Transcript The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales
Background information on the Middle Ages
Canterbury Tales
 Written by Geoffrey Chaucer (born about 1342)
 Insight into all walks of life during the Middle
Ages
 Wanted to educate the masses on the
corruption in the Church
 Frame (story within a story) Tale
 Usually satirical
Satire
 Literary technique in which behaviors or
institutions are ridiculed for the purpose of
improving society.
 What sets satire apart from other forms of social
and political protest is HUMOR.
 Satirists use irony and exaggeration to poke fun
at human faults and foolishness in order to
correct human behavior
Common Satirical Targets
 Wealthy
 Vanity
 Greed
 Hypocrisy
 Politics
 Corruption
 Vanity
 Arrogance
 Writers
 Pursuits of idle
wealthy
 Stupidity
Irony
 Verbal and situational irony are often used for
emphasis in the assertion of a truth.
 Situational- character/reader expects one thing,
but something else happens
 Verbal- when a writer/character expects one
thing, but means another
 TECHNIQUES: hyperbole, understatement,
sarcasm
Canterbury Tales
 Story begins in the Spring at Tabard Inn
 Pilgrims on a voyage to the Shrine of Thomas
Becket (martyr)
 Each pilgrims tells 2 tales on the way and two
tales back
 Host will judge stories
Pilgrims
 The narrator
 The Miller
 Knight
 The Prioress
 Squire
 The monk
 Wife Of bath
 The friar
 The Pardoner
 The Yeoman
Chaucer’s England Social Structure
 Society was divided into 3 states: clergy,
aristocracy, and the commons
 Positions in the hierarchy were well defined
 Clergy - responsible for people’s spiritual
well-being
 Aristocracy - responsible for defending the
nation through military might.
 Commons - laborers and producers
Feudal System
 Included aristocrats and commoners
 King owned all the land in the country
 King granted land holdings to aristocratic
tenants in exchange for military support
 Aristocrats would grant land holdings to
commoners in exchange for labor services that
would allow the lord to cultivate and maintain
the land
Clergy (1.5 %)
No one was born into the clergy
 Regular clergy: (monks and friars) the regular clergy
were male and were sworn to a life of celibacy and
poverty
 Secular clergy: parish priests (parsons) and clerics.
 Nuns didn’t have the same rights as the male clergy
 The clergy were expected to take vows of:
 Poverty
 Chastity
 Obedience
Aristocracy (1%)
 Warrior class or those descended from the
warrior class.
 Titled nobility: dukes, counts, barons
 Knights: lacked hereditary titles. Less than 1,000
in Chaucer’s England. A burdensome rank.
 Squires: the backbone of the English and French
armies. Moderate landowners and men of gentle
birth who were not knighted.
The Commons (97%)
 Most of England’s Population lived in the country
side
 People in the commons were loosely ranked
according to how much land they had
 Franklins/Yeoman (freemen who had more
then 50 acres)
 Husbandmen/Cotters (free or servile men
who held 10 to 40 acres)
 At the bottom of rural society were those who
held no land and were dependent upon their
earnings as laborers (plowmen, herdsmen, etc)
Religion
 Being apart of society in the middle ages
meant being apart of the church
 Catholic Church- official church
 All Christians in that part of the World were
under the authority of the pope
Compare and Contrast
 How was the society during the middle ages
different from our modern-day society?
 Religion
 Types of jobs
 politics
Thomas Beckett
 archbishop of Canterbury by King Henry II
 King Henry hoped that Thomas would side with
him over the pope
 The King’s plan backfired and Thomas ended up
taking the side of the Church/pope over the King
 Murdered in 1170
 Was idolized as both Saint and martyr
 The Shrine of Saint Thomas of Beckett became a
popular destination for religious pilgrimages during
the Middle Ages
Crusades
 Occurred during the the 11th,12th, and 13th
centuries
 A series of military campaigns called by the
Pope
 GOAL of the crusades: to restore Christian
control of the Holy Land
 Crusades had an enormous influence in
Europe during the Middle Ages
Effects of Crusades
 Political: helped undermine feudalism
 Social: allowed for romantic adventure
(Chivalry)
 Commerce/trade: opened up trade
throughout Europe and created a constants
demand for the transportation of both men
and supplies
 Catholic Church: increased the wealth of the
Catholic church and the power of the Papacy.
Chivalry
 Chivalry- system of ideals and behavior that
governed both knight and gentleman
 Included things such as:
 oath of loyalty to overlord
 rules of of warfare
 adoration of a particular lady (not necessarily
one’s wife)
 Courtly Love- Belief that acting in the name of
a lady would help a knight be more brave and
successful
Review
 What was Chaucer’s purpose for writing the Canterbury Tales?
 Which LITERARY device does Chaucer primarily use to get his
point across?
 What makes satire different from other forms of political or
social protest?
 Who was more powerful, the king or the pope?
 Where are the pilgrims going?
 Why was St. Thomas of Beckett murdered?