The Pilgrim In The Canterbury Tales

Improved Essays
The speaker’s attitude to the various classes of pilgrims are different but all show fondness of each pilgrim. He begins talking about a knight who is described as a worthy man who “loved chivalry”. In line 47, the author says, “Full of worthy was he.” Nothing but good is talked about this Knight. After talking about the Knight, he provides details about his son who is a youthful squire that is “great of strength”. Soon after, he mentions the prioress as a modest, well-mannered woman. She was a delightful woman, as he said. In line 32, she is described with the line, “In courtesy, she had delight and zest.” When describing the monk, great things were said about how he was “made for mastery”, and brave he was. There was a poor man that

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the Middle Ages, if you were a knight chivalry was very important. To be a knight you put your life on the line for your lady and king. The excerpt from Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, translated by Burtin Raffel, demonstrates the code of chivalry Gawain’s brave actions in an effort to reflect the enhancement of the character in this literature of the Middle Ages. One example of chivalry was when Gawain stepped up and took the axe over author to swing the axe at the Green knight.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 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
  • Superior Essays

    “The Pardoner’s Tale” Author Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales,” a book known as anthology for its several tales, in 1392. One of the several tales called “The Pardoner’s Tale” which has a prologue and then the tale itself. In the prologue, it is mentioned that “Love of money is the root of all evil” and the tale describing how greed can lead to devastating acts and consequences. A prologue and a tale with the sense of Morality in between the lines. Leaving aside that the Canterbury Tales is six centuries old, is it still worth reading today?…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the Pearl Poet’s romantic poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain is a knight who abides by a set of knightly virtues in the land of Camelot. Sir Gawain follows these knightly virtues with great efficiency. Sir Gawain always upholds his knightly virtues because of the people he meets, like the lady and the hosts, and because of his actions, like attending Christmas Mass. Sir Gawain is the ideal knight because he lives according to his knightly virtues, especially piety, chastity, and friendliness.…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Beowulf has many life threatening battles but he is not frightened because he puts his trust and physical ability in God and believes that whatever the outcome is that it is in God’s plan. Grendel is viewed as a character associated with the devil and always trying to cause trouble. “To feud with Almighty God: Grendel saw that his strength was deserting him, his claws bound fast… (49).This expresses the societies’ belief in God and that there was a devil. In ones own life, their will always be struggles that one will have to overcome. Although Beowulf’s battles may be more gruesome and dangerous, one can take away from this that any battle that one is fighting can be accomplished with God and the determination like Beowulf.…

    • 547 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On the basis of entertainment and lesson-teaching, it is not difficult to see which tale in The Canterbury Tales is the best. Each pilgrim journeying to Canterbury tells their own story with a lesson and a bit of entertainment, and their stories reflect their actions and personalities. “The Pardoner’s Tale,” “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” and “The Miller’s Tale” represent their storytellers while capturing the attention of the reader. However, only one of the tales has the strongest lesson and the most balanced amount of entertainment. “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” rises above the other stories in terms of lesson-teaching and entertainment because it demonstrates a revolutionary lesson while resisting the urge of being too obscene or too hypocritical like the other two tales.…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “ You’re old, and so abominably plain, so poor to start with, so low-breed to follow; It’s little wonder if I twist and wallow!” This is her explaining why he can’t sleep, The knight is very rude to her not treating women right…

    • 1000 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chivalry was the moral code that the noblemen of the middle ages strived to follow. This code outlined how a knight should behave in battle and to a greater extent how they should act at home. Gawain and the Green Knight and Marie De France’s Lanval can both be read as explorations of chivalry. Both works present chivalry as an impossible ideal rather than a fact of medieval life. Lanval, Gawain, and Arthur’s court are all pillars of the chivalric ideal, in Marie De France’s Lanval Arthur’s court is said to have, “had no equal in all the world”(154) and in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Arthur’s court is said to consist of, “the most courteous and chivalrous knights known to christendom;”().…

    • 1058 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Think about the stereotypical raider or pirate. This image presumably portrays a tough, unkempt, and harsh man. This man probably doesn’t really care about others and will do anything to get what he wants, or his treasure, he even steals and lies. Now think about how others view that man and what they think of him. Most would say that he is eerie and intimidating looking, while others may admire him for his bravery and strength.…

    • 832 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When one thinks of chivalry, an image of a valiant knight in armor appears in their head. However, in reality, the code of chivalry was a strict set of rules and guidelines that knights had to live by and was often impractical and difficult to uphold. In the chivalric romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Pearl Poet, Gawain undergoes a series of challenges that test his adherence to chivalry. In addition, the poem illustrates the rift between the code and human nature instinct. These instances provide examples of the impracticality of the medieval code of chivalry.…

    • 1182 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Helen Rocha Per.2 SAHC:HR By looking at the Knight's and Miller's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's work of fiction Canterbury Tales 1476, one can see the distinctions between love and lust, and the tragic and comic endings desire, temptation, and ones emotional necessities may lead the human mind to. The Knight who portrays humorous aristocracy among pilgrims, introduces a courtly love tale that represents his social class. The Miller on the contrary represents the middle class in Medieval England, and coveys a fabliau tale, completely distinct from the Knight's tale. Both tales introduce the conventions of romance, and upshot of desire. While one tale engages on a spiritual meaningful convention of love, the other engages in sexual drive and the humiliation lechery may bring to ones table for the rest of their living.…

    • 1073 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Pilgrim’s Progress Literary Analysis A Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegorical novel by John Bunyan, follows the journey of Christian, a man traveling from the sinful City of Destruction to the Celestial City after experiencing spiritual conviction and direction from Evangelist. Christian encounters numerous friends and foes along the way, until, after great turmoil, he reaches the City at last. Though Bunyan includes a variety of characters and places that accurately represent the various facets of the Christian walk, his overt approach neglects to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions, making his point less effective. This is demonstrated in his use of characterization, setting, and point of view.…

    • 1042 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout history stories have been one if the fundamental basis of all cultures no matter if they have been passed down orally from generation to generation or through written in script. There are several stories and poems in The Norton Anthology of English Literature that are considered to be some of the best literature of all time, such as Beowulf, Everyman, and The Canterbury Tales. Within these literature works people can see several differences and similarities as the literature moves through time. Personally, I believe that Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales have the most apparent similarities to the contemporary values of the modern world.…

    • 823 Words
    • 4 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

    The Medieval period was a time of firsts, the first Crusade, the first census, the first manifestation of the modern-day perception of knights and kings alike. The fourteenth century was also full of literary firsts, the most predominant being the shift from scholarly reading to a more universal style of tales written in Middle English, introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer, a timelessly renowned poet. The Canterbury Tales, considered the most important literary piece of the Medieval period written in 1392 by Chaucer, is considered his greatest achievement although the work is fragmented. The Tales begins in Chaucer’s day, the fourteenth century, in a quintessential English town named Southwark. Inside this town is a pub named the Tabard Inn, owned…

    • 1503 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays