Canterbury Tales The Dark Ages

Canterbury Tales as an Insight on the “Dark Ages” We get an exceptional visual on “Dark Ages” through the stories and details from the book Canterbury Tales. The “Dark Age” lasted approximately 500AD-1500AD. We refer to this era as the “Dark Ages” because it was a time of intellectual and economic declination as a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire. We have very little record of this time in human history. Although we have little documentation, we have enough clues to grasp a moderate depiction. An example of these clues that allow a speculative sensory perception comes from stories of Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales provides a visual on this time as it discusses the trip to Canterbury. Everyone on the trip to Canterbury had

From the book, the Clerk is described as a very poor individual who, as a result of his wealth, dressed in rags. On the other end of the spectrum, the Wife of Bath dressed very well because of financial success. From the Canterbury Tales we are shown the interaction between the wealthy and the poor. There was an obvious division between affluent and the poverty stricken. This difference determined the composition of these cities, down to the government organization. We would also see a variety of architecture, which was also relative according to the owners wealthy status. We would expect the poor to live in cold and feeble houses, while the rich would reside in larger and well constructed homes. Out of both these tangible differences, the greatest contrast would certainly be the way they interacted with each other according to wealthy status. To summarize the two classes using only one word per class, I would describe the majority of the wealthy as prideful and the majority of the indigent as humble. I came to this conclusion as, throughout the book, we observed the interactions between all the characters on there way to Canterbury. The majority of their conversations and even stories where contentious as a result of their conflicting

As we can imagine the poor farmers, workers, and other peasants would be compact into a destitute community who relied on one another. Because of the inefficiency of their technology, specifically there form of transportation, everything would be dirty and smelly. Poor hygiene would be a controversial issue. The wealthy, however, would expectedly isolate themselves practically in order to stay close to the major industry while still keeping a considerable distance. We could safely assume the homes of the elite would often be filled with enticing aromas of their next meal, or exotic and local spices imported from all over the