Insight into Human Nature in Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales :: Canterbury Tales Essays

Insight into Human Nature in Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury TalesThe Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, (written c. 1387), is a richly varied compilation of fictional stories as told by a group of twenty-nine persons involved in a ghostlike transit to Canterbury, England during the fourteenth century. This journey is to take those travelers who relish religious catharsis to the shrine of the holy martyr St. Thomas a Becket of Canterbury. The device of a springtime pilgrimage provided Chaucer with a diverse range of characters and experiences, with him organism both a narrator and an observer. Written in Middle incline, each tale depicts parables from each traveler. England, in Chaucers time, was a nation of brotherly and economic growth. Medievalism was a dominant influence in the lives of Englishmen, but the Renaissance had assumed definite form, and the country stood on the threshold of the modern world. Medieval Europeans asserted that the ideals of spiritual community, soc ial groups and national interests were greater than individualism. In Chaucers time, there were many manifestations of rebellion against the old order of things, including an influx of mysticism and materialism. People demanded more voice in the personal matters of their government and viewed the Catholic Church as corrupt. An emerging religious reformation, which placed emphasis on individualism and national patriotism, along with the upsurge of manufacturing and commerce, gave rise to the English middle class. The Canterbury Tales is a literary work that deals with the personal concerns and solutions of an evolving Medieval society. In Medieval Europe pilgrimages were common for personal reflection, penance, and spiritual renewal. Chaucer chose the framework of a pilgrimage for its naturally plausible diversity of people and mix of pious purpose and holiday spirit. Geoffrey Chaucer, Englands first great poet, was born in 1343, during a time of social, political, religious and lit erary ferment. Chaucer, who was the descendent of a prosperous family from Ipswich, received the impetus for writing from fourteenth-century Italian and French poets. Chaucer--whose father was a successful wine dealer in London and whose mother, Agnes de Compton, a member of the English court--was reared in an intellectual environment of high society. He was well educated, having studied at the Universities of the Court. He lived among nobility in his service to the Court. The project of writing The Canterbury Tales took Chaucer thirteen years of unremitting toil, a work that was both continually evolving and unfinished.