A Guide To The Canterbury Tales: Why Were They Banned? | Literary Classics | Perspective

foreign [Music] change the late 1300s was an age of transition that saw the decline of the traditional feudal system and the emergence of a new social hierarchy in an increasingly Mercantile England despite these major changes the power of the Catholic Church still prevailed although as the Canterbury Tales suggest it was an institution riddled with corruption in 1349 England was ravaged by the black death which killed one-third of the population abroad English foreign policy that embroiled the country in the Hundred Years War punitive taxation imposed to meet the cost of war was the driving force behind the peasants Revolt of 1381. despite this social upheaval the age was one of great opportunity the son of a wealthy London wine merchant was born into the burgeoning middle class his father's connections at court secured chaucerer position in the service of the Countess of Ulster she introduced him to the Royal patronage he was to enjoy for most of his life his very duties ranged from diplomatic missions to Clerk of the king's works it was this wealth of experience which provided the material for the poetry and prose that brought Jose literary Eminence in his lifetime his intellectual imagination was shaped by English culture and language and also that of France and Italy Joseph wrote only in English although in order to reflect his literary influences his writing has been categorized into French Italian and English periods an extensive literary range together with his observation of The Human Condition shaped Chaucer's writing his Rich poetic vocabulary and Broad Social Vision were combined to maximum effect in his most celebrated work the Canterbury Tales she also was a middle class man who made good he was the son of a wine merchant who got himself to court through marriage he married one of the ladies and waiting at the court as a result of that he became very pampered very loved by royalty he got sent on diplomatic missions abroad and he ended up as a civil servant he was a customs official for the last 25 years of his life Joseph began writing the Canterbury Tales in about 1387. during a period of semi-retirement it was an ambitious undertaking he planned to explore a wide range of narrative genre using as a framing narrative a pilgrimage to Canterbury a disparate group of 29 pilgrims meet at the tabad Inn at Southwick where the pilgrim narrator is admitted to their number [Music] in Southwick at the tabard As I Lay ready to wenden on my pilgrimage to Canterbury with full devout courage at night was common to that hostility well 9 and 20 in a company of sundry folk by adventuri Fowler in fellowship and pilgrims where they Allah that toward Canterbury Walden reader Joseph's original plan was that each Pilgrim would tell four tales two on the road to Canterbury and two on the return journey to London this major project was never fully realized and what was written was not finally revised however the 24 Tales found after Chaucer's death were in immediate success the success was not just because of his narrative skill but also because of the imaginative force of Chaucer's original idea from this great poem 10 manuscript fragments survive although it is not known exactly in which order the tales were written or how Chaucer intended the fragments to be read it's hard to have a clear idea of the order which Chaucer finally intended she also actually left the Canterbury Tales unfinished and unrevised so we actually we don't have a complete text what we have are manuscript fragments and sometimes those fragments contain one tail sometimes they actually contain three or four tails So within the fragments we can be sure about order on a small scale but we don't know the order in which the fragments were intended to come what we do know is that there are certain chunks that fit together for example after the Knight's Tale Comes The Miller's tail and then the Reeves tail and then there's a break now within that Chunk we can say that the order is absolutely important that the Miller's tale gains enormously from being a sort of response and even perhaps a sort of parody of the Knight's Tale and that is obviously significant because there's the same plot structure two men after the same girl um and how they try to get her well the stratagems which they use but the register is totally different so one is an idealistic picture of love very philosophical one is totally pragmatic totally farcical one fixed point however is the general prologue which introduces the Canterbury Tales it provides a framework for the tales as a whole and sets the scene it introduces the main themes the pilgrims the Estates to which they belong and the tale telling competition Chaucer adopts the guys of the naive Pilgrim narrator to establish a dual perspective the innocent narrator is apparently unconscious of the poet's ironic voice prologue is an essential um actually a scene in which all the tales can be located that's seen as a scene of pilgrimage lots of pilgrims gather at a pub in southern London and they're going on a pilgrimage to Canterbury and they decide to pass the time by telling stories competitively what the prologue adds is a whole different layer of meaning to the tales so that you've got the events the stories about noblemen and ordinary people within the tales and then you've got reflections of those events in the drama of the tellers and it also means that we are encouraged to actually think about the stories evaluatively and even competitively we are actually encouraged to start trying to work out which story is best and more important we're actually being encouraged to think what kind of criteria are appropriate for judging these stories are there any criteria which actually Encompass the huge variety of these stories she also uses the general prologue to subtly introduce his use of satire this undermines the characters outward appearances teaching us not to accept the pilgrims at face value but to make our own moral judgments Chaucer's ironic description of the priorists for example reveals her worldly nature silkeley she was of great to Sport and full Pleasant and amiable of port and pained her to counterfeit