Essays on "The Canterbury Tales"

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer introduces, discusses and analyzes two essays on "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer. Specifically, the writer summarizes and compares the two essays "The Knight's Tale and Trecento Italian Historiography" by James H. McGregor and "Desire, Violence and the Passion in Fragment VII of the Canterbury Tales: A Girardian Reading," by Curtis Gruenler. The writer notes that these two essays discuss different aspects of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," from what inspired "The Knight's Tale" to his use of violence and history in the work, and what that means for readers. The writer concludes that these essays open up new worlds and ways to explore "The Canterbury Tales," and they make the epic poem more interesting and compelling to the reader.

From the Paper:

"Both of these essays bring up aspects of "The Canterbury Tales" that casual readers might not recognize or understand. They show how the history of the day influenced Chaucer, and how he used other, older works as inspiration for his own tales. They show how events at the time also inspired Chaucer, and that he was writing largely against violence in most of the tales, and that shows in many of them, including the "Knight's Tale." Each of the tales is humorous or satirical in some way, and one essay discusses new fragments of the manuscript that contained differences in the accepted version of some of the stories. All of this information helps enlighten the reader and gives them another layer of understanding the work, and it makes reading it more enjoyable, too, because there is background and foundation for some of the tales and their meaning."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Gruenler, Curtis. "Desire, Violence and the Passion in Fragment VII of the Canterbury Tales: A Girardian Reading." Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 52.1 (1999): 35.
• McGregor, James H. "The Knight's Tale and Trecento Italian Historiography." Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question. Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. 212-225.

More papers on Essays on "The Canterbury Tales":

• Analytical Essay # 3606 : "The Canterbury Tales" and the Medieval Church"
• Analytical Essay # 42565 : "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales"
• Analytical Essay # 45440 : "The Miller's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale"

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