The Significance of Women in Chaucers The Cantebury Tales Essay

The Significance of Women in Chaucer's The Cantebury Tales      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   In Geoffrey Chaucer's The Cantebury Tales, many stories are told leading to a wide range of topics.   One particular and significant topic Chaucer touches on many times is the role of women.   In stories such as The Millers Tale, The Knight's Tale, and the Wife of Bath's Tale the women of each story are portrayed extremely different.   Alisoun, Emelye, and the wife of Bath, each exemplify three dissimilar ways in which women love.   The way Chaucer describes each of these characters is dependent on the out come of each particular story.   Chaucer is careful with his word choice and figurative language with each woman, enabling the reader to get a very visual and sometimes humorous picture.    Since the Miller's Tale is a parody of the Knight's Tale there is great wit when it comes to the role that Alisoun plays. Emelye on the other hand, is constructed in a more serious and respectful way. Emelye of the Knight's Tale has two men madly in love with her- Arcite and Palamon.   These two men are imprisoned for life and can only imagine the idea of loving and having Emelye as a wife.   Palamon upon seeing Emelye cries, "Into myn herte, that wol my bane ./ The fairnese of that lady that I see / Yond in the gardyn romen to and fro / Is cause of al my criying and my wo. / I noot where she be woman or goddesse. . . (1097-1101). His statement of love is so profound that Palamon is not even sure if Emelye is a woman or a goddess, but is sure of her "fairness" and beauty. Arcite also loves Emelye and ridicules Palamon's thoughts about Emelye being a goddess, he states,   "Though woost nat yet now / Wheiter she be a womman or goddesse"(1156-1157).   When Arcite falls in... ...e and foolish people can act while in love; this is something that many stories try to teach their readers.   Finally, somehow, Chaucer may have been reaching out to women with The Wife of Bath's Tale, although some believe she is used as an anti-feminist tool, perhaps Chaucer's point was to have that woman teach other women the positives of being in control.   No matter what message these women bring, Chaucer clearly appreciates their importance not only to his readers, but also to his tales. Works Cited Brown, Peter.   Chaucer at Work:   The Making of the Cantebury Tales. New York: Longman Group, 1994. Cooper, Helen.   The Structure of The Cantebury Tales. Athens: The University Of Georgia Press, 1984. Pursell, Willene van Loenen.   Love and Marriage in Three English Authors: Chaucer, Milton, and Eliot.   Stanford: Leland Stanford Junior University, 1963.

