Geoffrey of Monmouth

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…

Jacqueline Murray, the professor of Department of History at University of Windsor, shows how women emerge in the thirteenth-century manuals as a ’marked’ category defined by their reproductive and sexual functions, viewed above all in terms of how their own sexual status (widow, wife, virgin, prostitute) contributes to the evaluation of males who commit sexual sin with them. ( 13) The Wife thinks that the virginity is not very important because our bodies were given us to use. She despises…

Above and Below the Law The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson is nothing short of compelling. The audience is guided through the legal process, which lead to Charles I’s execution. Robertson’s assiduity in research is highly visible in The Tyrannicide Brief. Readers are not only presented with facts, but taken on a journey that is more than exceptional. Robertson manages to combine law, politics, and social history in one story. Robertson thoroughly brings to life the story of John Cooke.…

unique stories from nearly thin air. Many stories fade into nothingness after a period of time, but some stories are timeless and still are prevalent in media today. A good portion of the most popular stories are based off of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The stories are so broad and unique that one may not even realize certain stories are inspired by Chaucer. Anything from a noble tale of romance to a dirty bar story could be found within his timeless tales. From reading his…

One of the most influential pieces of literature in history is The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales takes place in medieval England, a time full of religious pilgrimages and exploration. The Canterbury Tales is a revolutionary piece of literature, known for its satire and truthfulness. Chaucer begins the tale with a prologue that individually describes diverse characters. Chaucer created these characters to be authentic; they are boastful, mean spirited, reckless, and…

First of all we have to think of the Canterbury Tales in a certain context, these stories are being told in the passage of a Pilgrimage to Canterbury. We see that these characters all live in the same world interacting with one another, but they all have different points of view in several topics. “The pilgrims are represented as affected by a variety of destructive and restorative kinds of love. Their characters and movement can be fully described only as mixtures of the loves that drive and…

The Importance of Friendship Friendship is, by definition, a relationship between two friends. Some believe that friendships are a necessity for human life. Joseph Conrad was a man who grew up not having many friends. As a young child he had missed school quite a bit from illnesses (Kathleen Wilson 200). This made it hard to have close relationships with other children. He did however gain a love for literature and the sea from his father at a young age (www.notablebiographies.com). This is…

Great writers create great stories. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer writes about the different classes of pilgrims. He has a narrator, Harry Bailey, who speaks highly of the knight but does not care about the Summoner. Bailey tells all the pilgrims that each will have the opportunity to tell a story of which they desire and whoever has the best story will get a dinner paid by the pilgrims. Throughout the stories, women are described as men’s pleasure. Chaucer uses characterization and…

In the Odyssey, Odysseus was a very noble man. One of the many things he struggled with was being humble. Odysseus must grasp humility to return back home. Multiple times the gods tried to teach Odysseus to be humble along his journey. Some examples of times the gods tried to teach Odysseus to be humble was when he tried to escape the Cyclops cave, when his men ate the cows of the sun god, and when Penelope had to keep suitors back. The gods attempted to teach Odysseus to be humble when…

Chaucer is no stranger to writing parodies of his own stories in The Canterbury Tales, as seen in the Reeve’s Tale working off of and following immediately after The Miller’s Tale. Similarly, The Friar’s Tale closely parallels and also follows right after The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Chaucer aligns these two tales to enforce the point that they should not be interpreted separately, but rather they should be accepted as an entire unit. And by implementing textual similarities, Chaucer blurs the lines…