The Canterbury Tales Study Guide
Prepare to explore the culture, life, and people of Middle Ages in these 24 stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer. The author was close to the King and wrote the text while being at the height of his career in the justice of the state. His experiences are reflected in the stories.
If you think that this is a boring book to be used for bedtime reading – you couldn’t be more wrong. So prepare yourself to be amazed and vowed! Each story is about human passions, morals, and vices. They all glorify and describe a man at his best and his worst.
What makes the “Canterbury Tales” so popular is the fact that the writer doesn't stick to one style or genre. He is constantly experimenting and the reader plays an active part in this experiment. Imagine reading a tragic myth about brothers who fell in love with the same girl… Then all of the sudden the story goes into a church servant kissing a student’s derriere in the dark thinking he is kissing the lips of his beloved lady. No wonder he’s surprised why his loved one has such a hairy mouth!
All the stories are different and unique: some of them are sad others are funny and mischievous. But all of them are meaningful and have a moral background to them. The language of the text can be a bit tricky since it’s written in Middle English. But it only adds to the style and interpretation of the stories.
Geoffrey Chaucer is a legend, not just a writer. He can be truly called the father of British poetry. In his words, the writer managed to impersonate the history of the country, making it vivid and interesting. Each of the pilgrims that actually tell the story represents a separate class. Through their words, we discover the negatives perceptions towards other classes of British society and Chaucer’s skepticism towards some of them, particularly the church servants.
Author: Levi Jennings
New Essays
As the conscientious reader nears completion of The Canterbury Tales, they have seen that Chaucer has written about various types of belief systems such as physiognomy, alchemy, fairies and spells, and pagan mythology. Yet, of all the belief systems that Chaucer explores in The Canterbury Tales...
Irony is a form of speech in which the real meaning is concealed or contradicted by the words used. There are three tales that are fantastic demonstrations of irony. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”, “The Pardoner’s Tale”, and “The Nun Priest’s Tale” are the three. While each one is different, each uses...
Avarice: Geoffrey Chaucer's Time Geoffrey Chaucer is the father of poetry, he has written many poems as well as various stories in his time. Moreover, in his literary masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer has recounts tales about a pilgrimage to Canterbury. However, certain stories in the...
Satire of the Knight in prologue and Knight's Tale Satire. Satire is a biting literary tool, one that Geoffery Chaucer used liberally when he wrote his Canterbury Tales. Webster's New World Dictionary says that satire is "the use of ridicule, sarcasm, etc. to attack vices, follies, etc. " Using...