The Use Of Satire In The Canterbury Tales

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In the piece “The Canterbury Tales the General Prologue”, we examined how the author proved the characters to reflect the social classes of medieval society. In this story Chaucer uses satire to shine a light on what he felt to be wrongs of society. The characters of this time were extremely modernized, in other terms, they were not what you would expect. They were the exact opposite of how they should act, dress, and appear. The characters reveal the author’s purpose in a modern way, like today’s society.
When we think about how a nun should should appear we think of a long black habbot that is very loose. We also imagine her appearance to be dull. She would also only desire to please God, not men. In the text Chaucer describes the nun’s …show more content…
A yeoman is one of the first characters listed in the text. The yeoman is extremely respected and is a proper forester where he lives. He dresses in a bow and arrow, dagger, coat and hood of green. He is also very neat and clean, well put together, and tan. His major flaw would be that he was tan. This is unexpected because in today’s society the tanner you can get the prettier you are. People find that if you are tan your appearance is more respected, you are more attractive. If you are pale you are found not as attractive. In the medieval society Chaucer shows us that if you were tan you had less money and were poor. In this case it shows that you had to work hard to earn money and you had no help to get you where you were. It also shows that you probably worked for someone in the upper class. If you were pale it meant that you were inside more which was most expected because you were rich. The paler you were the higher up the social chart you were, you were viewed as exceptionally wealthy. Chaucer proves the characters purpose by showing us the differences in societies, but examines how we are also modernized and can be so alike.
In the text “The Canterbury Tales the General Prologue”, Chaucer uses a great amount of satire to prove his point about the characters of the medieval time period. They were extremely modernized like we are today which creates a great amount of irony in the story. The
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