Chaucers View

It is said that Geoffrey Chaucer was unity of the greatest English writers of whole times. With Chaucers straight forward personality, it is non shocking that he would express his arguments or beliefs through his work. maven main points he made apparent in his writing was corruption exit on in the Catholic Church During Chaucers time, indulgences were of great controversy and Chaucer, along with many other people, were against them. He took this time to voice his feelings round the situation and wrote one of his most famous works The Canterbury Tales.The Canterbury Tales is a series of reports, told by pilgrims on their journey to the shrine of Saint Becket. Many thought that Chaucer was simply telling a story, but little did people know he was criticizing the Catholic Church. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in order to preach a address against the Seven dementedly Sins due to its corruption in the Catholic Church. Within The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses the narratives of certain characters to symbolize the Seven pestilent Sins and corruption. The fabliau, as it took new nominate under Chaucers compelling interest in characterization, brought him up against problems of mortality that were to become basic in the developed Canterbury Tales (Owen 226). He uses tales such as The Knights Tale, The Millers Tale, The Pardoners Tale, The Reeves Tale, and The Parsons Tale which was a sermon itself. Notice he uses characters such as the pardoner and parson members of the clergy to show that sinning was taking place in a holy place like the Catholic Church. Chaucer makes sure that he displays wholly the Seven Deadly Sins in his tales and some tales represent more than one of the sins.The Seven Deadly Sins consist of Lust, Gluttony, Avarice, Sloth, Anger, Jealousy, and Pride. According to forward-looking Advent, Lust is the inordinate craving for, or indulgence of, the carnal pleasure which is experienced in the merciful organs of generation. Sloth is said to be the disinclination to labor or exertion. Gluttony means excessive indulgence. Avarice is the inordinate fill ins for riches. Anger is defined as the desire of vengeance. Jealousy is a sorrow which one entertains at anothers well-being because of their view that ones own excellence is in consequence lessened.Lastly, Pride is the excessive love of ones own excellence (Delany). Everyone of these sins are used in the following tales. whiz of the first tales in The Canterbury Tales to symbolize the Seven Deadly Sins was The Knights Tale. In The Knights Tale, Duke Theseus of Athens, is on his room home from attacking Scythia. dapple he was t here, he wins over a wife and what now is a sister-in-law Emily. Along the way, Theseus runs into a group of crying women. They entreat Theseus to take revenge on Creon, the King of Thebes, because he refuses to bury their husbands.The oldest women stated Their bodies were dragged stunned onto the plain into a heap, and on that point , as we live learnt, they neither may have burial nor be burnt, but he makes dogs devour them, in scorn (28). Theseus decides to fight Creon, and beats him. After winning against Creon, he takes two of his men Palamon and Arcite to be servants for his castle. The servants are thrown in the tower to work with stunned ransom. Over time, they both sink in love with Emily after watching her through the tower windowpane. One day Arcite is let go, but with the promise of never returning.Arcite is envious of Palamon being commensurate to see Emily everyday. On the other hand, Palamon was envious of Arcite being able to form an army to get Emily hind end. Arcite comes back in disguise and Palamon escapes, they run into one another and decide to fight over Emily. Arcite wins the battle, but with complications that caused death. Emily ends up marrying Palamon in the end, That is called matrimony, similarly marriage, by counsel of the Duke and all his peerage. And thus with every bliss an d melody Palamon was espoused to Emily (86). The sins associated with this tale are Lust, Anger, Sloth and Jealousy.Since the characters in the tale did wrong and committed these sins, they had consequences. When Arcite and Palamon both Lust over Emily, it makes tension among them and makes it harder on themselves because they have no way of showing her affection. When Creon refuses to bury the bodies of the husbands, that shows Sloth, because of this Creon and Duke Theseus fight. Jealousy shows when Arcite and Palamon envy one other for being able to see Emily, this leads to them being angry at each another which eventually leads to greater problems. Anger shows up when Arcite and Palamon fight over Emily, which ends up with Arcite dying.This shows that with sinning, comes consequences. The next tale that Chaucer uses to preach is The Millers Tale. The Millers Tale is the tale of a carpenter, his childlike wife and two students. To make money, John rents rooms in his house to a bo y named Nicholas. Nicholas presently has his eye set on Alison. Another boy in town, Absalon also has his eye on Alison. The trouble begins when John leaves home on a trip. While John is out, Nicholas and Alison have an affair. Not much longer after the affair, Alison goes to church where she is hit on by Absalon. She shows no affection towards him because she is in love with Nicholas.Alison and Nicholas calculate of a plan to trick John so they can have more alone time. Nicholas convinces John that God is sending a flood. Rain is to fall in torrents, such a scud it will be twice as bad as Noahs Flood. This world, he said, in just about an hour, Shall all be drowned, its such a hideous shower, and all mankind, with total loss of life (97). He says that God told him they should hang three large buckets from the ceiling to cessation in and when the water got high, they would cut the ropes. John believes him and goes along with the plan.John thinks his wife is in her bucket, but lit tle does he know that she is with Nicholas. Later that night, Absalon comes to the window and asks Alison to give him a kiss Instead of her lips, she sticks her butt out the window. Angry, Absalon gets a hot brand to brand Alison, but Nicholas sticks his butt out. Absalon brands Nicolas and he yells out Water. John thinks the flood is here and cuts his rope. The whole town hears about the situation and makes fun of John. The two sins tied into this tale are Lust and Anger. Lust is shown when both Absalon and Nicholas lust over the young wife of John.Since Nicholas lusted over her, it caused them to have an affair and Absalon lusting over made him go to the bedroom