Geoffrey Chaucer Research Papers Samples For Students

In the Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath is a character designed to be more like the modern woman. Unlike what is expected of other women to behave at the time (which is to be submissive and obedient to their husbands, to have only one husband, to turn to nunnery when widowed, and to be virginal and pure), the Wife of Bath actively uses sex as a tool to get what she wishes. She demands complete sovereignty from her multiple husbands, and the freedom to do as she wishes in any aspect of her life.
Geoffrey Chaucer designed the ...

Hierarchy and social status are two of the major aspects of the Middle Ages, and two of the major themes embodied in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. In fact, what makes The Canterbury Tales is such an outstanding literary work is that Chaucer as depicted an extensive range of characters and occupations from the 14th century. The Canterbury Tales, of course, contains characters of both genders, from the various prominent social classes of the time, from the common to the aristocrat, the poor to the wealthy, the secular to the saintly, etc., and focuses on their interactions and relationships. ...

The great plague that devastated England in the mid-14th century wiped out entire villages and filled the streets of London with cartloads of bloated corpses. The relevant statistics are difficult to gauge accurately, but estimates are that from a population of about 6 million people in 1300, as many as four million are thought to have died from the outbreak of bubonic plague that hit England in the 1340s (Borsch, 2005). All of Europe was similarly affected, with as much as 45 percent of the continent’s population dying from the Black Death in less than a decade (Borsch). There were ...