'The Canterbury Tales'

Paper Summary:

This paper uses various examples from the text of "The Canterbury Tales" to illustrate Chaucer's implied opinions regarding men as the cause of their own destruction. The paper also compares this view of men, as masters of their own demise, with female characters in the text, who are often misjudged as being poor examples of literary feminism. The three tales on which this paper focuses are "The Miller's Tale", "The Pardoner's Tale" and "The Nun's Priest's Tale".

From the Paper:

"Women are generally depicted in Medieval art and literature as the root of all evil and the source of all man's weakness. Chaucer, being the revolutionary writer that he is, sheds a slightly different light on this commonly-held notion of female wickedness. In his collection of stories, The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer suggests, as opposed to the idea that women tempt men to sin and, ultimately, to self-destruction, that man's own stupidity and moral flaws are the result of his various failures and misfortunes. This radically new approach to writing about the downfalls of male characters is best illustrated in The Nun's Priest's Tale, The Miller's Tale, and The Pardoner's Tale. Each tale demonstrates a different male personality flaw that leads one or more of the main characters to his own demise. The Nun's Priest's Tale illustrates the stupidity associated with the vanity of both Chauntecleer and Randall the Fox (who, although animals, are still male), whereas, The Miller's Tale plays on the jealousy and gullibility of the carpenter. Finally, The Pardoner's Tale focuses primarily on the arrogance and avarice of three, young men."

More papers on 'The Canterbury Tales':

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