Tag Archives: Chaucer

This is the third in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT TRANSCENDENCE: There is no transcendence in this plot: only the authorial intent of the Reeve (a town official) who wants to get back at the Miller for telling a tale that satirizes carpenters because he is himself aContinue reading “The Reeve’s Tale: A Covenantal Outline”

This is the third in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT Transcendence: A clerk claims he knows God plans to destroy the world by flood.Hierarchy: The clerk is living with a miller and sleeping with the miller’s young wife. The scholarly clerk (Nicholas) is able to woo the wifeContinue reading “The Miller’s Tale – A Covenantal Outline”

This is the second in a series of posts about Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1390s). PLOT/THEME/RHETORIC Plot: The knight tells a classic chivalric romance about the battle two cousins (Arcite and Palomon) have for the same woman: the Duke’s sister-in-law Emily. Because the two cousins were political exiles, neither can fulfill their desire ofContinue reading “Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale”

This is the first of a series of posts on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1390s). PLOT/THEME/STYLE Plot: the opening of this frame narrative is pretty simple. Thirty-one pilgrims meet in an inn on their way to Canterbury, the destination of a religious pilgrimage to visit St. Thomas A Becket’s grave. The narrator, himselfContinue reading “The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue”