The Canterbury Tales
In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, a group of pilgrims travels together toCanterbury and along the way tell one another stories to pass the time.Chaucer makes use of these stories and the people who tell them to commenton the society of his time, suggesting certain things by his choice ofwhich pilgrim tells what kind of story. Some of the pilgrims are clerics,and others are government workers or members of the public. They representa cross-section of the society of the day, as do many of the characters inthe stories they tell. One of the persistent images in these stories is animage of women, which varies from the submissive to the more aggressive andwhich is found in both the pilgrims and their stories. In "The Franklin'sTale," ideas about women are expressed in the usual terms but in adifferent way, combining different traditions to produce an image of womenand marriage as both an instance of male dominance combined with thecourtly love tradition which so infused much of the poetry of the time. The image created of women is that they are decorative and virtuous,and this is also an element in the courtly love tradition. The traditionsincluded by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales are differe
He proves thepossibility of constancy and the way it can make those who seem not to careabout others suddenly care about others and prove it with their actions. One such was Dante, who wrote poems to Beatrice, whom heworshiped from afar. This story goes far toward making the conventionspraised by the other pilgrims seem foolish and unnecessary. Critics and historians point out, though, that this is a common kindof folk tale in which a damsel give a rash promise and then is expected tolive up to it. Obviously, this is quite a different sentiment than that expressed by theWife of Bath or the Clerk, both of whom saw marriage as a battle ground andnot as an institution associated with joy or ease. The turnabout of Aurelius is anotherinstance where the act is out of proportion to what w think the man woulddo, but it is better prepared for than the turnabout of the student, whohas little to gain by being noble and who has shown no inclination at allin that direction to this point. The knight in particular is simply too good andtoo noble to be true, as is made quite apparent when he agrees to let hiswife sleep with another man to protect her honor, something of acontradiction in itself. From the first, the Franklin has suggested a marriage of equalityruled by the laws of courtesy. The courtly love traditionalso takes a beating in this story, for Aurelius is the prime example ofthat tradition and fails to live up to it while also showing how foolish itis because there is no end to it, meaning without achieving love, the lovermerely languishes forever. The husband also said that he wold also obey any command hiswife gave him, and while she is now bereft and not ordering him as to whatto do, he still steps forward to take responsibility and to assure that hiswife understands that he bears her no ill will. This meant thatthere were two incompatible traditions which came together over these fiveor six centuries and created the ideal of marital love. While the husband and wife in this story arepresented as equals in marriage they are not equals in other ways. Aurelius was seduced by love, so eh canraise that as an excuse and overcome much of the what he has done. Then, she begins to worry about what might happen, and her worrybecomes an obsession of imagined shipwrecks: A hundred thousand bodies of mankind Have died on rocks, whose names are not in mind, And man's a creature made by Thee most fair, After Thine image, as Thou didst declare (148-151). These woman are lustier and more accessible, as a rule, with one of theprimary representatives being the Wife of Bath.
Common topics in this essay:
Britain Franklin,
Carthage Lucrece,
Franklin's Tale,
Miller Clerk,
Bath Clerk,
Franklin Franklin,
Canterbury Tales,
Wife Bath,
Arviragus Dorigen,
Guenevere Queen,
courtly love,
courtly love tradition,
love tradition,
wife bath,
franklin's tale,
love marriage,
noble knight,
husband wife,
marriage wife,
remove rocks,
stories told,
wife bath clerk,
love tradition story,
idea courtly love,
sense believe aurelius,
|
Acceptance Essays