a cheer of court and being a static of Manera and to Ben Holden Dina of reverence [Music] a vivid gallery of portraits provides a starting point for our view of the pilgrims whose lives and tales form the substance of this broad human drama in the 1300s a pilgrimage was one of the rare occasions when a cross-section of the community would be gathered together the tales present a microcosm of society in which a diverse selection of characters interact probably in the 14th century No group of people with such wide social interests would have gone on a pilgrimage physically together so I think one would have to say that it's it's a slanted realism or perhaps a varied realism it's building on something real to create something which is a microcosm of the whole to simplify by bringing them all together in the same place they're actually single characters who have been chosen to represent the virtues or the specific vices of a social group they're actually type characters if you like their stereotypes the host of the tabadin Harry Bailey who suggested the tale telling appoints himself Master of Ceremonies and persuades the pilgrims to defer to his authority he arranges the draw to decide who shall tell the first Tale she also Muses on the turn of events when the privilege happens to fall to the night the highest ranking pilgrim and shortly for to tell him as it was where it by Aventura or sort or Kaz the sooth is this the cut fell to the night it is uncertain exactly how the 24 stories which constitute the Canterbury Tales were intended to be ordered however the 10 manuscript fragments in which they are contained have internal licking passages as well as some Tales whose sequence is clear Chaucer intended that his narrative should open and close with Tales which highlight man's better qualities these are recited by the idealized Knight and Parson between these boundaries however we see the tales encompassing a wide range of popular genre these vary greatly in style and content from crude based comedy to courtly love each tale is not necessarily meant to stand alone in many cases they are designed to heighten the theme or act as a repost to an earlier Tale the interplay between the Pilgrim's Tales reveals more about their characters and also how members of the differing Estates View each other Chaucer was careful to make the Tails fit the teller and some prove to be particularly appropriate The Wife of Bath's Tale for instance is a boardy romance which tells how a woman gains sovereignty within marriage The Wife of Bath's Lusty comic prologue details her own wide experience of marriage experience though known Authority where in this world is right enough for me to speak of Woe that is in marriage for lordings Sith I twelve year was of age thunk'd be God that is a turn on Life House bond is at church door I have had five the tales are linked by narrative exchanges which Chaucer uses as a device to cover difficult endings or unfinished works the Franklin's tale begins when the Franklin interrupts The Squire effectively ensuring that the Squire is never required to complete his Tale I know it well the Franklin said again I beg you not to hold me in disdain just for a word or two to this young man each of the tales whether completed or not have an important function it is clear that whatever their order Chaucer's intention was that they would work together as a coherent whole in order to provide a commentary on society it's hard to say that the tales have different degrees of importance I think nowadays some of them get read much more than others get studied much more some of the tales seem relatively slight some of them were left unfinished um some of the religious Tales nowadays seem very dry very formulaic quite unappealing to a modern reader and I suppose there are Tales which people uniformly agree to be the great Tales um the Knight's Tale the Millers the wife of baths the Franklin's the partners um and what is so great about them is that they're superb examples of all their individual genres and in some cases they're actually the best example of the genre that we have in Middle English the Canterbury Tales are part of a tradition of estate satire a popular literary form in the Middle Ages to also introduced a cross-section of society into the tales excluding only the very lowly and the Very powerful the pilgrims are divided into three Estates reflecting the hierarchy of the age the military the clergy and the bourgeoisie to these groups can be added the pilgrim narrator and the host the Pilgrim's unqualified acceptance of the host's authority sees this diverse social group achieve an artificial form of equality you can't put your finger in the prologue upon an extremely rigid social order an extremely rigid social hierarchy to some extent Chaucer is just playing around he's just mixing all the pilgrims up a little bit he's actually blurring the strict social boundaries and he's doing that because because actually at the end of The 14th Century there was a lot of social confusion and the upper classes weren't quite as secure as they used to be and there are lots of Nouveau riche who are elbowing in there and they want to be countered in amongst the upper classes and I think he actually reflects this in a way in which he orders the portraits and I suppose chauces other reason for choosing this group or choosing a majority from this group is that this introduces the issue of social Mobility the idea that actually although whether you were Noble or not was the most important distinction culturally actually that distinction was breaking down that you could move from being born a commoner to dying as as a noble and that that to us as far as Wilkinson very slight social Mobility but as far as their concerned revolutionary social Mobility was an important feature of England in his time Joseph appears to reinforce social distinctions when the most high-ranking Pilgrim the Knight a member of the military tells the first Tale each tale proves to be an expression of the individual Pilgrim's personality and moral worth the night takes precedence not solely for his rank but for the respect his idealized figure inspires and Evermore he had a sovereign price and though that he were worthy he was