Chaucers Lessons in the Canterbury Tales

             Chaucer's Lessons in the Canterbury Tales
             Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a story of nine and twenty pilgrims traveling to Canterbury, England in order to visit the shrine of St. Thomas A. Becket. The General Prologue starts by describing the beauty of nature and of happy times, and then Chaucer begins to introduce the pilgrims. Most of Chaucer's pilgrims are not the honorable pilgrims a reader would expect from the beautiful opening of the prologue, and instead they are pilgrims that illustrate moral lessons. In the descriptions of the pilgrims, Chaucer's language and wit helps to show the reader how timeless these character are. Chaucer describes his pilgrims in a very kind way, and he is not judgmental. Each of these pilgrims has a trade, and in most cases, the pilgrims use their trade in any possible way to benefit themselves. By using our notion of stereotypes, and counter stereotypes, Chaucer teaches us many moral lessons about religion and money.
             Chaucer's moral lessons start while he is introducing the pilgrims. These pilgrims are not from the same social stations in life, and instead they range anywhere from a rich lady from Bath to a drunken miller. It is nice to think twenty nine people with different social classes can all join together and go on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, but this is not likely in today 's society. This idea helps not only to show Chaucer's religious and platonic view, but also how society should be accepting and look at each other the way Chaucer does in the General Prologue. Each of the pilgrims Chaucer describes can be considered timeless characters with timeless moral problems, since people today still display these characteristics.
             Chaucer describes all of the pilgrims; however, some character's moral problems stand out more so than others do. The Prioress, the Monk, the Friar, the Franklin, the Wife of Bath, the Summoner and the P...

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Chaucers Lessons in the Canterbury Tales. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 10:45, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/51967.html