The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer, through his writing of The Canterbury Tales, gives us (the audience) the best known contemporary picture of 14th century life. Chaucer chose to write The Canterbury Tales as a frame story. The outer frame is a story of pilgrims who are going on a "holy" pilgrimage to The Shrine of Beckett at Canterbury, and the inner frames consist of tales told by the individual pilgrims. In the inner tales Chaucer depicts the characterization of each pilgrim, and makes known that there is an underlying unresolved social or spiritual tension. "The notion of a "spiritual" [or "holy"] pilgrimage is deeply challenged by the very density of [Chaucer's] characterization" of the pilgrims (Baswell and Schotter 274). Some of the pilgrims display materialism, clerical corruption, cruelty, and carnal desires; and to a degree these have become the convention. The picture Chaucer draws with The Canterbury Tales is a picture that questions this convention. Chaucer's story is asking his readers to revaluate the church and society; and to redefine the convention because society is filled with moral and spiritual upheaval. This idea is apparent in the contrast between what a pilgrimage is really for and the morals and ideas of the peopl
The ironic pilgrimage, women and marriage, and poverty are all themes of argument used to persuade an audience to revaluate and redefine the conventions of society that would allow convention to represent new meaning. This seems to hold true; because during this time period being poor did not exactly attract friends, it repelled them. The idea of the Imatatio Christi is to live your life just like Christ, who lived in poverty. According to the churches perspective women were evil temptresses, remarriage was adulterous, and sexuality was excluded. One of the biggest arguments the Hag makes refers back to the Imatatio Christi; "Poverte ful often, whan a man is lowe, Maketh his God and eek himself to knowe," and this idea about poverty does eventually coincide with church teaching (Chaucer 355:1207-1208). The Wife of Bath throughout her tale makes an argument about the conventional idea of women, sexuality, and marriage. The qualifying tone and examples of the Hag's argument are an attempt to persuade the knight to revaluate and redefine his ideals about poverty, which include his wife. Quoting Juvenal the Hag brings up the point that; "The poore man, whan he gooth by the waye, Biforn the theves he may singe and playe" (Chaucer 355:1199-1200). The Hag's argument was part of the Wife of Bath's argument, and the Wife's argument was part of Chaucer's argument. The concerns of the Hag and the Wife of Bath closely resemble those of Chaucer, and unite them in an interest to revaluate and redefine societies' convention. How would he now view his impoverished wife? There is a metaphor towards the end of the poem that compares poverty to a pair of glasses that show you your true friends. Imagine the knight's shock when he finds out that the poorer and lower you are, the closer you are to Christ. The Hag during her argument on poverty is asking the knight to revaluate his idea of her, and through her examples she redefines the words rich and poor. Who is really going to steal from a poor person? Another point the Hag makes is that poverty can lead to wisdom for the patient, which could be a trade off in her case; although she may be a poor wife she will not be a dumb wife.
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