wise and of his Port as Meek as is made he never yet no villain in all his life unto no Mana White he was a very perfect gentle Knight within the tales social prominence is not necessarily a guarantee of decency the second estate the clergy is shown to Encompass not only the idealized impoverished person but also the corrupt Friar a rich libertine the social media of the pilgrimage reflects the changes in late 14th century Society during The Telltale the old hierarchical order breaks down when a member of the expanding and increasingly influential bourgeoisie the Miller displaces a member of the clergy in order to tell the next Tale the body Miller's tale parodies the theme of chivalric love featured in the Knight's Tale this foolish Carpenter was lost in Wonder at Nicholas what could have got him under he said I can't help thinking by the mass things can't be going right with Nicolas the Reeve infuriated by The Miller's treatment of a carpenter in his tail responds with a derogatory tale of a Miller these Tales demonstrate not only an interaction between stories but also the Thematic continuity Which shapes the Canterbury Tales about the themes of the Canterbury Tales I think one should always start from the individual Tale so that for example in the Knight's Tale we have a story about how fate treats to noblemen who seem very similar in lots of ways but whose eventual um whose life story turns out to be tragically different and we're forced to ask ourselves what's the justice of this how is it that the machinations of the Gods can create such suffering for human beings having seen that as a theme of the Knight's Tale then we can see how that theme is played out in a different way in other Tales tales for example which emphasize Christian Providence or Tales which treat the idea of Justice in a comic way so for me one of the big themes of the Canterbury Tales turns out to be the issue of justice and of the meaning of human suffering what constitutes nobility is it your birth is it whom you're descended from or is it actually how you behave is it a virtue that you show in your behavior and this is extremely important in the Clark's tale it's important in the Franklin's tale it comes up in The Wife of Bath's Tale and these are all quite middle class characters who are out to elevate themselves upon the social scale so they are all quite Keen to prove in their tales that being Noble showing jean-toless is nothing to do with birth at all it's actually how you behave which makes all the difference and of course Chaucer wants to demonstrate that as well he is a middle class character who has managed to get himself into the court um so he is very keen to prove that anybody can have all it takes the theme of pilgrimage is not just a literary device to enable an exploration of narrative genre it is a framework from which other major themes of the Canterbury Tales emerge thrown up by the interaction of a varied social group some themes are vehicles for social criticism although Christianity provided an accepted structure of social cultural and religious values she also judged that the church had become an institution whose Spirit was in need of renewal as representatives of the clergy the priorists the Monk and the friar are shown to embrace more worldly values there are some characters who have deviated so far from piety that they Embrace some of the seven deadly sins The Vices of lust anger and pride are all evident however it is the sin of avarice which produces one of the major themes in the tales the Love of Money not all chauces themes are serious he deliberately used differing approaches to alternate the tone and mood of his work Chaucer took Delight in the comic possibilities of human fallibility in various forms from humorous Tales to the comic disputes between pilgrims as well as the ironic humor of the poet comedy permeates the Canterbury Tales and certainly as sure as God is King to take a wife is a most glorious thing especially if a man is old and Horry then she's the fruit of all his wealth and Glory choices are very learned poet and we of course live in an age which is very remote from The 14th Century so we find that there are many things we have to learn or read or be told in order to understand these poems but one of the most important things about the poems in my view is that for large amounts of the poems what Chaucer is trying to do is to make us laugh and so sometimes we're in a very paradoxical position for example in the nuns priest's tale when we have to learn lots of different things about medieval dream theory or the medieval approach to astronomy but that all that Chaucer is trying to do with that information is to make us laugh so we have to learn and also laugh at the same time but there's another way in which laughter is very important in Chaucer I think it seems to me that one of Chaucer's most characteristic moves is to make you laugh at something make you think it's ridiculous and then 10 minutes later show you how serious and important and tragic it is and it's that mixture between laughing at something and seeing its full import that for me is at the heart of Chaucer's achievement as a single narrative work the Canterbury Tales is one of the greatest long English poems Joss's work like almost all medieval literature was intended to be read aloud sound patterns are those of a work designed for an oral delivery they had a cook with them whose boiling chicken with a marrow bone sharp flavoring powder and a spice for savor he could distinguish London ale by flavor and he could roast and seethe and broil and Fry make good thick soup and bake a tasty pie but what a Pity so it seemed to me that he should have an ulcer on his knee the pilgrim narrator in the general prologue is not sharing his experience with an individual reader he is addressing himself to an audience in the Middle Ages in the absence of written literature popular cultural memory depended on a strong oral tradition in a period when literacy was rare reading was not an individual Pursuit it was a performance art as a court poet Chaucer's primary audience for the oral presentation of his work would have ranged from Nobles to servants the Canterbury Tales with its naturalistic style of dialogue