The Canterbury Tale: The Reeve

             In Geoffry Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer manipulates the Middle English language to suit his own egotistical purposes, taking many words and utilizing their many different meanings. Certain passages can be read one way, and then when using a completely different meaning for just a few words, can be meant another way. The important details that Chaucer puts into his work about each character, as well as the details he omits, also play a large part in portraying the character that Chaucer wants to the reader to see. Also, Chaucer utilizes certain literary and poetic techniques in his tale that play a play an essential role in interpreting information about his subjects. Rhyme, rhythm, and meter play a large part in making Chaucer's work so effective and undying. In the General Prologue, during the Reve's portrait, the variances in the language that Chaucer uses and his exploit of poetic devices is integral in understanding who the Reeve is and what is vital about the character.
             Chaucer's Reve is seen as a man who works the earth, but almost a priest, bringing to mind many of the pagan druidic beliefs about the earth. The druids believed stridently in Mother Earth, and in an era when England was relatively new to Christianity, paganism was an issue fresh in everyone's minds. Paganism is at all times an issue in people's minds when it comes to organized religion: what things had been like and what things could quickly revert back to. As a man who works the earth, but is like a priest in his work and appearance, the Reve definitely brings to mind a druid of the old.
             The Reve is compared to a holy man, but a holy man of the earth, because the references to the earth are juxtaposed with references to holiness and the clergy. Chaucer's first physical description about the man likens the Reve to a priest, with his hair "dokked lyke a preest biforn" (Chaucer 15). The Rev...

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The Canterbury Tale: The Reeve. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 02:43, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/26021.html