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Geoffrey Chaucer's Nameless Knight

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Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales, is a popular story about a pilgrimage taken by 30 people, including himself, to Canterbury, England. It starts with a general prologue that helps break down each of the characters. The reader gets an understanding of who the people are that are travelling on this pilgrimage. Certain characters are part of each of the three estates that
Chaucer describes, which are the people who pray, the people who fight, and the people who work. The specific characters he uses for the clergy members are the monk, friar, and prioress, the knight, the squire, and the yeoman are all part of the nobility class, and the workers are the miller, the reeve, and the pardoner. Chaucer ridicules and problematizes the …show more content…

Francis Townsend, the author of "Chaucer 's Nameless Knight," seems to prove this through Chaucer 's ironic writing. Townsend uses comparison to prove how the knight is an oxymoron. He compares Chaucer 's knight to Florent from Confessio Amantis. He uses examples that Florent is well liked because "of his high standing as a knight and his noble lineage," while
Chaucer 's is really only liked by the queen and the ladies who "plead for him" (Townsend).
Chaucer 's knight really does not deserve or gain the proper respect as a true, noble knight during this time but he was not the only noble man that Chaucer mocked.
The knight always travelled with two other people, his son known as the squire and the yeoman. The squire is not like his father really at all. He is known more as the new chivalry. He fights but he also writes, dances, draws, and composes music. The younger knights are more known for fighting the nation rather than their faith like the knight. The squire does not just have fun doing all of those things but he is known as quite the ladies’ man. Chaucer describes …show more content…

Chaucer’s descriptions were extremely detail oriented about each of the character’s appearance but his real reasoning behind his character descriptions were to show the true irony of the three estates. Chaucer was illustrated with his depiction of the three estates and accurately ridiculed and problematized each class and members of the classes through satire, irony, and oxymoron throughout his entire general prologue. The audience is able to get a comical understanding of how these three estates worked long ago and the people who were involved in each

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Each tale reveals moral lessons that attempt to prevent the reader from performing the same mistakes as the character. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” possess similar themes, distinct differences arise in the topics presented in each passage. “The Pardoner’s Tale” and “The Reeve’s Tale” illustrates how greed corrupts men, how sin leads to more sin, and how revenge drives men to undertake foolish feats. The differences between Chaucer’s tales allows for a humorous yet insightful

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Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet during the middle ages, wrote The Canterbury Tale’s Wife of Bath; he was born from a humble middle-class family and climbed his way up through the aristocracy. The Wife of Bath main protagonist is molded by a sexist culture of her times. My goal with this paper is to shed light on The Wife of Bath’s main character. A story of a smart, strong-willed woman who manipulates her way to financial and personal independence, is she a feminist or a smart and scheming woman?

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He also utilized fabliaux to fill his stories with multiple sexual accounts that poke fun at the rules of courtly love. Chaucer’s humor had three main components – mockery, irony, and sadism. John, an older carpenter, with a young wife, is at the center of “The Miller’s Tale.” Chaucer mocks John for marrying a younger woman and the fact that their relationship does not follow the rules of courtly love. Courtly love suggests that jealousy strengthens relationships and equates to love.

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In medieval times, chivalry was something that many men lived up to. If a man lived up to the expectations of chivalry he was said to be loyal, brave and courageous. For some it was difficult to follow certain codes especially when it came to romance, an example: Sir Lancelot in the movie “First Knight.” Medieval romance was taken seriously during its time. Not only did men/knights have to follow rules and codes about war, but also about romance.

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(Chaucer 45-60). Chaucer gives the knight genuine praise to show the virtuous qualities he possesses. Similarly, Chaucer uses the knight in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” to show the importance of honor. The knight shows honor when he promises the queen that he will find what  women most desire, “In the end he chose to go away / And to return after a year and a day / Armed with such answer / As there might be sent to him by god” (Chaucer, 91-94).  

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In the story, “The Wife of Bath,” Chaucer handles satire to critique class and nobility. Alike today, class and nobility still haunt us. Being that, we still see it in high school, it obviously hasn 't gone away. Chaucer brings forth the issue by sending the Knight on a journey of a lifetime. When he arrives back, he still doesn 't have the answer that he was sent to find.

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