The Summoner In The Canterbury Tales

The Summoner in the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, is best described as being passionate. He is passionate about many things like money, wine, girls, and much more. Passionate has a very simple origin and means basically the same thing as it’s origin word, passion. The Summoner can also be considered passionate about his job, since his job is what gives him his money, wine, etc. He is even passionate about collecting bribes with his job. In fact, since he is so passionate, he cannot even be described as the antonym of the word. According to Merriam-Webster (2017) the word passionate comes from Middle English and Medieval Latin. The original word for passionate is actually passion. Indicated in the source above, “Passionate is an adjective that describes someone …show more content…
This is saying that he loves what he does and is not afraid if it is morally wrong. He loves to drink wine and will even get drunk quite often from it because of how passionate he is about it. The line Chaucer (1400) uses also describes him as being lecherous, such as, “In daunger hadde he at his owene gyse the yonge girles of the diocyse”(Line 652-653). It can be said that the Summoner doesn’t really care if anyone knows what he loves or not, just that he has strong feelings for many things that are morally frowned upon, such as being bribed to take someone off his list. Chaucer says almost anyone can bribe him for just, “a quart of wyn”(Line 649). He is so passionate about obtaining riches and pleasantries that he will do just about anything to get what he wants. It can be said that he cares more for other things than for his own well-being, since he is known to have a grotesque appearance but doesn’t seem to kill. Or the fact that he purposely eats the foods he likes, garlic for example, even though it causes him to have a bad stench surround him and makes others dislike him even