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The Moral Tales In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

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What would a satisfying tale be without consisting of a moral lesson and some entertainment? As one can notice in The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, there are many tales told that consist of both values. In this book various different pilgrims are on their way to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas á Becket. As they travel they are told to tell four tales, two on the way there and two on the way back. The pilgrim that presents the tale with the best moral education and the greatest entertainment value wins the contest. The judge of the contest will be the Host, and the winner will receive a free feast when they return home. Two tales that are compared at the beginning are “The Knight’s Tale” and “The Pardoner’s Tale”. Despite …show more content…

A tale would not be as valuable or exciting without entertaining parts to the story. People only listen to stories or tales for the entertainment aspect which is very important to include. In “The Knight’s Tale” there are large amounts of important parts that build up suspense and pull the readers in. Some important and entertaining parts are when Arcite comes back disguised as another individual to gain the love of Emily, or when Palamon escapes prison and runs off to fight Arcite in the woods. The battle is also very entertaining; which, contains all the imagery in the tale. “The Knight’s Tale” includes four different parts, so this tale include an extensive amounts of imagery and entertainment. “The Pardoner’s Tale” includes entertainment as well. This tale is one full section and is much shorter than the Knight’s tale. Some entertaining portions of the Pardoner’s tale include when the three rioters journey to find and kill Death, and when each rioters plan to kill the others to gain all the gold and wealth for themselves. Each plan doesn’t end up working causing all three of the rioters kill each other. This means that the wealth is obtained by no one and Death wins the battle. After reading both tales, the Knight’s tale contains more entertaining parts and the lessons learned are more toward a wide variety of audiences and can be read with greater

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