Chaucer lived during a tumultuous period

1

• Chaucer lived during a tumultuous period
• During his youth, the Bubonic Plague terrorized
  Europe, killing a large portion of the population

2

• Throughout Chaucer's life, the Church was in
  upheaval.
• It was caught in a position of deception and
  uncertainty, perhaps because of the Plague and
  economics.
• Nonetheless, the fraud occurring within the holy
  walls influenced Chaucer's work.
• During his lifetime, the Hundred Years War
  between England and France also took place

In 1346, thanks in part to the use of the
longbow, the English defeated a much larger
mounted French force at Crecy, introducing a
period of peace.
3
How the long wars between France England
started.

• Fighting started in the Hundred Years' War
  because the Kings of England - descendants of
  William the Conqueror who still spoke French
  -wanted to rule France as well. France was
  temptingly weak and divided.
• It began with the English King already ruling a
  large part of France and it ended with him ruling
  hardly any.

Who ruled where in 1328
4

• It is this period of political and social turmoil
  in England that allowed Chaucer to produce a
  large body of influential work.
• Known as a poet and often as a friend of the
  nobility, Chaucer was ultimately part of the
  bourgeois of England.

bourgeoisie, n. (French). The merchants,
professional persons (doctors, lawyers,
professors), employers and white collar workers,
as distinguished from (1) The clergy (2) The
nobility and the landed gentry
5

• Very little is actually known about Chaucers
  life, despite his rearing by a middle-class
  family.
• His father was in the wine and leather trade,
  perhaps giving the family their surname -Chaucer-
  meaning a maker of footwear.
• He was a page in a royal household during his
  youth, continued his relationship with royalty
  throughout his life, married the daughter of a
  knight, Philippa, and traveled to France and
  Spain.
• His life was that of an active, responsible civil
  servant

6

• Because of the political unrest of the time and
  Chaucer's sarcasm, he wrote Canterbury Tales
  consisting of a piece of each of England's
  stereotypical citizen archetypes put together in
  a mixing pot on their pilgrimage to Canterbury
• The destination is not as significant as the
  action that occurs along the way. The Tales are
  not even finished and the destination is not even
  reached

SARCASM cutting language remarks that mean the
opposite of what they seem to say and are
intended to mock or deride
7
Archetypes Universal symbols that speak in the
language of the subconscious. They are the ideal
images of deities and other powers
Stereotype a popularly held belief about a type
of person or a group of people which does not
take into account individual differences.
8

• It is likely that Chaucer abandoned his great
  literary work in the last years of his life and
  turned his thoughts to the salvation of his soul.
  
• He not only abandoned the tales but also
  expressed regret for having ever written them,
  except those explicitly religious and moral

Canterbury Cathedral Where Thomas a Becket was
murdered and the location of his shrine
9

• These stories and prologues bring together a
  satire of Chaucer's contemporary England,
  commenting not only on the people of the time,
  but bringing in Christianity, perhaps primeval
  feminism with the Wife of Bath, anti-Semitism,
  sexuality, unfaithfulness, and humor.
• Not all of the tales are finished

Wife of Bath
10
The General Prologue

• This is the key to The Canterbury Tales
• It narrates about the gathering of a group of
  people in an inn that intend to go on a
  pilgrimage to Canterbury (England) next morning.
• In the General Prologue, the narrator of The
  Canterbury Tales, who is one of the pilgrims,
  provides more or less accurate depictions of the
  members of the group and describes why and how
  The Canterbury Tales is told.
• Chaucer determined that each pilgrim should tell
  two tales on the way to Canterbury and two tales
  on the way back.
• The host of the inn offers to be and is appointed
  as judge of the tales as they are told and is
  supposed to determine the best hence winning
  tale.

