Today, we started off taking fill-in-the-blank notes over The Canterbury Tales prologue and Geoffrey Chaucer. If you missed this, here are the notes:
Son of a merchant, page in a royal house, soldier, diplomat, and royal clerk, Geoffrey Chaucer saw quite a bit of the medieval world. His varied experiences helped prepare him to write The Canterbury Tales. This masterpiece is the best contemporary picture we have of fourteenth century England. Gathering characters from different walks of life, Chaucer takes the reader on a journey through medieval society.
The Canterbury Tales
Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in his later years. No one knows what prompted him to start this work, but some people think his inspiration may have come from his own pilgrimage to Canterbury. A pilgrimage is a long journey to a shrine or a holy site, undertaken by people who wish to express their devotion. A popular pilgrimage for Christians is Jerusalem, the birth place of Christ. Muslims are required to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. For Buddhists, Lumbini is the place where Lord Buddha was born. Roman Catholics have Vatican City, the home of the Pope who is the leader of the Catholic Church. Hindus have Uttarakhand in India, Jews will travel to the Wailing Wall in Israel, and members of the Baha’i faith have The Shrine of Báb on Mount Carmel.
Canterbury Cathedral, located in Canterbury, England, is the location where Saint Thomas Becket was murdered and a common pilgrimage location for people in medieval England. In real life, Chaucer certainly had the opportunity to observe many pilgrims starting their journeys because the window in his home actually overlooked the pilgrim road that led to Canterbury!
In this masterwork, we have 29 people and Chaucer the narrator for a total of 30 pilgrims. The original idea was that each pilgrim would tell two stories on the way to Canterbury and then tell two more stories on the way back from Canterbury for a totally of 120 stories altogether. Canterbury Tales is considered a frame story, because there will be many small stories framed within one overarching storyline. Just as the tellers of Canterbury Tales come different class levels in medieval society, the tales they tell are just as varied – some are romance, some are comedy, some are religious and others are bawdy. Only 24 of the projected 120 stories were finished, but they stand together as a complete work.
The Prologue
This story starts out in April, when people are suffering from cabin fever after a long winter. In school, we have Spring Break, but back then, people went on pilgrimages. Not everyone could go to Jerusalem; so many people went to Canterbury Cathedral. It’s kinda like not everyone can afford to go to Cancun or South Padre Island for Spring Break, so los of people go to Galveston.
One thing that Chaucer is a master of is indirect characterization. If I were to tell you that Joe is a bad students. I have directly characterized him as a BAD STUDENT. However, let’s say that I am in a meeting after school, and I instead of directly saying the Joe is bad, I respond with:
“Joe is a great student. Very friendly! So friendly that he comes in a late a lot of time because he’s walking his friends to class. I think he also must work late because he sleeps a lot in class. Poor guy. I feel sorry for him. He must have a lot of drama going on in his life too, because he spends more time texting on his phone than doing schoolwork. He has a great sense of humor, too? You probably couldn’t see his t-shirt today because you were focused on his sagging pants showing off his green boxer shorts, but he was wearing a really clever pirate shirt that said ‘Time flies when you’re having RUM!’”
I didn’t come out and directly say that Joe was a bad student; I just used INDIRECT characterization. I described what he said, what he wore, and what he did and let other people figure out that he is a bad student on their own.
Chaucer uses indirect characterization because he spends a lot of time criticizing the church. He is not a fan of pardons. Generally, Catholics would be forgiven of their sins after they confessed their wrongdoings to a priest, and he would give them penance to do (usually prayer and other ways to make amends). This ended up being very time consuming for knights who killed people in battle during the Crusades, however. If the typical penance for killing a man was ten years of prayer, there is no way that a knight who went on the Crusades would ever be able to pray that much. So a deal was struck. The Church started allowing people to “pay” for their penance, which ended up as the Church would just take religious bribes instead of prayer. Chaucer didn’t like that. He also didn’t like that the Church abused their power with excommunication – which is where the church kicks someone out of the church, which means that the person has no chance at going to Heaven and would spend eternity in Hell. This was very scary, and was a powerful threat.
Anyway, Chaucer says that one springtime, he decided to go to Canterbury Cathedral to see the remains on Thomas Becket when he realized that there were 29 other people also going to Canterbury and that they all decided to travel together for safety and entertainment.
He then described each pilgrim using indirect characterization: what they did for a living, what they wore, how they acted, and what they said.
After he described everyone, Chaucer then says that the Host of the Tabard Inn decides to go with them, and he suggests a storytelling competition as entertainment. 2 stories on the way to Canterbury; 2 stories on the way back. He’ll be the judge, and whoever wins will get a meal paid for by the rest of the group when they get back from the trip. He proclaims that anyone who causes a fight during the trip will have to pay for the entire trip for all of the pilgrims! Everyone agrees, and they draw straws to see who will go first. Whether by luck, chance, or fate, the Knight went first. This is significant because in reality, the Knight is the most noble of people on the trip.
Lastly, read the No Fear section for the character you were assigned. You can find the list of characters and page numbers in BB.
