Canterbury Tales General Prologue an Reaction Paper

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The destination is a holy and venerated site, one that should inspire devotion, a spirit of penance, and peace; and it is fitting that a merry man should be the one to invite the other pilgrims to the game of the telling tales.

Unlike Dante's pilgrimage through the afterlife, which tends toward a much more spiritual focus, Chaucer's pilgrimage is earthly in the sense that its main focus is on human nature, in all its different shapes and sizes. If Dante analyzes the effects of sin and virtue on the human soul by viewing them from the realm of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, Chaucer analyzes the effects of sin and virtue on the human soul by viewing them from the everyday people he meets on a pilgrimage to a real place in real time: Canterbury.

Like Dante, however, Chaucer's Tales show the ways in which virtue is rewarded and vice punished.

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Such is clear in the General Prologue, too, as Chaucer describes the various pilgrims, which range in character from the noble and virtuous (like the Knight) to the Wife of Bath, who has had many husbands and may be considered a proud and sensual, fun-loving woman. These characters tell tales fitting to their character, but the General Prologue merely introduces them to the reader, putting before his eyes the varied and realistic characters of late-medieval England. Some characters are clearly ones that can be admired for their goodness of spirit (like the Parson), others are more worldly (like the Franklin), while others are somewhat mean in aspect (like the Miller, who likes to tell bawdy stories). Chaucer means to present humanity in its entire spectrum, showing how all of us are making a pilgrimage through life, from birth to death, towards eternity.

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