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Hypocrisy In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

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Chaucer rights many stories with in his Canterbury tales. Each one of these stories will lead to messages that he wants to send to the community. He claims that he is traveling from London to Canterbury for enlightenment. He claims that on this journey many of the people or characters had a different story. Of course, each story leads to a different moral or lesson he wants to give to the public. There are three main things that Chaucer wants to address through his tales. He is very concerned with the hypocrisy of the church, he is also very concerned with people thinking they are stronger than they really are, and that women do have a place to stand up for themselves. Initially, Chaucer describes his concern for hypocrisy through the …show more content…

During this story a knight is threatened his life for committing a crime the only way he can get out of death is to find out what women really want. “A woman wants the self-same sovereignty over her husband as over her lover” (184-185)He spends a lot of his time looking when he meets an old lady that says that she has the answer. The older woman is not to good looking and she says the only way that she will give him the answer is if he kisses them. She also states that they must get married. This give the women the most dominant role within this tale. This is in the fact first feminist stand ever taken and it was by a male. Once the knight returns to the castle to state that all women want is sovereignty. Cleary, Chaucer is responsible for the use of satire within his tales. Within his Wife of Bath tales he made the first feminist statement. He showed how women can also be dominate within a society. The statements he makes within the pardoner 's tale shows how he really was trying to make a statement through the character that he had created along the way. With his statement he shows that he was truly concerned with the hypocrisy in the church. Through satire he states that even the highest people on the social latter can also not be

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