Allusions In The Canterbury Tales

While many students today may regard Geoffrey Chaucer’s work The Canterbury Tales as useless information, the text still provides useful insight into the society of Chaucer. Through Chaucer’s detailed descriptions of most of the characters in The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the stories each character tells, readers can gain an innate understanding of social opinions and ideals in the time of Chaucer. Due to the sheer number of characters present in The Canterbury Tales, it is likely that readers will find a particular story or character, whom they may relate to. Also, since society’s root motivations rarely change, Chaucer’s time is in some respects quite similar to ours. Emerging citizens of our modern culture must realize that Chaucer’s …show more content…
Some of the allusions are more subtle; however, others are extremely conspicuous. Many examples of these allusions can be found in The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, where Chaucer goes through and thoroughly identifies every character present in the tales. In the prologue Chaucer writes, “…instead of weeping and of prayer one should give silver for a poor Friar’s care” (lines 229-230), when discussing the Friar. It is important that Chaucer used this language when discussing the Friar because during the time in which Chaucer wrote his poems, there was a growing sentiment of resentment against corruption in the church. By characterizing the Friar as a corrupt church official, who is easily bribed, Chaucer shows how he and many other people of his time felt. Today, students of Chaucer’s work can relate such characters as the Friar to other corrupt individuals in positions of power. In Chaucer’s time, the church was in a way its own government. So, corruption in the church then can be compared to corruption in government now. This is an especially powerful connection in the United States, where questions of government corruption and morality riddle the general population on an almost daily