Literature & Community Essay

Literature can reflect the lives of individual characters and more importantly it can allow the reader to put the character or conflict in context by revealing the community through the eyes of the individual. In the instances of William Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily† and John Updike’s â€Å"A&P,† the community plays a central role for the narrator. The community and people are filtered through the lens of   Sammy the checkout boy and the unknown narrator. Both belong as part of the larger community but their observations allow the reader to glean a closer, though biased look of the other characters such as Emily and the girls roaming through the A&P. Their narrations reveal the closed sensibilities of two communities separated by decades and the leaps of modernity, but the New England town of Updike’s story is no less judgmental or structured than the Faulkner’s 19th century southern community. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† Faulkner shows Emily only through the eyes of the other community members. Haughty and self-contained, she is part of the community legend but not part of the reality of the town, described from the beginning as â€Å"a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town†(Faulkner, W. 2001; p.79). Their day-to-day lives continue with or without the presence of Emily, her death excites only curiosity. She is a living eccentricity who in her secrecy has elicited the town’s curiosity. They feel â€Å"not pleased exactly but vindicated† (2001; p. 80)   in Emily’s inability to marry successfully and heartened by the pity they can feel for her financial straits. The individual woman has long fallen to the wayside as the legend of her odd nature is absorb as lore. Presented through the eyes of the narrator, the reader never really attains a complete understanding of Emily as an individual character. Instead, Faulkner presents both facts and suppositions to show the mixture of gossip and fact that had created the myth of Emily. Stripped of her individuality by her inability to be part of the community and the community’s inability to accept her, Emily becomes a two-dimensional caricature of a woman. The reality of her preceding years, shown in the long-dead corpse lying in the bridal chamber and the gray hair upon the pillow beside, will simply be added to this myth. The narrator makes no attempt to explain this strange image but implies in the form of the rest of the story that this will be added to the legend. Faulkner’s story shows how the community can change an individual into a story, through their perceptions and judgments. Updike’s â€Å"A&P† shows a similar trend in how judgmental assumptions can replace the reality of an individual. The community in this case is the closed community of an afternoon supermarket crowd who represent the town at large. In much the way Faulkner’s narrator reflects the views of the town, Sammy expresses and relays the perceptions of the â€Å"few house-slaves in pin curlers† (Updike, J., 2001; p. 33) and the judgmental manager. His observations of the other people in the supermarket and their reactions to the girls, both verbal and non-verbal, show the community’s perception of the girls’ character based on shallow assumptions. Sammy also unwittingly reduces the girls to embodiments of his own sexual desires. While he is outraged at the treatment they receive, he seems more bothered by the way the opinions of the community alter his own vision of the â€Å"Queenie† (2001; p. 32) and her friends. Like Emily, the girls’ represent myths for Sammy individually and the community. For Sammy the myth is created from his own hormone fueled ideals that inspire him to the â€Å"heroic† gesture of quitting his job. But why did he not simply stand up for the girls? It is simple, he has created in his minda romantic myth where he is the hero, and they the damsels in distress. For the community, the girls represent a myth of the immorality and indecency of youth. Their exposed flesh merely highlights their growing maturity from the easy acceptance of little girls to questionable teenagers on the cusp of womanhood. Both stories show how the myths of individuals can be created by the perceptions and attitudes of their communities. These myths exist outside the closed ranks of the community because the the community’s inability to accept their difference. With Miss Emily the difference lies in her eccentricies. For the â€Å"Queenie† and her friends their difference lies in the community’s difficulties in reconciling these generational changes with the children they once were and the women they would become. Unable to accept these women as part of the community’s indentity, they are reduced to mere myths in the eyes of the community members. References Faulker, W. (2001). A Rose for Emily. In R. Diyanni (Ed.). Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 79. Updike, J. (2001). A&P. In R. Diyanni (Ed.). Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama. (5th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 32.

The Harlem Renaissance And American History - 1217 Words

Art is defined as an expression of a persons beliefs, ideas, imagination, and character. In this class, we learned that the many forms of art could be a reflection of a persons emotions or a time period by using naturalism, idealism, or abstract themes. During the 1920’s, an era known as the Harlem Renaissance defined black culture and changed entertainment around the world. The black community used art such as music, literature, and paintings to express social freedom. Artist such as Jacob Lawrence, Langston Hughes, and Duke Ellington used their art as a form of therapy and communication to share the life of an African American in White America. This phenomenon created culture pride within the community. Their art is significant to†¦show more content†¦However in the summer of 1919, the white community became fearful and uncomfortable with the Great Migration and retaliated with violence. The KKK engaged in several riots and lynching’s that resulted in 83 deat hs of African Americans ( Mann HRC). Yet, from those terrible tragedies came great civil rights leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Gavvery. Their work, believes, and programs inspired racial pride throughout the black community. â€Å"Du Bois believed that artistic and literary work could be used as a form of propaganda to help combat racial stereotypes and gain new respect for the race†( Mann HRB). This political agenda sparked change and inspiration for Black entertainment and culture because artists were using their talents to proclaim freedom from the inequality in the country. During the 1920’s, Langston Huges was a monumental literary artist because he changed the way that people wrote in that era. He wrote poetry, short stories, novels and plays that reflected black culture and became the first African American artist to support himself as a professional writer. His work was significant because of is use of imagery and use of raw and truthful phrases per fectly portrayed the frustrations of being black in America. In one of his famous writing â€Å"Theme for English B† Hughes wrote a poem to his professor about the education system and how a white dominated culture affects