Medieval Religious Officials in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prologue to Canterbury Tales

Abstract

Chaucer is a great humanist who gently unmasks the roguery, foolishness and corruption of the medieval religious officials in Geofrey Chaucer’s Prologue to Canterbury Tales withour malice, spite or animosity. His attitude is that of benevolence and tolerance, even his satire is in the form of tender shafts of irony, which neither hurt nor destroy. He gives us a direct transcription of reality and a true picture of the medieval social condition as it actually lived in the age in most familiar aspects in his masterpiece work, The Canterbury Tales. He uses humour, irony, exaggeration and ridicule to satirize the medieval religious officials’ follies and foibles. The research focuses on the seven medieval religious officials by the name eof the Prioress, the Monk, the Friar, the Clerk of Oxford, the Parson, the Summoner, and the Pardoner. This research aims at revealing the follies, the absurdities, the monetary greed, the hypocrisy, and, on the whole, the irreligious natures of these men of religion. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative proposed by Creswell (2014). The research result shows that the religious characters of his times are portrayed in a most unfavourable light. The ecclesiastical characters that are favourably portrayed, and for whom Chaucer admires are the Clerk and the Parson. Chaucer has nothing to satirize for them but praise, while the other characters belonging to the church are ridiculed and satirized. They are not only most worldly-minded but also dishonest, immoral, and corrupt.

Keywords: Middle Age, medieval society, ecclesiastical characters, medieval religious officials, irony, satire.

References