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Courage In The Canterbury Tales And The Pardon's Tale

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You may ask what is courage, courage is the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery. Medieval Literature is attempting to teach readers about the importance of one of these three major themes Pride, Loyalty, and Courage in early British. Because these are foundational themes for British society which is the basic foundation of the modern English society. In the epic Beowulf and one of The Canterbury Tales: The Pardon 's Tale, both of them fully expressed courage of the main characters, but in different ways, Beowulf is representing the positive way of courage, on another hand, The Pardon 's Tale is representing the negative way of encouraging. The courage of a true warrior comes from the complete fatalism of life and …show more content…

In The Pardoner’s Tale from Canterbury Tales, courage has been present as a bad thing to have. The Pardoner told a story about money is the root of evil, it could give people courage to do things against their morals. Three men who were decided to kill death, people were dying from the black death. "At once the three young rioters began To ran, and reached the tree, and there they found A pile of gold florins on the ground, Now-coined, eight bushels of them as them as they thought. No longer was it Death those fellows sought. For they were all so thrilled to see the sight, The florins were so beautiful and bright, That down they sat beside the precious pile." When they saw the gold coins, they decided to celebrate about this, the youngest one got the shortest grass, he needed to go buy food and alcohol. The other two decided to kill him on his return and split the money. The youngest man was afraid that the other two won 't give him the money, he bought one bottle of poison and put into other two bottles of wines, saved the third one without poison for himself. They killed him when he returned, after that they sat down and drunk the wines and died, then three of them found

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“Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. ”(Lee,149) This quote meanings is, courage is not winning the battle or even participating in it, it means knowing you going to lose the battle, but fighting anyways and dealing with the embarrassment because you know you're in the right,so standing up for the right thing even if society is against it. This teaches to always fight for what you believe is right of fair.

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A pardoner is a man who sells religious relics of forgiveness to sinners. However, Chaucer’s Pardoner is an untrustworthy character who sells fake tokens for a profit. He boasts of his great ability to preach, and ironically, his favorite topic is greed. “

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Bravery, defined as, courageous acts of one’s character. The main person in this epic poem to demonstrate the act of bravery would be, Beowulf himself. Beowulf’s battle with Grendel shows true courage. Beowulf then “took off the helmet and handed the patterned sword”. (672-673)He was completely unarmed as described in the lines previous.

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I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.(Lee 112)

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They had confidence and courage to win the battle in the name of Beowulf. The author’s perception of courage displays that good will always outperform evil. In conclusion, “Beowulf” illuminates characters and their dauntless actions. In the heroic tale “Beowulf,” the author’s tones strongly demonstrates themes of loyalty, honor, and courage.

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Courage was spread throughout medieval literature and tended to be linked to knightly chivalry, as it is in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Courage was an extremely focal area of interest during medieval times. Medieval literature is teemed with examples of courage and thankfully Sir Gawain and Green Knight has great courageous characters too. What is great about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is that the poem tends to deal with the problematic nature of courage throughout. Courage can be defined in many ways, but the author of Sir Gawain: Cowardyse and the Fourth Pentad, Valerie Allen, really hits the nail on the head with her definition of courage.

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Three younger men drink and argue and argue and drink until one of their servants tells that an old friend of theirs was murdered by a figure called death. They go off in search of Death to kill this so-called figure to avenge their dead friend. On their journey for Death, they meet a man who is ready for Death to take him, he seems to know where Death went, so they follow. They eventually come upon not Death, but a tree with gold in its roots. The smartest of the three friends tells one of the friends to go get food for the rest of the day, as they can’t travel through the town with all of the gold.

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“Radix malorum est cupiditas” translated from Latin into “Greed is the root of all evil.” (Chaucer 125) Throughout the Pardoner’s Tale, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the story of three men that treat people lower than them and they end up finding a whole pile of gold, but they end up killing each other to get the gold to themselves. The entirety of the three men end up dead and not even one gets the gold. There are many topics involving greed, this essay will involve what it is about, the dangers, and the benefits of controlling the desire to gain.

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Beowulf definitely displays multiple examples of courage, such as fighting Grendel barehanded and going to fight a dragon alone, but the most pronounced example is when Beowulf goes to fight Grendel’s mother, his second trial. Her home is a disgusting, murky lake that’s “infested with… sea-dragons / and monsters” (1425) and so deep that “the mere bottom has never been sounded by the sons of men” (1367-1368). Even the creatures that live around it would rather die than dive under the water’s surface. Beowulf makes a big deal out of how terrifying her home is, expressing how the warriors who arrived at her home were “not man enough / to face the turmoil of a fight under water / and the risk to [their] life” (1468-1470). But Beowulf is willing to.

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To fully appreciate the layers of irony in “The Pardoner’s Tale,” you must consider all types of irony. There are three types of irony: verbal irony is when something is said that contradicts the truth, or is the opposite of how the person speaking truly feels, situational irony is when events have an affect on a situation to make the outcome the opposite of what was expected, and dramatic irony is when the significance of actions and doings of the characters in a story are obvious but the characters within the story remain oblivious. Within “The Pardoner's Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, all types of irony are used throughout the story in order to show society uses deliberate ignorance to justify its wrong doings. Particularly,

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Troy was written by David Benioff in 2004 and was based on The Iliad. Troy follows Achilles and the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans and additionally shows us that one of the seven deadly sins can lead to the downfall of mankind. Similarly, the Canterbury Tales, written by Geoffrey Chaucer, explains the tales told by twenty-four different characters. One of the seven deadly sins, pride, is used in both prices of literature and teaches us that if not managed can bring about the fall of mankind. In Benioff’s Troy, the Trojans lead themselves to their own downfall, being the major pride they exude, letting down their guard when they get “surrender” present.

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At the very beginning of the Pardoner’s tale, through one of his sermons, we are told his, “theme is alwey oon, and ever was—/“Radix malorum est Cupiditas” (“Pardoner’s” Tale 5-6). This statement provides an aura of satire, as the Pardoner solely speaks against the practice of greed, as on the side he ironically practices exactly what he preaches against. Continuing on, the Pardoner, himself, clearly states the greedy motives his drive depends upon as he informs us that for his, “intent is only pence to win,/ And not at all for punishment of sin” (“Pardoner’s Prologue” 117-118). The Pardoner states his “only” intent is to win “pence” or profit.

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This quote shows bravery because he's saying he will fight and win with his courage/bravery or he will die because it was not his fate to win. Today in modern society showing bravery is something that can be so little but mean so much to someone else. It could also mean something so big that impacts not only yourself but people around you also. Everyday a human will show an act of bravery and become brave like

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Additionally, in Germanic societies, such as the one in which Beowulf takes place, there were heroic codes which defined how a noble person should act. It is composed of strength, courage and honor, these codes also included loyalty, generosity, and hospitality. The heroic code was of great importance in warrior societies. In Anglo-Saxon culture and literature, to be a hero was to be a warrior, which signifies the importance of the Heroic code (Stitt). Many examples can be seen with Beowulf, just as said in the book “Often, for undaunted courage, fate spares the man it has not already marked."

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Throughout the story, three major details of the narrator’s psyche are confirmed. First, we learned of the narrator’s deceitfulness. Every morning he lies to the old man with the least bit of guilt. The next continues to prove the madness as the narrator feels utter joy from the terror of another. Lastly, the narrator fabricates that the old man is simply not home to assure the officers.

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