¶ … Chaucer's "The Monk's Tale"
"The Monk's Tale," from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, is intriging because it is different from the other poems in the collection. Presented by a monk who appears to be very unlike a monk, it focuses on the calamity of life with a slight mention of how fate can intervene and set anyone's life upon a new, and sometimes not better, course. Life is difficult and fate is cruel appears to be the message from this man of the cloth. His tale might have been dark but his message is clear: be happy because misfortune could strike at any moment.
It is a collection of short tales about men who lose their power in oe way or another. Readers are cautioned at the beginning of this tale to let "no one trust a blind prosperity" and to be "warned...
But while it is true that he loved the funny side of life, he was also quite genuine and sincere in his purpose to expose the superficialities of social roles. "If we look at the whole corpus of his work, we see his tragic poems all interrupted, unfinished, or transfigured into celestial comedy" (Garbaty173). Chaucer unlike some tragedy masters of his time was not too concerned with gloom and sadness
The destination is a holy and venerated site, one that should inspire devotion, a spirit of penance, and peace; and it is fitting that a merry man should be the one to invite the other pilgrims to the game of the telling tales. Unlike Dante's pilgrimage through the afterlife, which tends toward a much more spiritual focus, Chaucer's pilgrimage is earthly in the sense that its main focus is on
Perhaps no one has more of a sense of humor about herself and the world than the Wife of Bath. The Wife of Bath shatters a number of stereotypes of the Middle Ages a contemporary reader might possess: first of all, she is socially powerful. As a widow, she is rich, and she is willing to speak her mind. Chaucer's evident delight as a narrator in her lustiness shows that
Of course a Queen would expect to be in charge, but the story serves to support the Wife's rather bad behavior in four of her five marriages. She ends her story by suggesting that every woman should have a young and attractive husband who has the sense to obey his wife. The views of the Wife of Bath must have been startling or even shocking for its day. Relations between
Since they are blank pages, the women possess no direct say in which man will use her to write his story. The result is that men will compete over her and she will remain largely passive in this pursuit. This motif is used by Chaucer both within the Miller's and Knight's tales, and between these two pilgrims; men compete for women in both stories, just as the Knight and
Chaucer's "Retraction" and Its Meaning within the Context of the Canterbury Tales The "Retraction," a fragment that follows the last of the Tales in Chaucer's masterpiece, has attracted much critical attention, as students of Chaucer attempt to divine whether it implies a renunciation on the author's part of his work, or is intended ironically. Benson comments that "the authenticity of the Retraction has been challenged" (Benson, 2000), and certainly it is possible
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