11
Characters in the Canterbury Tales

• The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale
• The Shipman's Tale
• The Prioress' Prologue and Tale
• Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topas
• The Tale of Melibee
• The Monk's Tale
• The Nun's Priest's Tale
• The Second Nun's Prologue Tale
• The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue Tale
• The Manciple's Prologue Tale
• The Parson's Prologue Tale
• Chaucer's Retraction

• The Knight's Tale
• The Miller's Prologue and Tale
• The Reeve's Prologue and Tale
• The Cook's Prologue and Tale
• The Man of Law's Prologue Tale
• The Wife of Baths Prologue Tale
• The Friar's Prologue and Tale
• The Summoner's Prologue Tale
• The Clerk's Prologue and Tale
• The Merchant's Prologue Tale
• The Squire's Prologue and Tale
• The Franklin's Prologue Tale
• The Physician's Tale

12
The Church In Chaucers Time

• Chaucer chided the Catholic Church noting a
  predilection of Catholic leaders, for good food
  and bad women...."
• The Medieval Church played a far greater role in
  England than the Church does today.
• At that time the Church dominated everybody's
  life. All people - be they village peasants or
  towns people - believed that God, Heaven and Hell
  all existed.
• From the earliest of ages, the people were taught
  that the only way they could get to Heaven was if
  the Roman Catholic Church let them.
• Everybody would have been terrified of Hell and
  the people would have been told of the sheer
  horrors awaiting for them in Hell in the weekly
  services they attended.

13

• The control the Church had over the people was
  total.
• Peasants worked for free on Church land. Their
  time could have been better spent working on
  their own plots of land producing food for their
  families.
• They paid 10 of what they earned in a year to
  the Church which could be paid in either money or
  in goods produced by the peasant farmers.
• As peasants had little money, they almost always
  had to pay in seeds, harvested grain, animals
  etc. caused a peasant a lot of hardship as seeds,
  for example, would be needed to feed a family the
  following year.

14

• What the Church got in tithes was kept in huge
  tithe barns a lot of the stored grain would have
  been eaten  by rats or poisoned by their urine.
• A failure to pay tithes, so the peasants were
  told by the Church, would lead to their souls
  going to Hell after they had died. 

Now a museum, this building was once a tithe barn
serving Maidstone, Kent
15

• When looking at Chaucer's work, four things must
  be remembered about Chaucer himself and his time
  period.
• He was a Catholic during the end of Catholicism
  in England,
• He was chivalric
• He was English
• He was part of the Bourgeois.

Chivalry refers to the medieval institution of
knighthood, most especially-ideals that
were/have become associated with it throughout
literature. It was also often associated with
ideals of knightly virtues, honor and of courtly
love.
16
The Narrator

• The narrator is also a character in his book.
• In the General Prologue, the narrator presents
  himself as a gregarious and naïve character.
• Later the Host accuses him of being silent
  sullen.
• Because the narrator writes down his impressions
  of the pilgrims from memory, whom he does and
  does not like, and what he chooses and chooses
  not to remember about the characters, tells us as
  much about the narrators own prejudices as it
  does about the characters themselves.

17

• At the Tabard Inn, just south of London, the
  poet-pilgrim falls in with a group of twenty nine
• other pilgrims who have met each other along the
  way.

18
The Knight

• The first pilgrim Chaucer describes in the
  General Prologue, and the teller of the first
  tale. The Knight represents the ideal of a
  medieval Christian man-at-arms. He has
  participated in no less than fifteen of the great
  crusades of his era. Brave, experienced, and
  prudent, the narrator greatly admires him.
• The Knight is the person of highest social
  standing on the pilgrimage though you would never
  know it from his modest manner or his clothes.

19
The Squire

• The Knights son and apprentice. The Squire is
  curly-haired, youthfully handsome, and loves
  dancing and courting.
• He has seen some military action, but it was to
  impress his lady not his Lord God. Unlike his
  parent, he is fashionably dressed.
• He is very much in love, he has cultivated all
  the social graces, and is also aware of his duty
  to serve as his father's squire

20
The Yeoman

• The servant who accompanies the Knight and the
  Squire is the yeoman.
• The narrator mentions that his dress and weapons
  suggest he may be a forester. He is noticeably
  over-armed for a pilgrimage, which indicates
  probably suspicion of the big city by a man more
  at home in the forest.