window which caused more problems. Anger sets in when Alison sticks her butt out of the window instead of her lips, when Absalon realizes, he turns angry and gets the hot brand and ends up branding Nicholas instead. This makes Nicholas yell out and than John cuts the ropes and makes a mockery out of himself by the town. C haucer did not stop at just one or two tales, he decided to take it even further and use The Pardoners Tale to help further his voice.In the Pardoners tale, he starts off by going on a rant about young Flemish people who spend their time drinking, gambling, and swearing. He than starts back to his story. Three rioters are drinking and talking about a friend who was killed earlier by a thing called Death, Many and grisly were the oaths they swore, tearing Christs rejoiced body to a shred if we can whole catch him, Death is Dead (251). Outraged about their friend dying, the men go on a hunt to find and kill Death. On their way, they run into an old man who tells them that they can find Death underneath an oak tree. Pleased, the men rush to the tree to only find gold.They plan to steal the gold, but wait until night. During the wait, they send one man to go get wine and bread. While he is gone, they dapple to kill him in order to split the gold. The man who went to fetch the bread , and wine was also thinking similarly. He poisons the other twos wine and heads back to the tree, but to only get killed when he arrived. Excited about the gold, they drink the dead mans poisoned wine and they soon die. He goes to end his story, but forgets he had pardons and relics in his bag and asks for contribution. on that point are both Avarice and Gluttony take place in the Pardoners Tale.We see Avarice take place when they set their eyes on the gold, all men are eager to get all the gold and in the end, their greed kills them all. We also see Gluttony, it takes place when the pardoner starts off talking about the Flemish boys, we also see it when the men are drinking too much in the bar. Them drinking too much in the bar, lead to them devising stupid plans to kill Death. In the end they end up dead because of greed and a little too much to drink. The Reeves Tales is yet another tale used by Chaucer to preach. The Reeves Tale is about a miller named Simpkin who likes to fi ght and enjoys wrestling.Most people dont talk to him and he cheats his customers by robbing corn from them. He also paddles their flour cheap substances. When the manciple of a school gets sick, the miller takes the opportunity to cheat the school even more. Two students, Alan and John are sent to do it for the school so they will not be cheated. When they arrive at the mill, Alan and John tell Simpkin that they will watch the corn being ground so they are not cheated. Simpkin gets angry and he unties their horses. When they find out the horses are missing, they go looking for them, giving Simpkin time to steal flour from them.He later has his wife bake a cake with it. Having wasted the whole day, Alan and John decide to stay the night at Simpkins house Alan sneaks and has intercourse with Simpkins daughter. John does the same with Simpkins wife. He does this by touching the cradle to her bed to his so she will climb in with him. When Alan goes to bed he mistakes the cradle and go es into bed with Simpkin. Thinking he is John, Alan tells Simpkin that he had intercourse with the millers daughter. Enraged, Simpkin rises out of bed and punches Alan in the nose. Alan and John beat Simpkin up, then run away picking up the cake made of their robbed flour on the way out.In the Reeves Tale, there are many sins. We see Avarice, Anger, and Pride. We see avarice when the miller robs all the corn and flour, which results in the boys sleeping with his daughter and wife. We see Anger when the boys find out about the miller robbing them and anger when the miller finds out about the boys sleeping with the women, which causes a fight. We also see pride when Alan brags about sleeping with the millers daughter to which he thought was John, which caused the miller to throw the first punch. Chaucer had in mind the other Tales, when he finally conducted the Parsons through his against the Vices they illustrate?To me the conclusion seems unavoidable that this division of the Parson s sermon is but the culmination of the frequently recurring motifs of the Seven Deadly Sins (Tupper 117). The Parson splits his sermon up into the three parts. He speaks of contrition, he talks of confession and he goes into depth about each of the seven deadly sins. Throughout the tale, the Parson recites several passages from the Bible. Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales in order to preach a sermon against the Seven Deadly Sins due to its corruption in the Catholic Church.It is obvious that he used tales such as the Knights tale, the Millers Tale, the Pardoners tale, the Reeves tale and especially the Parsons tale to get his point across. point though The Canterbury Tales was never finished by Chaucer, it was a strong enough work to make people ask questions and think about the corruption going in the Catholic Church. Works Cited Chaucer, Geoffery. The Canterbury Tales. New York Penguin Classics, 1997. Delany, Joseph. Anger. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York Robert App leton Company, 1907. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. org/cathen/01489a. htm. Delany, Joseph. Avarice. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 7. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1907. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. org/cathen/02148b. htm. Delany, Joseph. Gluttony. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. org/cathen/02148a. htm. Delany, Joseph. Jealousy. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. org/cathen/08326b. htm. Delany, Joseph. Lust. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1910. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. rg/cathen/09438a. htm. Delany, Joseph. Pride. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 12. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 13 Mar. 2013 http//www. newadvant. org/cathen/12405a. htm. Delany, Joseph. Sloth. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 14. New York Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 13 Mar. 2013 http//w ww. newadvant. org/cathen/14057c. htm. Owen, Charles A. Jr. Mortality as a ludicrous Motif in the Canterbury Tales. National Council of Teachers of English. 16. 4 (1955) 226-232. Print. Tupper, Fredrick Jr. Chaucer and The Seven Deadly Sins. Modern Language Association America. XXIX. 1 (1914) 117. Print.