The Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

Throughout the entire existence of human being there have always been the people who don’t agree with the rest of the population for whatever reason, these people are usually given the title social outcast or simply different. Most of the time these are people who aren’t very socially comfortable and might even be a tab awkward when it comes to social gathering, these are people that you probably don’t consider your friend. Never the less these people usually have strong beliefs against the normal society of their day for their own reasons and can be either outspoken or very private and to themselves about their personal beliefs and problems with the society. These people can be defined as being iconoclastic, or someone who seeks to overthrow
or change popular views in society. One of the most famous iconoclastic people is Geoffrey Chaucer a very outspoken author of his day and who is still studied in depth by student today. Chaucer had three main objectives with the way society was being ran during his lifetime, the first being about hypocrisy in the church, the second being with patriarchy of men and women, and the third being how social classes were sorted by wealth. As I mentioned Chaucer was certainly not a keep to yourself kind of guy and published one of the most famous works of literature, the “Canterbury Tales,” which if you are familiar with the stories you know are filled with extreme sarcasm and satirical messages. If you aren’t familiar with the satirical form of writing allow me to enlighten you on the concept behind it, in layman’s terms it’s basically saying one thing and meaning another, to strengthen your understanding of satire you must first understand the different types of satire, there are two types. The first type of satire is called Horatian satire, this type of satire is more lighthearted and can be laughed about on both sides, even by the person who is being made fun of, but the other form known as Juvenalian satire is meant to be more harsh and not laughed about by the subject, this is meant to hurt feelings. Chaucer exhibits both types of satire in his writing in Canterbury Tales, but for today we will mainly focus on his use of Juvenalian satire. It’s important for us to remember that when Chaucer was writing this piece of literature he was doing so for the three main objectives that I have already mentioned, or his problems with society of his day. Chaucer uses satire to meet his objective in three major ways, first he meets his problems with the church by writing the “Pardoner’s Tale”, he then meets his objective of challenging patriarchy by writing the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, and finally he meets his problem with social classes by writing the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”. We first see Chaucer meet his objective when he directly writes about a character who does exactly what he has problems with the church and shows how hypocrisy runs ramped in the church itself, honest the last place you want hypocrisy to take place. It’s important to note and remember that if you are talking about the church at this time you are referring to the Roman Catholic Church, basically the only church at the time. To show the public the corruption in the church he tells the prologue of the Pardoner who is a member of a group of men who is going on a sacred pilgrimage with Chaucer himself. Chaucer tells about how this pardoner is always doing bad things such as getting publicly drunk, sleeping with multiple women in every town, and even stealing money from people and the church. Chaucer also goes into grave detail about how the Pardoner himself tells the group of pilgrims about his scheme against people of the congregation. We see this in lines 1-12 of the “Pardoner’s Prologue”; “My lords in the churches where I preach I cultivate haughtily kind of speech… I’ve got it by heart, the tale I tell. …it always is the same and always has been, since I learned the game. … I stand, and when the yokels have sat down I preach as you have heard me say before, and tell a hundred lying mockeries more.” This is a direct example what Chaucer was trying to say about the church, the Pardoner tells all the people around him that all he does in stand in front of “yokels”, or stupid people and tell them the same story over and over again, he even considers is a game. The genius of Chaucer did not stop he later in his prologue the pardoner talks about how he always offers people pardons to heaven for a fee, he then pockets the money for his own spending. The fact that he openly tells the people these terrible things that he does, in a drunken stupor I might add, is horrifically making the church and its employees look bad. Chaucer knew that the people of the church were continually doing no good such as pocketing the money taken for pardons and because of this he writes this story and marks it as true words from a pardoner himself. This in itself is another example of how much a genius this man was, he wrote all these things for all twenty some of his characters and marked them as direct quotes. Then, when questioned about who these people are and where to find them he told the questioners that he simple couldn’t remember much about them, he made all of these people up and quoted his ideas, then passed the blame to them and got away with it. By doing so he was able to create a pardoner who did the exact things he hated about the church and published it for the public to read, directly accomplishing his first objective for writing this with a satirical character. The second time that Chaucer uses satire to fulfill his objects is when he talks about the Wife of Bath’s prologue and how she has been controlling her husbands, all five of them.