21
The Prioress

• Described as modest and quiet, this Prioress (a
  nun who is head of her convent) aspires to have
  exquisite taste. Her table manners are dainty,
  she knows French (though not the French of the
  court), she dresses well, and she is charitable
  and compassionate.
• She has a pretty face and knows it
• Her nun's habit is elegantly tailored, and she
  displays discreetly a little
• tasteful jewelry a gold brooch on her rosary
  embossed with the nicely ambiguous Latin motto
  Amor Vincit Omnia, Love conquers all.

22
The Monk

• Another member of the church who is supposed to
  stay in his monastery but who, finds an excuse to
  get away from it
• Most monks of the Middle Ages lived in
  monasteries according to the Rule of Saint
  Benedict, which demanded that they devote their
  lives to work and prayer. This Monk cares
  little for the Rule his devotion is to hunting
  and eating. He is large, loud, and well clad in
  hunting boots and furs.
• He has lost any of the monastic ideals he may
  have set out with, and he now prefers travel,
  good clothes, good food, good hunting with
  well-equipped horses, in place of the poverty,
  study and manual labor prescribed by his monastic
  rule. He may not be a bad man, but he is not a
  good monk.

23
The Friar

• Roaming priests with no ties to a monastery,
  friars were an object of criticism.
• Always ready to befriend young women or rich men,
  the friar actively administers the sacraments in
  his town, especially those of marriage and
  confession.
• This worldly Friar takes bribes.
• He is even less a man of God than the Monk. A
  member of a mendicant order of men who lived on
  what they could get by begging, he has become a
  professional fundraiser,
• He has an attractive little lisp, a talent for
  mending quarrels and having the right little gift
  for the ladies, and a forgiving way in the
  confessional especially when he expects a
  generous donation.

24
The Merchant

• The Merchant trades in furs and other cloths
• He is part of a powerful and wealthy class
• He likes to TALK of his prosperity and is
  concerned about pirates and profits
• He is tightlipped about business details and in
  debt.

25
The Clerk

• The Clerk is a poor student of philosophy. Having
  spent his money on books and learning rather than
  on fine clothes, he is threadbare and wan.
• He speaks little, but when he does, his words are
  wise and full of moral virtue.
• He is the first admirable church member we meet
  on the pilgrimage.
• "Clerk" meant a number of related things a
  cleric, a student, a scholar.
• This clerk is devoted to the love of learning and
  of God
• He would rather buy a book than a coat or a good
  meal

26
The Lawyer or Sergeant of the Law

• He is successful lawyer commissioned by the king.
  
• He upholds justice in matters large and small and
  knows every statute of Englands law by heart.
• The Sergeant of the Law is a successful but
  unostentatious, high-ranking lawyer who sometimes
  functions as a judge.
• We are told with just a touch of irony, that he
  is, like many of the pilgrims, the very best at
  what he does

27
The Franklin

• franklin means free man.
• In Chaucers society, a franklin was neither a
  vassal serving a lord nor a member of the
  nobility.
• This particular franklin is a connoisseur of food
  and wine, so much so that his table remains laid
  and ready for food all day.
• He is a generous extroverted man who likes good
  food and
• drink and sharing them with others, somewhat like
  St Julian, the patron saint of hospitality

28
The Haberdasher, a Dyer, a Carpenter, A Weaver,
and a Carpetmaker

• Somewhat lower in the social scale is a group of
  Skilled Tradesmen most of them connected with the
  fabric trades and belonging to a guild, a
  "fraternity".
• Their prosperity shows in their clothes, and
  their accouterments and the fact that they have
  brought their own cook

29
The Cook

• The Cook works for the Guildsmen.
• Chaucer gives little detail about him, although
  he mentions a crusty sore on the Cooks leg.

30
The Shipman

• Brown-skinned from years of sailing, the Shipman
  has seen every bay and river in England, and
  exotic ports in Spain and Carthage as well.
• He is a bit of a rascal, known for stealing wine
  while the ships captain sleeps
• He is not above a little larceny or piracy and in
  a sea fight he does not take prisoners.

31
The Doctor

• The Physician is one of the best in his
  profession, for he knows the cause of every
  malady and can cure most of them.
• Though the Physician keeps himself in perfect
  physical health, the narrator calls into question
  the Physicians spiritual health he rarely
  consults the Bible and has an unhealthy love of
  financial gain.
• While it sounds to us more like astrology and
  magic than medicine, he makes a good living at
  it.

