Geoffrey Chaucer\'s Canterbury Tales (Make Read Wife

¶ … Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (make read Wife Bath's Tale, Prologue), respond: This week,'ve read Prologue Canterbury Tales. From 've read (including Prologue), create a profile character.

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Character profiles

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales chronicles the procession of a series of pilgrims to visit the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. The pilgrims that make up the party of travelers span from the highest classes of the aristocracy and priesthood to lower-class members of common trades. One example of a high-born pilgrim is that of the Knight. The Knight tells a tale of two cousins warring for a beautiful woman's hand; at the end of the tale, as one of the cousins dies fighting for her love, he tells her to marry the other man. The tale reinforces the values of courtly love.

In contrast, the bawdy Miller's tale satirizes the notion of perfect, transcendent love. While the Knight is noble and full of high ideals, the Miller is earthy and enjoys telling dirty stories. As in the Knight's tale, two men are warring over a woman's hand. Alisoun, the heroine, is married to a much older man, a carpenter named John. Alisoun does not love John. She has an affair with the lodger boarding at her home, a scholar of divinity named Nicholas. When Alisoun and Nicholas play a nasty trick on one of her other suitors, the parish clerk Absolon, the story ends with Absolon branding Nicholas on the bottom with a pair of hot pokers. The Miller is a lower-class character who enjoys drinking, and this is reflected in his story. His view of the church and the nobility are in stark contrast to the reverence with which the Knight regards courtly love.

Chaucer further satirizes religion in the "Reeve's Tale." The Reeve is angered by the Miller's tale depicting carpenters as stupid and foolish, since the Reeve was once a carpenter himself. He responds with a tale about a miller named Simkin who tries to trick two students but ends up getting tricked himself, as his wife and adult daughter are deflowered by the students. The Reeve, a member of the church, is cold and efficient, and very in his character and appearance than the Miller. However, his tale is just as sexualized and bawdy as "The Miller's Tale," it merely reverses the identity of the tradesperson who is tricked. Part of the Reeve's anger may lie in the fact hat he is not pleased to be reminded of his lower-class, tradesman's past.