking the norm of knight and nobility being top class, and turning it around. This promoted peasant and middle class to rise up make something for themselves. The idea that a person in the middle class could afford to go on a pilgrimage like the one described in The Canterbury Tales. Some topics focused on are in the Canterbury Tales were; why is the rise of middle class so evident in Chaurcer’s tales, and what did the rising of the middle class look and consist of? How is the rise of the middle class evident in this tale, and where is the middle class in the tale from, and why is the rise of the middle class such a surprise and so significant. Many characteristics make up the medieval time period present in Chaucer’s tale, and what is the significance of this...
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...societies throughout history as dishonest members misinterpret and misuse the word of God. This is especially true in fifteenth century England. In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses estates satire, ridiculing not only the Clergymen but all three social classes in order to highlight the flaws of society. He uses specifically uses “The Pardoner’s Tale” to highlight the deep-seated corruption of the Church during this particular time. The social commentary is focused around a Pardoner, authorized to grant forgiveness of sins, or indulgences, as a hyperbolic example of the flaws in the Church. Chaucer exposes increasing corruption, issues with clergymen, and the normality of deception...
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...The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer talks about a pilgrimage. In this story “a group is gathered at Tabard Inn to go on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas à Becket at Canterbury.” (Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. South Carolina McDougall Little British literature. Ed. Janet Allen et. al. Houghton Mifflin, Co. 2009. p.140 ). The host decided to let the group to tell stories to pass time on their way. In this story there are Chaucer’s saints who are honest, ready to help, faithful and on the other hand, there are scoundrels who are greedy, hypocrites, liars. Chaucer's saints are Knight, Parson, and Plowman, and the rest where bad and good in ways. Every character on this pilgrimage have differences and similarities. Saints and...
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...Shlok Kumar Professor Padma Baliga English Literature Upto 1900 13 September 2010 The Canterbury Tales and the Panchatantra: Two Frame Narratives contrasted The East has a wonderful tradition in teaching morals through interesting tales; India has given the world the earliest such tales in the form of the Panchatantra, the Hitopadesa and even the Puranas. The Canterbury Tales and the Panchatantra are both frame narratives- often known as ‘story within a story.’ Yet the target audience of both these works is different. And this arises from the nature of these works. Whilst The Canterbury Tales was written by Chaucer originally for a courtly, upper class audience, the Panchatantra was written to teach the high morals and sensibilities of Vedic literature to three disinterested princes in the simplest language, using animals as symbols and characters. Indeed, the Panchatantra and its derivative work, the Hitopadesa are often dismissed as stories for children. Though these fables are indeed vastly instructive, they also teach a way of thriving in the material world and a way of life itself; the Panchatantra is referred to as a niti-shastra. This paper attempts to contrast the Canterbury Tales with the Panchatantra and illustrate the manner in which the latter is a niti-shastra without being merely populated by abstruse, pithy phrases. We know that in The Canterbury Tales, a group of about 30 pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, across the Thames from...
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...Iaeudyfgioerjhsdgklasd;fkyyyyyguitvbeoitvbuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuueopwbn oserituboew orituoieruotyb uyrouyo rouyoriuyero roituyeroiuy7o oruyo neoruybw0ruy 0wrt9uy rtuyworiuy b0riuyowperiybn ri5uyrowei wr09tuywe4oy w0rtuyei9ry6t94p 9guyoeir 9r8rtu oey riu 8ory 9eroiugjeuorg oerug eori 79eoeri r8tyg rtetym ryjhdfym m h ry uer y5 356 uy7 67 u rt y yt ui ertu tu7 er y er6uy t I bh gufy gtyd trdseyrw cvrbfuytdestf yugtrdrdtyhguh g6duytgiujhuioy yrytguijhiojuigut uhoijiujiytuv ugiojuioguyrfty oihuyfytghujoljm oguyguihoi jigijiop jtfuytfrt5 ertyf deree ws 5rgy u The Knight The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue, and his story is the first in the sequence. The Host clearly admires the Knight, as does the narrator. The narrator seems to remember four main qualities of the Knight. The first is the Knight’s love of ideals—“chivalrie” (prowess), “trouthe” (fidelity), “honour” (reputation), “fredom” (generosity), and “curteisie” (refinement) (General Prologue, 45–46). The second is the Knight’s impressive military career. The Knight has fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian lands and attempted to convert whole cultures by the force of their swords. By Chaucer’s time, the spirit for conducting these wars was dying out, and they were no longer undertaken as frequently. The Knight has battled the Muslims in Egypt, Spain, and Turkey, and the Russian Orthodox in Lithuania and Russia. He has also fought in formal...
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...Throughout the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has various characters tell their tales about one of the seven deadly sins. The seven deadly sins are wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. The Pardoner's Tale displayed wrath. The sin of wrath is manifest in the individual who spurns love, but instead takes the side fury. Three men kill each other for gold, "two murderers receive their due so did the treacherous young poisoner". When the three rioters come across bags full of gold coins they send one of the rioters out to go fetch for some wine and bread. While he is gone the other two rioters come up with a plan to get rid of their other friend by killing him so that they receive more wealth. When they go and kill the friend their...
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...content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 182.69.107.77 on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 10:45:38 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A CONJECTURE ON THE WIFE OF BATH'S PROLOGUE of Bath's the Wife When for the first reading Prologue time, I remember my surprise upon reaching line 193 to find continued for several hundred lines, whereas that the Prologue a tale to follow. With I had expected each reading since, I in adjusting my expecta the same difficulty have experienced found. This repeated experience, tion to what I actually and I suspect it has come to all readers of Chaucer, in finally the matter. The result is a theory cited me to investigate which holds that the first part of the Prologue through line 193 was originally Pro by the present preceded Shipman's a number of lines which were later omitted, and that logue plus to the present the whole served as a Wife's...
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