32
The Wife of Bath

• Bath is an English town, not the name of this
  womans husband.
• She is a seamstress by occupation, but seems to
  be a professional wife.
• She has been married 5 times had many other
  affairs in her youth, making her well practiced
  in the art of love. She has been to Jerusalem 3
  times her hat hips are as large as her sexual
  appetite
• She loves marriage and sex, and, from what we see
  of her, she also loves rich attire, talking, and
  arguing.
• She is deaf in one ear and has a gap between her
  front teeth, which was considered attractive in
  Chaucers time. She has traveled on pilgrimages
  to Jerusalem three times
• She is one of only 3 women on the pilgrimage.

33
The Parson

• The only devout churchman in the company, the
  Parson lives in poverty, but is rich in holy
  thoughts and deeds.
• The pastor of a sizable town, he preaches the
  Gospel and makes sure to practice what he
  preaches.
• He is everything that the Monk, the Friar, and
  the Pardoner are not.
• Unlike most of the other pilgrims, he is not
  physically described, perhaps because he is such
  an ideal figure.

34
The Plowman

• The Plowman is the Parsons brother and is
  equally good-hearted.
• He is a member of the peasant class
• He pays his tithes to the Church and leads a good
  Christian life.
• He probably has the lowest in social rank on the
  pilgrimage and one of the highest in
  spirituality,

35
The Miller

• Stout and brawny, the Miller has a wart on his
  nose and a big mouth, both literally and
  figuratively.
• He drunkenly insists on telling the second tale.
• The Miller seems to enjoy overturning all
  conventions
• He ruins the Hosts carefully planned
  storytelling order he rips doors off hinges and
  he tells a tale that is somewhat blasphemous,
  ridiculing religious clerks, scholarly clerks,
  carpenters, and women.
• His idea of fun is smashing doors down with his
  head or telling vulgar stories.

36
The Manciple

• The Manciple is in charge of buying provisions
  for a group of Lawyers in London.
• Despite his lack of education, he is smarter than
  the 30 lawyers he feeds.

37
The Reeve

• A reeve was similar to a steward of a manor
• This reeve performs his job shrewdlyhis lord
  never loses so much as a ram to the other
  employees, and the vassals under his command are
  kept in line.
• However, he steals from his master.
• Old and suspicious, he is also a choleric man,
  that is he has a short temper that matches his
  skinny frame.

38
The Summoner

• The Summoner brings persons accused of violating
  Church law to ecclesiastical court.
• This Summoner is a lecherous man whose face is
  scarred by leprosy.
• He gets drunk frequently, is irritable, and is
  not particularly qualified for his position.
• He spouts the few words of Latin he knows in an
  attempt to sound educated.

39
The Pardoner

• Pardoners granted papal indulgencesreprieves
  from penance in exchange for charitable donations
  to the Church.
• The Pardoner excels in fraud, carrying a bag full
  of fake relicsfor example, he claims to have the
  veil of the Virgin Mary.
• He has long, greasy, yellow hair and is
  beardless. These characteristics were associated
  with shiftiness and gender ambiguity in Chaucers
  time.
• The Pardoner also a gift for singing and
  preaching whenever he finds himself inside a
  church.
• He is with the disgusting Summoner who is his
  friend, his singing partner and possibly his
  lover,

40
The Nuns Priest

• Like the Second Nun, the Nuns Priest is not
  described in the General Prologue.
• His story of Chanticleer, in the poem is well
  crafted and suggests that he is a witty,
  self-effacing preacher

41
The Second Nun

• The Second Nun is not described in the General
  Prologue, but she tells a saints life for her
  tale.

42
The Host

• After serving dinner, Harry Bailly, the fictional
  Host or owner of the Tabard Inn originates the
  idea for the Tales
• The leader of the group, the Host is large, loud,
  and merry, although he possesses a quick temper.
• He mediates among the pilgrims and facilitates
  the flow of the tales.
• His title of host may be a pun, suggesting both
  an innkeeper and the Eucharist, or Holy Host.