Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales

When analyzing The Canterbury Tales, many critics take issue with Geoffrey Chaucer's use of humor and his failure to seriously address the major ills of his day. Chaucer's references to the Black Death, the Peasant's revolt, and the labor disputes of the Flemish cloth makers are merely allusions in his bawdy, satirical tales, as Chaucer's characters are often irreverent yet insightful, telling their stories with frankness and candor. Due to the crudeness of Chaucer's comedy, critics are also quick to cite The Canterbury Tales for its historical irrelevance and lack of true social commentary. While these critiques are not entirely baseless, they are also rather hasty and unfair. Despite Chaucer's reliance on humor to tell his tales, his stories are also imbued with moral significance as well, and in his own subtle way, Chaucer provides social commentary that illuminates the upheaval and bleakness of his day in a way that even twenty-first century readers can understand.

The Canterbury Tales opens in springtime, as a group of travelers are making a pilgrimage to the shrine of the martyr Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury. It is suggested by the Host, Harry Bailey, that the pilgrims all travel together and share stories on both legs of the trip. Whoever the Host decides has told the best tale will earn a free meal at his tavern at the expense of the other pilgrims. The narrator of the tales, whose name is also Chaucer, gives a description of twenty-nine pilgrims, and

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n unexpected, often outrageous ending. Chaucer uses the fabliaux so that the Miller might satirize the concept of courtly love that the Knight glorified in his previous tale. Instead of resembling the selfless, tormented lovers in the Knight's tale, Nicholas and Alisoun are depicted as lustful and selfish. Absoloun, who behaves more like a courtly lover by respectfully wooing Alisoun, is repaid for his "noble" behavior with a kiss on Alisoun's ass and Nicholas passing gas in his face. Chaucer criticizes the idea of courtly love by utilizing the comical Miller to convey a candid, bawdy tale clearly meant to shock and amuse readers. Chaucer is able to employ the fabilaux again in the Summoner's Tale, but this time, his criticism is aimed at the church and so-called men of God. The narrator describes the Summoner as a lecherous drunkard, who is not particularly intelligent or capable. Angered by the tale that the Friar has told, in which a summoner is depicted in an unfavorable light, the Summoner immediately becomes defensive, and before he begins his story, he shares a quick anecdote about a friar who is taken down to hell by an angel to witness its pain and agony. The Summoner describes: Unto this angel spak the frere

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