Canterbury Tales
"Those that Pray"

Background

• Chaucer the Man
  • Civil servant
  • Well educated and read
  • Well traveled
• Chaucer's Society
  • Five different English accents
  • Not published more likely meant to be heard more than read
  • Written in Middle English
• Pilgrimage
  • Journeys for religious, health, and entertainment purposes
  • Canterbury, and its shrine to St. Thomas Becket

Prologue: Cast of Medieval Characters

• Good and virtuous people
  • Knight - A noble man of arms
  • Clerk - An educated scholar
  • Parson - A country preacher
  • Plowman - A simple farmer
• Evil scoundrels
  • Friar - A religious person normally living in a monastic community
  • Summoner - A person who "summoned" people to ecclesiastical courts
  • Reeve - Similar to an accountant or manager of the estate
  • Pardoner - A religious figure focusing on the ability to forgive and grant pardons

Pardoner

• Prologue
  • A drunken, hypocritical confession
  • His craft is revealed
    • How he plays on the congregation's emotions
    • How he gets their money
  • Irony - Opposition between literal, and intended meaning
    • A drunk preaching against drinking
    • A lover of money seeking money
    • His taking of your "sins" upon himself - i.e. your money
• Tale: Exemplum
  • Irony - A moral tale told by an immoral man
  • Role of the Knight at the end

Prioress

• Prologue: A hymn to the Virgin Mary
  • Fits her character as a nun
  • Prelude to the theme of the tale
• Tale: Saint's Legend
  • A Christ allegory - the child of innocence and the death of Christ
  • Ironic hatred for the Jews contrasts with her description in the main Prologue
    • Chaucer reveals the Medieval Church's view of the Jews and their complicity for the death of Christ
    • A Medieval Interpretation of the Gospel's portrayal of the crucifixion

Nun's Priest

• Tale: Beast Fable - a tale using animals metaphorically
  • Rooster - vanity
  • Fox - flattery
  • Hen - woman
• The ironic context of the story
  • Chanticleer is surrounded by cackling hens
  • The priest telling story is himself surrounded by "cackling" nuns
• Comic absurdity
• Puns and "mistranslation"
  • Foul Vs fowl
  • "Woman is man's bliss..."

Humanities Resource of Mark Hunter