Characterization in Canterbury Tales Essay
By cover to hide, Geoffry Chaucer’s late 14th century assortment of short tales, Canterbury Reports, provides visitors with a exceptional literary encounter.
Chaucer compiles twenty-four brief allegories of no connection, yet all of the narrators understand eachother. One more interesting trait of Chaucer’s masterpiece occurs in the beginning as he dedicates above twenty webpages just to portrayal of the story tellers. Chaucer takes about a webpage to deeply introduce you to each figure who explains to their own anagnorisis. It has been explained of Chaucer’s characterization that “the large variety of wealth of detail produces the impression of a certain person. But, taken with each other, it all adds up to a comparatively simple stereotype” (Prompt) Chaucer switches into such fine detail in his sexual act that he almost generally seems to create real persons.
For the most part, Chaucer stereotypically characterizes each figure, but in the story about another person of their same type, he satirically and indirectly brands them contradictary to the reader’s initial opinions of the equatable narrating personas. Chaucer makes these contradictart characterizations to exhibit the faults in contemporary society. Chaucer sets up the reader with a stereotypical explanation of each figure showing all of them what qualities the character types should have got, then simulatenously in the tales points out characteristics that one could view because corrupt and ironic.
In the “Shipman’s tale”, a monk goes in back of his finest friend’s back and sleeps with his wife. Actually not something a stereotypical monk have to do. In the “Friar’s Tale”, a summoner corruptly blackmails visitors to keep from summoning them.
Finally in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, a knight rapes a women which will contradict’s Chaucer’s initial noble description of the Knight. Inside the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”, a “lusty” knight recognizes a maiden “alone as she was born”, and despite her refusal “by very push he took her maidenhead” (282). This Knight contradicts Chaucer’s preliminary direct portrayal of the Knight in the sexual act having “truth, honor, generousness, and courtesy” (4). Chaucer describes the Knight in his prologue since the unoriginal “distinguished”, “modest”, “perfect gentle-knight”(5). The “Wife of Bath’s Tale” could hardly portray the knight in different more satrical of a lumination.
The knight’s brutal rasurado of the first creates situational irony since it completely contradicts the information of Chaucer’s “gentle” knight (5). Chaucer points out that even the the majority of noble and respected men can easily committ terrible acts of violence that go against their particular expected ideals. But also men who also do not have a similar class ranking as the knight can still committ immoral acts that go against their very own expected activities.
In Chaucer’s prologue, this individual characterizes a Summoner. He does not necessarily portray the Summoner as being a noble guy, but respectable as “children are afraid if he appears” (20). A respectable Summoner that society needs to do his job proper, the “Friar’s Tale” identifies a Summoner who does anything but do his task moraly and respectfully, “he was a theif, a summoner, and a pimp” (295). The “Friar’s Tale” reveals a Summoner who “rode forth to catch his prey” when he would blackmail people callously for money to be able to not Invite them to courtroom (295).
Chaucer victimizes the folks the Summoner takes advantage of simply by lableing all of them as “prey” and not directly characterizes the Summoner as heartless and manipulative. Culture expects a Summoner to truthfully carry out his task without stealing people’s money in exchange to get a court discharge. The “Friar’s Tale” portrays a dirty Summoner which contradicts the stereotypical Summoner Chaucer describes in his prologue. This unethical Summoner shows the ill in society that lots of Summoners take advantage of people in the same way the Summoner does inside the “Friar’s Tale”
