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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 not all medieval women were desexualized in literature, and portrayed as shrinking maidens or nuns. Her tale seems openly feminist: it depicts a knight who must rely upon an old woman's wisdom to fulfill his quest, and after he is forced to marry her, she offers him a choice: she can be beautiful and unfaithful, or ugly and faithful. When given the option to choose the knight surrenders his choice to his wife -- to which the woman responds that he chose correctly, and now she will always be lovely and faithful as his reward.
The moral is clear -- to have an agreeable and happy wife, she must have her liberty. Yet the Wife admits that one...
Also, the crime the knight of her Tale is being punished for is a sexual crime against a woman, although he seems redeemed in the end. However, even though the Wife of Bath has not always lived the feminist moral expressed at the end of her tale, the fact that Chaucer includes such a complex and strong woman in his cast of characters shows the fact that gender relations were far more ambiguous than is often assumed. Marriage could give a widow power and money, and women were not always faithful. The gap-toothed Wife says that while Christ might be pure and perfect, she is of the world and is not above sexual desire. She proudly calls herself a humble loaf of bread in contrast to fine white bread some women might be, and she defends herself when attacked by the more sanctimonious people on the pilgrimage.
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
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
Gender Women occupy conflicted and ambiguous roles in Middle English and Renaissance English literature. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night all show how male authors in particular grappled with the role of women in an increasingly patriarchal society. Women feature prominently in each of these stories, even if their status and perceived morality is questionable. Each of these stories features women who have a
Knighthood and Chivalry: Heroism, Love, and Honor in "Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" Fourteenth century literature was characteristically based on medieval period, wherein the dominance of Christianity is evident in Western society during that time. Influenced by the image of a knight, who serves as a warrior and man of noble birth, literary works during this period centered on the virtues taught to be
For the poet, Christianity must be devoid of the cultures of corruption and hypocrisy that prevailed during his time. Ideally, a religion, in order to be respected and followed by the people, must maintain a clean image -- that is, an image that reflects the truth of its teachings, wherein its religious principles are embodied by the people who make up the Church. It is also through "Canterbury" that Chaucer
Humanities Annotated Bibliography Annotated Bibliography Beowulf: A dual-language edition. (1977). NY: Doubleday. One of the most striking examples of literature to come out of the Dark Ages was Beowulf, created by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet and considered by many scholars to be the most important work of its time. There is no official date to the work, but it has been traced to somewhere between the 8th and the early 11th Century.