VEDA'S JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOELL) CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF THE SOCIAL POSITION OF WOMEN AS DEPICTED IN THE CANTERBURY TALES BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER (original) (raw)
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Selçuk Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2021
Geoffrey Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, which contains 24 stories, presents a panorama of his society through the pilgrims‘ stories. These tales engage themselves with numerous issues such as the representation of women and men, courtly love, knighthood, honor, and pious life. These stories have different sources like fabliau, romance, the courtly love tradition, and saint‘s legend. The portrayal of gender plays a highly significant role in these tales that highlight the suppression of women. This study will, in this respect, discuss the problematic depiction of gender and gender roles through the detailed discussion of the female characters in the three selected tales in Chaucer‘s The Canterbury Tales, namely ―The Franklin‘s Tale,‖ ―The Physician‘s Tale,‖ and ―The Man of Law‘s Tale.‖ This discussion will ultimately reveal what kind of attributes these female characters are given in line with the historical, social, and literary context through numerous specific examples from the tales and relevant secondary sources.
International Journal of Literature and Arts The matriarch of Bath – Chaucer's feminist insights
This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer's character Allison of his tale "The Wife of Bath" within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the "Chaucer Review" scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.
The Status of Women in the Patriarchal Society of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale"
Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literature, 2017
This paper aims at analyzing the status of women in a man-dominated society, as shown in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale". To achieve such a goal, the paper analyzes the formation and development of some female figures of the tale, like Ypolita and Emelye. The paper discusses the various consequences of forcing such female characters to live in patriarchal societies, and it explains some strategies used by female characters to resist patriarchal dominance. I argue that Ypolita and Emelye's silence, for instance, is one of the main approaches adopted by the tale's female characters to resist Man's dominance, and that though silence seems productive for resisting and challenging patriarchy, it might spur Man's anger and cause him to view women as an enemy, and behave accordingly. In addition, the paper discusses the struggle between female characters' desire to be independent from Man as much as possible and the desire of male characters to dominate females. Nevertheless, arguing for and against such ideas, this paper concludes that "The Knight's Tale" discusses the patriarchy-dominated medieval society's viewpoint that women will always be dominated and controlled by men since the system of the whole universe is patriarchal.
The Matriarch of Bath – Chaucer’s Feminist Insights
This paper critically analyzes Geoffrey Chaucer’s character Allison of his tale “The Wife of Bath” within the Canterbury Tales. The argument is made that Chaucer intentionally used this character to present his personal feminist ideals to his audience, thereby acting as an advocate for women under the guise of literary author. Evidence will be presented both from the text by analyzing her characterization, imagery, and dialog while the weight of this thesis will rest upon The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer evidence presented by scholars, particularly from the “Chaucer Review” scholarly journal, as well as research conducted on the life and times of women during the medieval era.
Anti-Antifeminism in Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales
Gender Studies, 2013
A characteristic of the medieval fabliaux is the dogma of antifeminist traditions. The present article will investigate whether The Canterbury Tales, as a type of fabliaux, are antifeminist literature or if, on the contrary, they stand as a reply to this genre and indirectly militate for feminist literature. Are The Canterbury Tales antifeminist writings or something one might call ‘anti-antifeminist’ literature?
The Clerk, the Wife of Bath and the Merchant: perspectives on women in the "Canterbury Tales
2020
1.1. Chaucer's life and works 1.2. The Canterbury Tales p.7 2. The Clerk's Tale………………………………………………………… 2.1. The Marriage Group 2.2. The Clerk's Tale: an analysis 2.2.1. Griselda and Walter 2.3. Petrarch, Boccaccio and Chaucer 2.3.1. The historical background: did Chaucer meet Petrarch and Boccaccio? 2.3.2. The Story of Griselda between Chaucer, Petrarch and Boccaccio p.23 3. The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale……………………………….. 3.1. An analysis of Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale 3.2. The Wife of Bath, the Old Woman and the Knight 3.3. Sources and analogues of the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale 3.3.1. La Vieille's speech: a source of the Wife of Bath's Prologue 3.3.2. Analogues to the Wife of Bath's Tale 3.4. The Women in Dunbar's Treatis of the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo p.53 4. The Merchant's Prologue and Tale…………………………………... 4.1. An analysis of the Merchant's Prologue and Tale 4.2. Three analogues of the Merchant's Tale 4.2.1. The Tenth Novella of the Second Day of the Decameron 4.2.2. The Ninth Novella of the Seventh Day of the Decameron 4.2.3. The Story of the Woman and the Pear-Tree of Il Novellino p.83
Laboring in the God of Love’s Garden: Chaucer’s Prologue to The Legend of Good Women
Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 2002
On1 2 October 1385, Chaucer was appointed to the commission of the peace in Kent. He served as a justice of the peace (JP) for the next four years, until being appointed Clerk of the King's Works in 1389. For Chaucer's biographers these years have always posed a problem; they are the middle of his poetic career, seemingly transitional years between his courtly dream vision poetry and the later frame tales. They are some of the best-documented years in terms of official records, yet they have provoked divergent interpretations in terms of their import for Chaucer both as a poet and as a Ricardian servant. For Donald Howard, the late 1380s were ''the worst of times'' when the poet traded a relatively secure urban existence for debt-ridden rustication. For Derek Pearsall, on the other hand, the Kent years provided a well-deserved respite from the poet's ''arduous and thankless'' activities as controller of customs as well as a necessary (and presumably welcome) distance from a court about to be thrown into disarray by the Appellant crisis. 1 Both biographies imply that Chaucer, politically astute as ever, chose to ride out these turbulent years in a Kent backwater rather than brave them in a neighborhood nearer Westminster. Both biographies also describe these years as dominated by Chaucer's single documented return to London in the fall of 1386, when he sat in the so-called ''Wonderful Research for this article was made possible by a stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as by a University of Pittsburgh Faculty of Arts and Sciences Grant. I also with to thank Mike Witmore for this valuable comments on successive drafts of the essay.