Humanity And Climate

THE THEME OF CORRUPTION IN THE CANTERBURY TALES

Chaucer’s The Canterbury tales deal with corruption with his religion and religious ideas. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer explains the corruption in a way that is both ironic and humorous. The religious icons in The Canterbury Tales show many of the problems corrupting the medieval Church. For Instance, The Monk and The Friar. Chaucer highlights corruption to the reader, especially with these two tales. While The Friar is portrayed as a greedy counterfeit, The Monk is described as a person who breaks the rules. Throughout the story, the Characters depict corruption with the attributes they are given.

In the story, both the characters on the pilgrimage and the characters display elements of church corruption, two characters, in particular, stand out as being corrupt while claiming religious or moral situations. The First is The Monk. In general, a monk is defined as a member of a religious community of men normally living under obedience. However, Chaucer’s Monk is described as the opposite of this description. Monk chooses to hunt, which is his hobby than committing his life to work his religious knowledge. Although this is against the rules of the order of St. Benedict. The Monk spends all his money on dressing and his own interests rather than doing charity work.“His sleeves were garnished at the hand with fine grey fur, the finest in the land, and on his hood, to fasten it at his chin. He wore a wrought-gold cunning fashioned pin; into a lover’s knot” (Chaucer 128). He should be wearing a rosary instead of a gold pin, indicating that he is not religious. The monk is also distinct from other monks in that “His head was bald and shone like looking glass; so did his face, as if it had been greased. He was fat and personable priest.”

The Second is The Friar, who tells a tale about a summoner. “There was a Friar, a wanton one and merry A Limiter, a very festive fellow. In all Four Ordersthere was none so mellow,”( General Prologue 150) Church corruption is explained extensively in this tale. The story centers around a corrupt summoner. Summoner is an untrustworthy, deceitful person who steals and cheats people. The Summoner uses his position as a church official church member to defraud innocent people into giving him money or bribes. He puts corruption in the foreground by doing injustice instead of providing justice which is his main duty. Chaucer wrote this tale to show how insatiable and corrupt church officials were during the Middle Ages.

“That lay by hem, they tolde it in his ere.

Thus was the wenche and he of oon assent;

And he wolde fecche a feyned mandement,

And somne hem to chapitre bothe two,

And pile the man, and lete the wenche go” (58-62)

To Sum up, with these two tales, the theme of corruption in The Canterbury Tales came to the fore. Geoffrey Chaucer illustrates the corruption in the church with these two characters. All of these events that took place in tales demonstrate the state of corruption in the church. The use of greed, lust, hypocrisy represented corruption in the church. The theme of corruption is usually depicted in ancient works, and Geoffrey has successfully demonstrated this theme to us.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Geoffrey Chaucer's The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, and Nevill Coghill. The Canterbury Tales. London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2003