Chaucer's Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

Say One Thing and Possibly Mean Another
(An analysis of the use of satire in The Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, and how the person that the satire was aimed towards was affected.)
There will always be people that are two-faced. That tell the world one thing, when really only trying to get his or her own gain out of it. These are the type of people that are going to do everything they can to improve on their own lives, while making it seem like they are really helping others and that is something that Geoffrey Chaucer did not like, and did not put up with. “Son of a merchant, page in a royal house, soldier, diplomat, and royal clerk, Geoffrey Chaucer saw quite a bit of the medieval world.” (Stevenson ) Growing up he did experience all of these things and in his twenties he began writing a series of tales that picked apart people in the middle ages society. It is interesting because without this writing the world would not know a lot about the middle ages themselves. Chaucer attacked three different categories of people in these tales and those where, the religious, the upper class, and the lower class. That is interesting because
anyone could say a great deal about these three grouped depending on what was believed by the accuser. In the middle ages everyone believed the same things, everyone was catholic, everyone attended church, everyone followed the rules they were given. Or at least, they seemed to be. In Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, satire was used in a way to show and reveal the corruption that was going on in the church and in society itself.
Initially, women have been thought of differently throughout history and in The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, he really manages to display how women are in control, no matter what. Women have caused wars, “Achilles should have left behind a pointless catastrophe and gone home” (Lateiner), and that is something that is very powerful when put into perspective. Not everyone can just cause a war. Women were property back in the time of Homer and The Illiad, but in the middle ages women were not thought of much better. Women were thought of as weak, they had to do what they were told, they were to stay loyal and nothing was truly theirs because men controlled them. This was the common thought in the middle ages. That is until Chaucer told the tale of The Wife of Bath. In this tale the wife of Bath tells how she is really in control, how women are really in control. “So there’s one thing at least that I can boast/ That in the end I always ruled the roast.” (Line 251-252). The wife of Bath explained how she did rule the house and made all of the choices, her man just did not know it and this was said to be true for anyone in a relationship. The women did have control, just without the men knowing.
With that said, the church was a subject that was hit hard by The Canterbury Tales and Chaucer intended for this to happen. One of the reasons that Chaucer wrote these tales in English was because he wanted to make fun and mock the church so he could not have written this in Latin. That right there is a significant hint at how appalling this got. In the Pardoners Tale it told the story of how this priest was doing this for his own greed. “They can go blackberrying [in hell] for all I care.” (Line 24). This was an example that Chaucer used to get people to understand that the priests were corrupt, that they were using the people of the church to fund their own needs and wants. “Is all my preaching, for it makes them free. To give of all they have--namely, to me.” (Wilcox) This bring up and interesting question of the priests and if all of them were corrupt? This is something that will never be known due to the fact that Chaucer is one of the only people who kept documentary during the time.
Lastly, the use of satire that Chaucer used in the General Prologue is one that attacked almost every type of person in that time era. One of the characters that he really described in depth was the monk. This was not the ordinary monk; this was one that disregarded the rules that governed the monasteries. In the middle ages “monks and nuns gave up their personal belongings and families to live stricter lives.” (Cels) This quote is ironic in more than one way. There was not just a monk on the pilgrimage, but also a nun who was no greater than this monk. Chaucer uses a great deal of sarcasm when he is talking about how the monk thinks that the rules of the monasteries are outdated. He even goes as far to say “Greyhounds he had, as swift as birds, to course./Hunting a hare or riding at a fence…” (Lines 194-195) This might not make sense, but it is against monastery rules to hunt, and this is something that the monk going on this pilgrimage takes pride and joy in.
In conclusion, Geoffrey Chaucer used satire in The Canterbury Tales and showed a lot of people what was actually going on in the communities of the Middle Ages.
These tales told the stories of made up people on a pilgrimage, and this is how Chaucer got away with writing what he did. Whenever someone would accuse him of his writing, he would just say that he did not say it, how could you blame him when he was just writing down tales other people had told him. Everyone was required to go on a pilgrimage because they “Were regarded as penitential acts reflecting the pilgrimage of the Christian spirit toward its Creator.” (Flagg) This particular pilgrimage was one that had a lot of tales to go along with it, and these tales will never be forgotten by the people they affected with the satire woven into every line of these
tales.