Love: the predominant reason for matrimony in the present day. Or as the Oxford Dictionary defines it: “A strong feeling of affection and sexual attraction to someone”.1 Chaucer’s tales, whether original or translated, walk the reader through themes of religion, folly, greed, sexuality, and among others, love while on a pilgrimage to Canterbury.2 The incomplete collection of twenty-four tales has survived since the late 1400’s. And notably, though not exclusively, the author used those tales containing marriage to highlight the incompatibility of power and love in romantic relationships.
Though marriage today has as its idealistic foundation profound sensations of love, such was not always the case. During the Middle Ages and even well into …show more content…
This is because of woman’s desire for freedom which will resist submitting to another. And contrary to the wife’s tale and prologue, such endings are also unrealistic as the man too, desires freedom. It is human nature to desire freedom and so it is natural that these styles of marriages are inoperable. It is not then an arduous conclusion to draw that a relationship – a marriage- where each is free and in love with the other is a relationship that will be stable. To the modern-day couple, a relationship is almost always founded on the ideals of love. Yet in Chaucer’s time, such was not usually, if ever, the case. Something changed between then and now and such a change could only have come about through a change in thinking. The tales of marriage in the Canterbury Tales subtly laid the foundation of the idea in the English speaking world that the practises commonly used were less than ideal and that there existed a much superior alternative. Power and love do not coalesce which is why Chaucer plead his case to keep them
Though marriage today has as its idealistic foundation profound sensations of love, such was not always the case. During the Middle Ages and even well into …show more content…
This is because of woman’s desire for freedom which will resist submitting to another. And contrary to the wife’s tale and prologue, such endings are also unrealistic as the man too, desires freedom. It is human nature to desire freedom and so it is natural that these styles of marriages are inoperable. It is not then an arduous conclusion to draw that a relationship – a marriage- where each is free and in love with the other is a relationship that will be stable. To the modern-day couple, a relationship is almost always founded on the ideals of love. Yet in Chaucer’s time, such was not usually, if ever, the case. Something changed between then and now and such a change could only have come about through a change in thinking. The tales of marriage in the Canterbury Tales subtly laid the foundation of the idea in the English speaking world that the practises commonly used were less than ideal and that there existed a much superior alternative. Power and love do not coalesce which is why Chaucer plead his case to keep them