Hypocrisy In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

Improved Essays
Many people throughout history people have tried to act one way but think and do another thing. This is called hypocrisy. It is when people say or act one way but behind others back, they say and do other things. For example, Chaucer wrote Canterbury tales based on their hypocrisy on the church and the patriarch. He talks about the church members and how they act and sau other things. However, he also has a character that is the real deal, he is a true christian with a true christian heart who practices what he preaches. In this story we will discuss the hypocrites of chaucer's time and the real deals.
First of all we will discuss the the pardoner. I like talking about this character because in the story he gets drunk and says all the stuff

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Tartuffe is widely considered Moliere’s finest comedic play, written in 1664. It was considered quite scandalous at the time and King Louis XIV censured it (Scott 2000). The play was subtitled ‘The Imposter’, or sometimes ‘The Hypocrite’. So deeply woven into our intellectual culture is the play, or rather its protagonist, that in both French and English ‘Tartuffe’ has officially become a word. The definition in English is ‘a hypocritical pretender to piety’.…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Canterbury Tales Satire Essay THE PROLOGUE: “ Will you two be quiet and stop mumbling about how popular you are I have a real story about brains and brawn that will surely top any of the nonsense you're talking about. No one will care about how many tackles you got in about 10 minuets and no one cares about how your dad shut down your credit card this month! There I finally said it, I've been stuck in this musty detention room for the past 30 minuets and only ignorant things have come out of both of your mouths. This will teach you two about the importance of being intelligent, even if you play a sport. Everyone picks on the kids who do their work and study for the grades they get and no one praises them.…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The Middle Ages were marked by religious upheaval in Europe. Two new major world religions were coming to power: Islam and Christianity. The rapid success of Christianity led the Roman Catholic Church to become the dominant religious force in most of the western world, and as with any powerful institution, it became increasingly corrupt (Swanson 409). As Lillian Bisson writes in Chaucer and the Late Medieval World, "[the] Medieval church . . . was a collection of competing factions with often contradictory agendas" (49).…

    • 199 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the general prologue skims over the characters as the narrator chooses to show us. The last two pilgrims the reader is introduced to are the Summoner and Pardoner, who were travelling together before meeting the larger party. When describing the Summoner, the narrator begins by saying he had a cherubic face except it wasn’t a compliment. His face was red and full of pimples and he had narrow eyes.…

    • 382 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In the Canterbury Tales, the reader is quickly introduced to the game of the host. The Host’s game takes place during the pilgrims’ journey to see the shrine of Thomas A. Becket, and involves each pilgrim telling their own tale in any manner they would like to give. The first tale presented to the host is the Knight’s tale. A noble tale about a wise king. Another tale offered to the host is the Pardoner’s tale.…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Mae Corrigan Mrs. Jacomme Honors British Literature Period 8 23 November 2015 “Payback Appearing in The Canterbury Tales” The reoccurring theme of payback is forever present throughout literature. In The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, there are multiple examples of vengeance and retaliation. Chaucer creates a frame story as twenty-nine pilgrims start their journey to the shrine of Saint Thomas á Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.…

    • 1972 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An inspiration, selfless, honourable; few pilgrims can be described using these words. This pilgrim in The Canterbury Tales is a pilgrim to aspire to be like. The squire is a true knight who is an inspiration to others, a contributing member of society, and one who cares for his lady. To illustrate, the squire is “a cadet, a lad of fire,” he’s passionate and it shows. More specifically, he follows his duty as a squire and goes into battle when ordered, and he is one of the most important soldiers out there.…

    • 436 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the Canterbury Tales, both The Pardoner’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale are filled with irony and displays a deep message at the end of each. When it comes to the theme, The Pardoner’s Tale explains that the desire and greed for money are roots of all evil. The moral in The Wife of Bath’s tale conveys to not a judge a woman by their physical and outer beauty and their sense of moralities deeply rooted inside them. To begin with, it is ironic that pardoner tells a story with his moral because he admits in his prologue that e tricks people into giving him money and that is what he does professionally. The word “death” was emphasized in this story to tell that the three men found the gold are not loyal to each other.…

    • 467 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Through many of the pilgrims that Chaucer writes about there seems to be a constant theme of corruption especially in most of the religious pilgrims such as the Pardoner and the Friar. The Pardoner was basically a salesman who sold “freedom” in other words. He would go out selling pardons for people’s sins, but he was over charging them and pocketing the rest. He was a hypocrite who preached on the notion the greed is the root of all evil while he himself lived a life full of greed (314). The same goes for the Friar, he bought people confessions and the administration of sacraments for the people.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When one thinks of religion the words associated can include faith, purity and piety. A person who fully devotes themselves to religion implies that they will live in accordance to their religion demands. In Christianity, that usually means having to remain chaste, act generously, be humble and believe in the Christian God. The understanding is that religious folk are expected to live free of sin, greed and hatred. However in the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer paints a new picture of what religion really is.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chaucer utilizes his intelligence and storytelling ability to criticize medieval English society in his compilation of short stories, The Canterbury Tales. The church's power and its ability to harshly punish dissenters forced Chaucer to use his stories as a way of questioning established religious beliefs and commenting on his society. Chaucer appears to have enjoyed criticizing established religion and societal norms, and uses his texts to illustrate these criticisms. The most prominent criticism is when Chaucer mentions the flood which Noah had to face. Even though this reference is a major part of the tale, its main role is to further progression of Chaucer’s story.…

    • 950 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    An example of Chaucer’s criticisms is visible in the prologue of the Pardoner’s Tale. Here, the pardoner admits with ease his unkemptly practices…

    • 1437 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With rocks being stacked on his chest, the innocent man spoke two words, “More weight!”, as the scornful men did nothing but watch. John Proctor and Abigail Williams have an affair which introduces the witch trials. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, human nature leads to greed, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. In the meager town of Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, the guilty, heartless citizens turn against each other for their well-being. The witch hunts begin to shape the way people treat each other because of the greed within the bitter hearts of the citizens.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer tells of the journey of twenty-nine pilgrims to St. Thomas Becket of Canterbury’s shrine, in order to be healed. To pass the time, they all decide to have a competition and tell two stories on the way to and on the way back from Canterbury. Before telling their tale, the reader is introduced to each and every character and learn of the character’s background, social status, and overall appearance. Geoffrey Chaucer does the prior in order to give the reader an idea of society’s view on each pilgrim and their role in society. In Chaucer's novel, Canterbury Tales is a snapshot of the views of society at the time on the topics of nobility, women and sexuality, and religion.…

    • 979 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Although the Canterbury tales is a satiric story about pilgrims, each character presents personality traits, appearances and tales that do not fit them in to absolute good or evil. However, instead of leaving the sinful characters to only be defined by their evil deeds, Chaucer manages to rationalize their deed to be a result of their nature. Giving them more of an amplified version of evil characteristics every human beings possesses. Through this rationale, Chaucer was able to show that no matter what their social status was, they were all Firstly, The gender parallels of each character reflect some of the worst characteristics in each other only adjusting their wrongdoings to be more fitting to their gender. For example, The Pardoner of…

    • 1673 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays