Chaucer's Canterbury Tales the Raucous Term Paper

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Thomas's gift turns out to be a giant fart, which Chaucer describes using richly comedic imagery: "Ther nys no capul, drawynge in a cart, / That myghte have lete a fart of swich a soun," ("Summoner's Tale," lines 486-487). The humor continues to enliven the Summoner's tale; toward the end the characters seriously debate how to divide up a fart.

Chaucer's use of comedy and farcical imagery parallels his mockery of the clergy, of the "First Estate" which claims moral superiority. Furthermore, the Friar and the Summoner were both outsmarted. Through the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer implies that the feudal caste system is hilariously outmoded as well as being a source of evil.

Furthermore, the Friar and the Summoner both note that men of the cloth often hypocritically extort money in the name of the Church. Such men claim moral righteousness while they exploit other people and distort Christian spirituality. Their actions are direct insults to scripture, and both the Summoner and the Friar allude to Biblical allegory to prove their points. For example, the Summoner devotes several verses to Biblical allegories of abstinence. Chaucer's inclusion of Biblical references serves as counterpoint to the examples of evil behavior.

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Furthermore, the Summoner, and therefore Chaucer, does not defend Thomas's behavior: the lady of the house in the Summoner's story describes Thomas's fart joke as being churlish and says that "His sike heed is ful of vanytee" (lines 542; 544). In the Friar's Tale, Chaucer implied that lechery is less a crime than Church-sanctioned hypocrisy and extortion. In the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer similarly suggests that vanity and churlishness are less significant moral slip-ups than Church-sanctioned extortion.

The Summoner's tale is more filled with dialogue than was the Friar's Tale, making it a more engaging and faster-paced story. However, both the Summoner and the Friar reach the same conclusion regarding the nature of good and evil: true evil is neither lechery nor vanity but abuse of power, hypocrisy, and greed. True good is the exposure of such evils and the sincere attempts to reform. Chaucer shows that the Bible and its teachings are essentially good when they are not distorted by Church hypocrisy and greed. In both the Friar's Tale and the Summoner's Tale, Chaucer presents Church bureaucracy and feudalism as the evil root causes….....

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