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Thomas's gift turns out to be a giant fart, which Chaucer describes using richly comedic imagery: "Ther nys no capul, drawynge in a cart, / That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun," ("Summoner's Tale," lines 486-487). The humor continues to enliven the Summoner's tale; toward the end the characters seriously debate how to divide up a fart.
Chaucer's use of comedy and farcical imagery parallels his mockery of the clergy, of the "First Estate" which claims moral superiority. Furthermore, the Friar and the Summoner were both outsmarted. Through the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer implies that the feudal caste system is hilariously outmoded as well as being a source of evil.
Furthermore, the Friar and the Summoner both note that men of the cloth often hypocritically extort money in the name of the Church. Such men claim moral righteousness while they exploit other people and distort Christian spirituality. Their actions are direct insults to scripture, and both the Summoner and the Friar allude to Biblical allegory to prove their points. For example, the Summoner devotes several verses to Biblical allegories of abstinence. Chaucer's inclusion of Biblical references serves as counterpoint to the examples of evil behavior. Furthermore, the Summoner, and therefore Chaucer, does not defend Thomas's behavior: the lady of the house in the Summoner's story describes Thomas's fart joke as being churlish and says that "His sike heed is ful of vanytee"...
In the Friar's Tale, Chaucer implied that lechery is less a crime than Church-sanctioned hypocrisy and extortion. In the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer similarly suggests that vanity and churlishness are less significant moral slip-ups than Church-sanctioned extortion.
The Summoner's tale is more filled with dialogue than was the Friar's Tale, making it a more engaging and faster-paced story. However, both the Summoner and the Friar reach the same conclusion regarding the nature of good and evil: true evil is neither lechery nor vanity but abuse of power, hypocrisy, and greed. True good is the exposure of such evils and the sincere attempts to reform. Chaucer shows that the Bible and its teachings are essentially good when they are not distorted by Church hypocrisy and greed. In both the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer presents Church bureaucracy and feudalism as the evil root causes of social injustice.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Librarius online version retrieved…
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. Librarius online version retrieved Nov 2, 2005 at http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm
At which point, Palaomon would marry Emelye. This is significant, because it is highlighting how the various outcomes of different events can change quickly. As the knight is drawing upon his own experiences to: illustrate how your personal fortunes can change (based upon your level of preparedness for them). ("The Knight's Tale Part 1 -- 2," 2011) ("The Knight's Tale Part 3 -- 4," 2011) When you step back and
Canterbury Tales are a collection of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300s. At the end of the contest and pilgrimage, the person who has told the best story will win a free meal at the Tabard Inn in Southwark. Among the most popular tales in the book are "The Knight's Tale," "The Miller's Tale," and "The Wife of Bath's Tale." "The Knight's Tale" is a story that follows
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
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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
The contrast between the pardoner and the content of his tale also shows that from a literary perspective, Chaucer was illustrating a new subtly of character. What a character thought he was like (a holy man) might not be who he or she actually was. This could be revealed through involuntary 'slips of the tongue,' like the pardoner condemning greed, even while he was a greedy person in life.