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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 11 page research paper/essay that analyzes Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" from his medieval masterpiece The Canterbury Tales. The writer specifically addresses the pagan setting used in this tale and argues that it facilitates social commentary by distancing the narrative in time. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
11 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khchkst.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
the diversity of "aesthetic expression," which characterized the contemporary culture, along with a "range of intellectual and ethical attitudes," which collectively represent the nature of Chaucers "pan-European contemporary cultural and
social world" (Schildgen 122). As Chaucer scholar A.J. Minnis has demonstrated, Chaucer deliberately created the pagan settings in his Tales so as to make them seem "remote" from his own
era, and thus, distinguish pagan from Christian values (Schildgen 1-2). Examination of "The Knights Tale" demonstrates this feature and shows how the pagan setting of this tale allowed Chaucer
to address the ancient perspective of Stoicism. Background to "The Knights Tale," Chaucers era Chaucer lived during a transitional time. The period of united Latin Europe was drawing to
a close and the fourteenth century also marked the emergence of national consciousness, as exemplified in the absolute monarchies of Louis IX and Henry IV (Schildgen 121). Rigidly fixed social
stratification was waning, as new social categories emerged, such as bankers, merchants and craftspeople. It was also an age in which the "Schism, the Avignon papacy, and the hypocrisy
of the clergy and religious orders" discredited the spiritual assertions of orthodox Christianity (Schildgen 121). The writer of this period--Dante, Petrarch, Boccacio and Chaucer, himself--as did the reformers, such as
John Whyclif and John Hus, drew attention to the moral and spiritual failures of the Christian Church (Schildgen 121). While The Canterbury Tales is set on an "English road,"
with "English people," speaking the English language, as they wend their way in the process of English pilgrimage, they nevertheless represent the diversity of opinion, worldview, and experience that characterized
Chaucers world. Chaucer presents a "pluralism of worldviews" that refuses to be summarized by universal prescriptions (Schildgen 122). In so doing, the Christian ethos is undermined by tales, such as
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