Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

Canterbury Essay Geoffrey Chaucer was very clear about the characters he admired and despised in The Canterbury Tales. The prologue was a huge clue in revealing who Chaucer's favorite groups of people were. He had extremely strong opinions of these people in which he expressed through his writing. There were two certain people that Chaucer specifically favored. These people were the knights and the women. Right from the beginning it was very obvious that Chaucer valued the feudal class. In the prologue, the knight was portrayed to be honorable and virtuous. It was said that he "had loved chivalry, truth and honor, liberality and courtesy." (Chaucer 17 lines 45-46). Of course the Knight told a moral tale rather than the other travelers who …show more content…
Ironically, the church people fit this category. It may seem odd that Chaucer would express hate for the religious people since he is very religious himself. However, these church folks did not always do their jobs. In the tales, Chaucer gives the religious characters poor physical and personality traits to help get his point across. The way the religious folk act in The Canterbury Tales is a reflection of how they acted in Chaucer's time period. They were merely con-artists and manipulators. In The Summoner's Tale, a friar is portrayed as a con-man. The friar went from door to door promising people he would pray for them in return for money. In reality, the friar was not really praying for people like he was supposed to be doing. He was scamming them for their money. Even the actual Friar was just as greedy as the Friar in The Summoner's Tale. It was said in the prologue that "He was an easy man in giving penance where he knew he would gain a good pittance." (Chaucer 27 lines 223-224). Chaucer wrote the Friars to be a con-men in The Canterbury Tales because that is how he viewed people who "worked for the church". Chaucer disliked these people so much because they did not help the people or the