The Canterbury Tales

1
The Canterbury Tales

• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Tale of travelers on their way to Canterbury
• Each traveler tells a tale
• Chaucer shows us (reader) the virtues and faults
  of each character
• Social commentary of Middle Age society, values
  and customs

2
Literary Terms

• Direct characterization
• Direct statements about a character
• Indirect characterization
• Actions, thoughts, and dialogue reveal a
  characters personality.

3
Choose a character

• Cannons Yeoman
• Clerk
• Cook
• Franklin
• Friar
• Knight
• Man of Law
• Manciple
• Merchant
• Miller
• Monk

• Nun
• Parson
• Priest
• Prioress
• Physician
• Reeve
• Squire
• Summoner
• Shipman
• Wife of Bath

4
A class dividedp. 92 - 93

• Aristocracy lineage and tradition
• Upper Class acquired wealth
• Middle Class trade mastery
• Virtuous Lower Class poor but moral
• Degraded Lower Class no morals

5
A class divided

• Go sit with your classmates.
• Aristocracy up front
• Degraded lower class closest to the back
• Other classes in the middle but be sure to keep
  the proper ranking.
• VLC should not be near the Aristocracy ?

6
Character Analysis

• Find your character in the Prologue
• Create a character analysis to share with the
  class
• Character
• Occupation
• Description (physical appearance, attire, etc.)
• Actions and motivations for those actions
• What can you infer about the character?

7
(No Transcript)
8
www.litrix.com/canterby/cante001.htm

• Summarize your characters tale.
• Create a one-sheeter to hand out.
• Due on Wednesday
• Present and share on Friday.

9
Quiz on Nuns Priests Tale

• Study while you can!!

10
Nuns Priests Tale
Literary Terms

• Parody a humorous imitation of a work of
  another type of work.
• Mock heroic epic
• Mock fable

11

• Why do Chanticleer and Pertelote argue at the
  beginning of the tale?
• How is the fox able to catch Chanticleer?
• What does this tell you about Chanticleer?
• How does Chanticleer escape from the fox?
• What characteristic of the fox enables him to
  escape?

12
The Hero Cycle
13
Literary term

• Exemplum an antecdote to illustrate the main
  point of the story

14

• Why did the men want to kill Death?
• What did the old man tell the three gamblers?
• What happened?

15
Archetypes

• What does the old man respresent?

16
Social Commentary

• What does the Pardoner do at the end of his
  story?
• Why does Chaucer include this?
• What is the social commentary made?