What in your opinion is Chaucer

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What in your opinion is Chaucer’s view of the religious characters in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales?

Geoffrey Chaucer  born in  in London, was an  , , , ,  and . Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished  . The tales, some of which are originals and others not, are contained inside a  and told by a collection of pilgrims on a pilgrimage from  to  to visit the shrine of  at . The Canterbury Tales are written in ; although the tales are considered to be his greatest piece of many of the religious characters in The Canterbury Tales represent character traits that are different from what is traditionally expected of them. This is because the Catholic Church, which ruled all of England, Ireland and most of Europe in the Fourteenth Century, was extremely wealthy. Extravagant cathedrals were built in every big city while the people suffered from poverty, disease and famine. The contrast between the wealth of the church and  of the people was overwhelming. As a result, the characters in Chaucer’s tales were portrayed as deceitful, greedy ultimately a subtle attack on society.

The first religious character that we meet is the Prioress who is praised by the narrator as for having a lovely modest smile, then her politeness , as Chaucer states ‘hir gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy’ showing that she has flawless etiquette. Her name is ‘cleped Madame Eglantine’ which can be translated into ‘sweet, wild rose’ which is very inappropriate for a prioress as she is the leader of a of a convent of nuns and her aim in life should be to set an example to the nuns, abide to the rules of which are set by the church and to be totally devoted to Jesus and mo other men; this is why the nun is so ironically praised. Men and women of the church are expected to live in poverty and hold no worldly possessions. The Prioress spoke of owning  dogs, which is strictly prohibited in a convent, and treating them exceptionally well and being extremely attached to them. By owing these dogs she violated the vow of poverty but the most apparent item that she owns is a gold broche that and leads the reader to believe that she was not entirely devoted to the church, it is a broach of ‘gold ful sheene’ which has the words ‘Amor vincit omnia’ carved our inside, this means in Latin love conquers all.

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Madame Eglantine wants to be known as ‘well bred’, she did try hard to appear this way but ‘peyned hir to cheere of court’ which means she took pains to imitate courtly manners as she Chaucer says ‘Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly meaning well and gracefully, but she speaks her French in a terrible accent ‘after scole of countrefete-atte-Bowwe’  which are the pilgrims mocking the prioress, again none of this she was allowed to do yet se did it anyway, she even flirts with men and shows body parts which should be covered uyp such as ful ...

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