Who Is Chaucer's Character In The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a compilation of stories written by Geoffrey Chaucer around the 14th century. Chaucer was the son of a middle-class merchant, he was constantly around the docks as a kid, so he picked up a lot of lower working class jokes, humor, and mannerisms. When he grew up he worked in the royal court, so he got to also see upper-class life in this time. So Chaucer, knew how every class acted, and he knew that they were not so different, despite their social stratification. Although he was educated in a school, he also had street smarts, that he learned from his time at the docks. The Canterbury Tales, was a collection of stories that took place on a pilgrimage to Canterbury with a collection of 29 pilgrims ranging class stature and rank, it was originally planned to have 120 stories, but only around 24 were finished. Chaucer was a brilliant writer and he knew how to get away with things, and one way he did this, is playing the ‘idiot card’ in the Canterbury Tales. The tales are told in the fashion of the narration of the pilgrimage by Chaucer the character, who in the tale is played as an idiot. Although Chaucer is portrayed as a bumbling fool in the Canterbury tales, actually the Nun’s Priest is Chaucer 's true persona and character. Chaucer is portrayed …show more content…
The next time he advertises himself is at the very end of the Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer is asking for forgiveness from the Church, he tells all of his ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’ works, and this does two things; It tells the Church that Chaucer has done good deeds while writing, it 's not just a sinful compilation of stories, and it also advertises himself, stating all the works that he did. These are some examples of example of writer Chaucer, meanwhile the character Chaucer is not nearly as