When we talk about the patriarchy of the time we need to understand that it was socially and moral acceptable for a husband to beat his wife, in all reality it was recommended. The man of the house was allowed a stick no thicker than the thickness of his thumb, thus the rule of thumbs comes into play, this stick was there to beat his wife with any and every time she didn’t act right. You might be wondering what exactly was the right way for a wife to act was, to my understanding she got beat of every little thing that happened. Chaucer had a huge problem with this social ideal; in fact I would stretch to say that he was the first outspoken feminist in history. Chaucer’s belief was that the women should have the control in the relationship, have all the power and become the boss. Clearly if Chaucer had just come about and started preaching about this he would have been looked down upon or even injured for thinking so, so he did what he did best and created a character to say it for him. This character as you probably have already figured out was named the Wife of Bath, she was a strong willed, out spoken woman who had been married five times and claimed that she indeed wore the pants in all five relationships. In her prologue in the Canterbury Tales she tells the story about how the one true thing
that all women want, even more than sex, is control of the relationship. She does this in two ways, her direct experience and thinking and in a story about a knight who is tasked with finding out the one thing all women want, discovering it to be in fact power of their relationships. We see this in the Wife of Bath’s Tale in lines 178-191; “The queen then bade the knight to tell them all what thing it was that women wanted most. …’ My liege and lady, in general, a woman wants the self-same sovereignty over her husband as over her lover, and master him, he must not be above her. That is your greatest wish, whether you kill me or spare me…’ In all the court not one woman shook her head or contradicted what the knight had said… ‘He’s saved his life!’“ Here we see that the Wife of Bath is telling as story about how women want nothing more than power over their husbands. The idea of the women being in control of the relationship was completely opposite of the social norm of the time and stirred up quiet the fuss in the local people of the time, at least them men of the time. When questioned about whom this lady was that had the insane idea Chaucer said he only remember that she was from a town named Bath, hence his genius. By creating this character and telling of her and her story the way that he did Chaucer directly used satire to fulfill his objective against the patriarchy of the time. The final objective that Chaucer answers with satire is the idea that the social class should be separated by wealth rather than other things. He does so reach the audience with this objective by satire in the Wife of Bath’s Tale when the old woman talks about her beliefs of this concept. After marrying the young knight upon repayment for saving his life the old wise woman asks why the knight is so down in the dumps. When told that it is because his wife is old, ugly, and poor she gets upset, with good reason if you ask me. She informs him that money is not all that matter when it comes to people self-worth, putting it quiet delicately and simple as for him to understand fully. We see this satirical explanation in the Wife of Bath’s Tale in lines 323-349; “As for my poverty… no shame is poverty if the heart is gay, as Seneca and all the learned say. He who accepts his poverty unhurt I’d say is rich although he lacked a shirt. But truly poor are they who whine and fret and convet what they cannot hope to get. True poverty can find a song to sing… the poor can dance and sing in the relief of having nothing that will tempt a thief. Poverty is, though wanting an estate, a kind of wealth that none calumniate… brings one to God and teaches what is holy.” She tells her love that he shouldn’t judge her because she is poor because money isn’t everything and poor people might just be happier than people who have money. Today it’s commonly known that what makes a person great isn’t their personal wealth, but who they are as a person. In all seriousness at this time people believed that the only way that someone could matter in society was for them to be born into money or somehow acquire a lot of money. Because of this Chaucer wrote about it in the Wife of Bath’s Tale in a satirical way, showing the public personal views, without giving away his identity. We’ve discovered that Chaucer was able to reach his audience by using satire to meet his personal objectives when writing Canterbury Tales by writing about the churches hypocrisy in the Pardoner’s Prologue, the woman’s need for power in a relationship in the Wife of Bath’s Tale and finally the falseness in the concept of social classes being based on wealth also in the Wife of Bath’s Tale.
At any and all times that Chaucer is talking about talking about a character in his this tale it’s extremely important to remember that the character is completely made up and all of their ideas and words come directly from Chaucer himself. This of course wasn’t known to the readers of the story or they would have possibly lynched Chaucer for believing in such ways. Chaucer so creatively uses satire to talk about how the church is ran by hypocritical people, such as the Pardoner, is pure genius and should be treated as such. He even has a quote where the Pardoner says that he really doesn’t care about the people and they can all go to hell and pick blackberries for all he cares. This is so sarcastic and ironic that people actually tried to find the Pardoner, only to be told that Chaucer couldn’t remember where he was from. He once again uses satire to reach his audience when he uses the Wife of Bath to tell how women deserve to how the power in a relationship. She does so with a story of a knight, which we have already talked about, and in the end does cause the society to think
differently. Had Chaucer himself gone and preached this point of view it would have gone nowhere, but to have woman do it in front of men it became iconic. The last and possible most know idea that Chaucer used satire to reach his audience about was the idea that wealth isn’t what’s important when it comes to people. He does so once again through the Wife of Bath’s Tale with an old wise woman who is poor in monetary value, but rich in faith and self-worth. This concept has actually been more widely accepted by society today because of Chaucer and his fictional characters. In all reality there society might not have advanced to our social levels we have today had it not been for Geoffrey Chaucer and his outspoken ideas, but mainly his use of satire do the out speaking for him.