and cross-section of characters would have required an element of theatricality from its narrator to which the audience could respond in his earlier Works Chaucer had been an experimental poet he had been reading the latest work of the French and Italian poets and thinking about how that related to the Roman poetry that he knew better he was a very intellectual poet very experimental poet he was one of the first poets to consciously imitate Dante's Divine Comedy when he moves to his mature poetry poetry like trellis and Crusade and the Canterbury Tales he starts using a five stress line and this is actually it's a rarity it was done very little before him it actually gives you along a line in which you can say more complicated things and in which you can be more sophisticated in your ideas in which you could actually fit more material and I think that assists in the the complexity of his mature poetry and where he is really really Innovative is that he takes these five five stress lines and he orders them in rhyming couplets and that gives you a very fluid very flexible meter which is particularly useful for writing extended narrative verse in the latter part of the 14th century a gradual advance in literacy which had been The Preserve of the clergy saw the emergence of educated laymen like Chaucer who recorded their narratives on manuscripts the age of print initiated a process in which printing technology continually evolved and improved ensuring that 600 years after his death copies of Chaucer's work continue to be reproduced either in Middle English or in translation [Music] history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world we aim to bring you only the most dramatic and fascinating stories of the past through our award-winning documentaries find out about the rise of leaders such as Cleopatra and Napoleon in our latest offering of exclusive documentaries sign up now for a free trial and prospective fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code perspective at checkout to the modern reader the unfamiliar appearance of Middle English with its non-standardized pronunciation and spelling can be problematical Chaucer wrote and spoke in the Middle English dialect which had become the accepted language of the Court this is the language of the Canterbury Tales and it is from this form that much Modern English descends Chaucer was the first major writer to combine the English language with Continental forms of rhyme and meter in order to understand the linguistic effects achieved by his sound patterns and rhyme the importance of the oral tradition cannot be over emphasized Joseph's verse is primarily intended to be spoken aloud Chaucer's original plan for the Canterbury Tales was that each Pilgrim would tell four stories which would allow an exploration of various narrative forms it may be that she also revised his plan or simply ran out of time whatever the reason the scheme did not reach fruition there are only 24 Tales and The Collection ends before the Pilgrims reach Canterbury we have to remember that Chaucer always had tremendous problems with endings many of his works are unfinished and in many of his other works when he gets near the ending you can feel him becoming nervous at the end of troilus and crusader his greatest finished work he suddenly addresses the ladies and apologizes to them for Crusader's infidelity and Promises to tell stories about men's infidelity in the future then he has another thought and he decides that really the whole story wasn't about men and women but was about the relationship of the soul to fate which also gets very nervous at the end of her work because I think he feels that at the end of a work his options are running out the ending of the work will determine what a work means and once the audience has decided what a work means the audience will feel free to criticize the author the audience is no longer held enthrall by the storyteller's spell so that whatever choices of original plan was I think it was modified by his fear of reaching a definite ending as well as of course by life simply running out on him despite the unfinished nature of the work there is an overarching design to the tales using various narrative forms Jose while engaging with social reality weighed the morality of his characters laying bare their excesses his final story is told by a truly good man the Parsons tale is a sermon on the Christian theme of penitence which finally Accords with the true Spirit of pilgrimage the Parsons prologue deals with its content the person said it once in level tones you'll get no Fable or romance from me for Paul in his epistle to Timothy reproves all those who wave aside the truth for fables that are wretched and uncouth when I think about which tale is it that makes me think the longest Which tail is it that raises the biggest issues then I think it's probably the Knight's Tale though there are times when the Franklin's tale makes me think almost as hard but if you ask me which tale I enjoy the most which tale has the most intricate balance between thought and humor then I think I'd give the prize to The Miller's Tale on a personal level I think the Merchant's tale is actually my favorite and it's my favorite because whereas all the other Tales actually stick to one kind of narrative they're either romances or they're Fabio or whatever the Merchant's tale is this kind of fantastic hybrid which manages to be a romance a Fabio a bit of an epic introduce a few moments of classicism all stuffed into the same Tail as the tale which wants to do everything and which manages to be cynical about everything in the same breath and I think I think it's a great Tale [Music]

Channel: Perspective

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Keywords: British literature, Middle English literature, banned books, book analysis, book reviews, classic tales, cultural literature, forbidden books, historical literature, historical narratives, iconic authors, literary analysis, literary heritage, literary heritage analysis, literary influence, literary insights, medieval poems, medieval society, narrative art, taboo books

Id: 1sZxBxo8UkU

Length: 31min 41sec (1901 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 04 2023