Revenge
(Chaucer’s use of Satire to reach his intended audience)
“The appreciation of Geoffrey Chaucer has suffered a good deal in the past from his reputation as the ‘Father of English poetry.’'' (Traversi) From this man’s great writing has come many different views and different understandings of the English language. What Chaucer does is very important, he uses satire. What does this word mean? It is a sort of Irony or trick where Chaucer will say one thing, but mean another. This is a way of telling the audience what is wrong in our society, without directly telling them. How did he make people listen? It all has to do with the evolution of English Language. It starts with Old English in 1000 A.C. with Beowulf, then to Chaucer around 1300…show more content… Chaucer was one of the first know reformers of the Catholic Church. He was said to be the beginning of the attacks on what was wrong with the religion. He was not an atheist per say, he completely had faith in God, but he did not agree with the way the church went about scamming the people for their money. The main message of these two texts was, “Greed is a source of all evil.” He says this without really directly saying it. In the General Prologue he attacks the dishonestly and trickery that the church and the priests do to the common people, called Yokels. Then in the tale, it illustrates a story that explains why it greed and the desire for money can be so harmful. It showed the particular consequences. A critic talks of how the story is symbolic, “It is, of course, a passage that seems to demand a symbolic interpretation.” (David) This is an important concept in the passage. That there is symbols that represent the message that Chaucer is trying to convey. He directly looks towards the local men and women because they are easily persuaded, especially when it comes to ideas of the church and their…show more content… The ranking of the people were very important in the time of Chaucer. It made a difference in the way people were treated and understood as people. In the Pardoners prologue and Tale, it showed the importance of church officials, in addition to the non-importance of the Yokels. In addition to that tale, was the Wife of Bath’s Tale. This story shows the difference and importance of classes within marriage. One of the lesson’s learned is it should not matter if someone is poverty or wealthy, even though may people in the medieval ages thought it was very important. You could not associate with people that were not in your rank. Chaucer, often jokingly, shows that this view of class is wrong, “Indeed, he can even afford to be a little patronizing at times, and to have his little joke at the expense of the too-busy lawyer.” (Donaldson) Chaucer shows, through the story, that it should not matter the rank or class of someone, but only who they are as a person. Your class does not define someone as a